Portal talk:Knowledge

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Organic Design

Platforms & Sanctuaries

The Nodal Model

The software & user interface

  • This content still needs to be done...

We'll use the current XmlWiki environment as the basis of explaining what the new software is. The main differences are:

  • WYSIWYG: There is no need for wikitext or HTML in the new environment
  • OpenGL and Flash
  • Developed collaborately
  • Applicational content: Forms, widgets, scheduling, rules, algorithms are all content in the network
  • No concept saving or loading, the RAM, filesystem and beyond are all unified into a single tree
  • P2P: This tree is not bound to webservers, the content is distributed across all storage resource in the network
  • Security: The current XmlWiki environment is only really a token gesture of security and permissions, the new one is real security.
  • Nodal Applications
  • Borgification
  • Interface
  • Ultra Changes
  • Geometry

Peers

The current generation of peers are running wikid.pl which is not truly a peer as described above because it does not exhibit nodal reduction. Wikid.pl has been patched together from various code snipits developed for prototyping the nodal environment. The new generation still under development are running peerd.c which are running a true nodal reduction environment. Once the basic interface is functional the Flash version peer.as will be brought up to the same level of functionality so the application will be available as a standalone application or served within a browser.

The current wikid.pl-based peers have been "in the field" since about the end of 2005 and perform many jobs such as backing up and dsitributing data, checking POP boxes and updating DNS record when IP addresses change. They also give XmlWiki the ability to have features which would be very difficult to program in the request-response based PHP environment its programmed in, for instance the recent changes is able to display changes from other wiki's, websites and RSS feeds.

XmlWiki

We installed a Wiki to collaborate on development more effectively, a wiki was used rather than a CVS/SVN based solution because its non-specialist nature was more in accord with the project's principles and allowed all of us involved in all the different areas of the project to work together casually, but productively using Wiki workflow.

We developed XmlWiki to allow us to extend various features of our wiki environment as the needs arose, and that such extensions could be developed and collaborated on without having to leave the environment. We call this ability Self Containment which is an important foundation principle of the project. XmlWiki allows us to collaborate, develop and test all the aspects of the project which cover a variety of languages such as PERL, PHP, C, Flash and XML. Many features are lacking compared to more matured and specialised development environments, but we find the unified nature of this environment has far outweighed those problems.

MediaWiki and Wikipedia

The decision to move to a wiki and to use MediaWiki was made by Rob on 17 May 2005 when he said

...I'm thinking of MediaWiki which is the one used by Wikipedia. Would you use one if I set it up?"

I like the Wikipedia project a lot so agreed that MediaWiki was a good choice even though MediaWiki is programmed in PHP which we didn't want to support due to the nodal development focussing on PERL, Flash and C. The Wikimedia Foundation's slogan is "Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. And we need your help." which is one of the main foundation principles of the project too, so were pleased to be able to become more familiar and tie in with the Wikipedia project.

We're not officially tied in with Wikimedia or its projects in any way, our XmlWiki components are not suitable for serious use and are totally unsupported. But we hope to help them a great deal in the near future by offering a new interface with which to access the Wikimedia projects and by using that interface to distribute their load into P2P space where it will be safer, more accessible and more cost-effective.


Independence

Peerix

Peerix is a UNIX-like operating system being developed specifically for the Nodal environment. It uses the set of GNU UNIX-like components for low-level hardware integration operations such as memory-management, and the GNU components in turn reflect the POSIX standard which defines what exactly "Unix-like" means. Peerix uses the nodal environment for high-level network and resource allocation layers, and to provide the user interface.

The source-based methodology used by the GNU linux community means that the operating system can work on a wide range of computer hardware available now and in the future. The PC (x86) and Mac (PPC) platforms are the most common, but many others are supported. It should be possible to have Peerix operating system work in a similar way on Mac, PC, Palm, even iPod and PSP.

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