WikiMath

WikiMath. It would be interesting for wiki to do some simple calculations. For example,

• if I’m doing a MeatBall:WikiAsPim, and I make a list estimating how long a bunch of sub-projects would take, it would be nifty for the wiki to automagically display the total time for the whole project.
• If I include the prices when I list all the components in some proposed system at the ComputerComponent wiki, the wiki would automagically display the total cost for the system.

What’s the simplest thing that could work? Perhaps: if every row in a list began with a number, put the total after the end of the list. (Perhaps this would evolve into something more complex … load in sub-totals from other wiki pages … do more complicated math … etc.).

The page Futures:AutomatedTechTree discusses something similar: critical path management. If we have a bunch of pages on various events, each page listing what prerequisite events must happen, and how long we expect it to take, after all the prerequisites come to pass, before this event happens, then the computer should be able to figure out an estimated date for each future event … which events are on the critical path … When information about an event is updated, the changes trickle through, changing the estimated date for all dependent events.

Possibilities

We can do this *now* (with a bit of tricky editing) on wiki that let us write JavaScript.

Implementations

Activity

Dan Bricklin (who wrote the original spreadsheet) is currently implementing WikiCalc, combining spreadsheets and wiki (and AJAX and GPL ). ThoughtStorms:SpreadsheetsAndWiki.

Terminology

Do we need terminology to distinguish between

• calculating things once when the editor hits the save button (similar to “signature string substitution” on many wiki)
• re-calculating things each time a reader loads a page, using only the information found on that page (similar to the “numbered lists” on many wiki)
• re-calculating things each time a reader loads a page, and also pulling in numbers from other pages.

Also, perhaps we should distingush between doing the calculations client-side (perhaps using JavaScript) or client-side.

Problems

We want to make sure we don’t crash the WikiEngine if a user puts “illegal” values into a function (such as divide-by-zero). We want to make sure we don’t lock-up the WikiEngine if we have an infinite loop or “circular references”.

See Also

WikiVariables

(moved from IdeasToPlace # 209)

Contributors

DavidCary

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