FinScribe 0.6 review

FinScribe is a flexible web authoring application, which provides Wiki and Weblog authoring functionality in one application (commonl

License: Other/Proprietary License File size: 726K Developer: Bill Welliver

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FinScribe is a flexible web authoring application, which provides Wiki and Weblog authoring functionality in one application (commonly referred to as a "bliki".)

FinScribe was written as a technology demonstration for the Fins web application framework, FinScribe has grown into a full featured application that offers the best features of many different applications in one easy to use package.

FinScribe (and indeed, the whole underlying Fins framework) was born out of a desire to replace SnipSnap as the engine for this website. While it was (and is) a wonderful application, SnipSnap had a few very bad habits, such as eating a large amount of RAM and being rather slow. Additionally, SnipSnap's development pace had slowed considerably, leaving me to wonder if the shortcomings I'd encountered would be fixed or improved in a timely manner.

After approximitely a week of development, FinScribe replaced SnipSnap on this website, and we haven't looked back since. We've made a large number of enhancements since then, and hope to continue the current pace of development in the future.

Note: There is no SnipSnap code in FinScribe, though the CSS stylesheets shipped with FinScribe are very slightly modified versions of those included with SnipSnap.

This is primarily due to the fact that this application was designed to be at least partially compatible with SnipSnap. As things continue to develop, we'll probably replace the stylesheets with something more original.

Here are some key features of "FinScribe":
Flexible Wiki engine using SnipSnap compatible markup
Weblog functionality
Multiple Weblogs per application (each page may be a weblog)
Multi-user capable
Per-object Comments
Extendible via Plugins (both wiki markup and application level macros)
Produces RSS 2.0 feeds for Weblogs
Includes an RSS 0.92/1.0/2.0 feed reader
Category support
Attachment support
User administration
User self-registration
Skinnable interface using CSS
Versioning capability (new versions are created upon object saves)
Deployable as a standalone web server, as a module within Caudium, or using [external]FastCGI (tested with Apache).

Requirements:
Pike 7.6.50 or newer
libxml2
PCRE
libfcgi (if deploying using FastCGI)
Mysql or SQLite for object storage

What's New in This Release:
Full support for ACLs on objects, along with a new interface for building and editing ACLs.
Better attachment support, BackLinks, and a number of other plugins have been added.