Wikis are good for quickly getting down to work. Its extremly easy text markup and the simple user interface explain the popularity. On the other hand, mind mapping software and sketching tools also appear to have great popularity. One reason is, that making a picture of an idea often improves understanding very much. In SnipSnap we have tried to put these two ideas together to form a new way to discuss and document ideas. With the {graph} macro you can write down MindMaps, Organizational Charts and similar hierarchical information as text and SnipSnap draws the picture for you. But we have not been content with just hierarchical ideas. They even included ways to express data and ideas for project management and software development. You can write down work packages and mile stones of your project plan to be laid out as a Project Structure Plan. Software developers may express ideas using the UML renderer. The text based representation makes it easy to keep track of changes and allows for quick changes. SnipSnap includes Groovy Scripting for a while now but has not been documented much until now. A small example explains how to use the scripting feature to write a servlet-like script that returns the HTML code for the rendered snip only, without portlets and other SnipSnap GUI elements. The possibilities are endless, as each groovy template script can be used as a view or edit handler for any typed snip. Think of web forms for special snips or other complex handling of snip content. This has been added to the tools section of Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.
posted by Marcus Zillman |
4:20 AM
