Ripplerap

Set up

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:20:17 GMT

The first version of RippleRap (as used at Le Web and BlogTalk) were very rough prototypes, and we've recently completed re-writting much of the code for purposes of improved architecture, reliability and cross-browser compatibility.

We're now in the process of writing up documentation and support notes, as well as an example implementation of a self-hosted edition. The latest documentation is available here: http://tiddlywiki.org/wiki/RippleRap

In the meantime, there are a number of options available for those looking to implement RippleRap:

Use the Confabb NotesShare product, which is RippleRap with a different name. This is by far the easiest option.
Use a standalone version of RippleRap (without the note sharing turned on). We're creating a standalone version of RippleRap for a conference coming up shortly, and will share this when available.
Dive into the code and try to make it work yourself with the latest documentation. You'll need to be comfortable working with TiddlyWiki and also building RippleRap from subversion - there are some good pointers for development in TiddlyWiki here http://trac.tiddlywiki.org/wiki/TiddlyWikiDevelopmentTools. The actual RippleRap code can be found here: http://svn.tiddlywiki.org/Trunk/verticals/ripplerap/.

Code found in subversion includes:
- A core directory which contains the main RippleRap TiddlyWiki
- An editions directory where we keep builds of specific editions
(These builds grab the core code and then add in some configuration specific for a given edition)
- a server directory where we keep various server tools

In the meantime, if you're willing and able to wait for documentation, let us know by contacting us at hello@osmosoft.com, and we'll let you know as soon as it becomes available.

Regretfully, if you'd like to use the old code, we won't be able to provide you with any support. You would be likely to encounter many problems - this is why the code has been re-architected and re-written! Most of the problems in the old code have been fixed in the new version, and we'll be focusing on that version from now on.

Events

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:12:00 GMT

OpenTech 2008

OpenTech is a grassroots conference taking place in London on 5 July 2008. There will be very little wi-fi available at this event, and so we're planning to create a standalone version (without authentication or note sharing) which will be distributed at our stall. Come along and say hi!

Personal Democracy Forum - New York, 23/24 June 2008

The RippleRap product has been integrated into the Confabb Conference Portal, and was launched at the Personal Democracy Forum. Find out more here!

Paul Downey uploaded a set of photos onto Flickr, as did Phil Hawksworth. They also created an entertaining video podcast about the experience.

BlogTalk - Cork, 3/4 March 2008

RippleRap was used for the second time at BlogTalk in Cork, Ireland, on 3/4 March 2008. An archive of the RippleRap file containing all the notes taken at the conference can be found here.

The BlogTalk edition featured new "event stream" functionality, allowing users to see the latest blog posts, tweets and photos from the event. If you're interested in running an event using this additional functionality, check back later when the developer notes will be available.

Phil Whitehouse wrote a blog post reflecting on the experience, and the team published several photos on Flickr.

The server which supported this event is no longer in operation.

Le Web 3 - Paris, 10/11 December 2007

RippleRap was used in a public environment for the first time at Le Web 3, which was held in Paris on 10/11 December 2007. An archive of the RippleRap file containing all the notes taken at the conference can be found here.

RippleRap was supported by Osmosoft at Le Web, and there was a stall attended by various Osmosoftonians.

A number of blog entries have been written by the team, reflecting on the experience:

Several photos were also uploaded to Flickr.

The server which supported this event is no longer in operation.

Support

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:04:00 GMT

Because RippleRap is based on TiddlyWiki, and the new components which have been used to create RippleRap can be used in other ways by the TiddlyWiki community, the first port of call for RippleRap-related queries or requests is the TiddlyWiki Discussion Group.

You can also find more information about TiddlyWiki on its official website and documentation website. You can also check out the latest RippleRap documentation and also general guidelines on developing with TiddlyWiki.

If you have feature requests, or improvements that you wish to contribute back to the project, please raise these either by contacting Osmosoft by email at hello@osmosoft.com, or on the TiddlyWiki Discussion Group.

If you have bug notifications or fixes, please notify us of these by completing this form on Trac.

For general questions about Osmosoft, BT, TiddlyWiki and RippleRap, please take a look at the FAQs.

FAQs

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:56:00 GMT

What is RippleRap?

RippleRap is a note-sharing tool, and is based on the popular, open source TiddlyWiki product. In fact it's simply TiddlyWiki combined with a number of plugins, with some fancy server-side architecture handling the note sharing and agenda population.

Who created RippleRap?

A company called Osmosoft created RippleRap. Osmosoft is the open source innovation arm of BT.

What's the relationship between BT and Osmosoft?

Osmosoft was bought by BT in May 2007, and our remit is to support BT in understanding and adopting open source solutions in a sensible, responsible fashion. BT decided that the best way to go about doing this was to hire people who already had experience of running a successful open source project, and they therefore hired Jeremy Ruston (through the acquisition of his company, Osmosoft) because of his experience creating and running the open source TiddlyWiki project.

What's RippleRap based on?

RippleRap is based on the popular, open source TiddlyWiki product, which is an entire wiki product packaged into a single html file! TiddlyWiki already has a community of developers and enthusiasts helping to develop it and support new users.

There are over 400+ plugins which can be used to configure TiddlyWiki in a multitude of ways. It can be used as a task management tool, a de-centralised collaboration tool, a platform for writing and de-bugging software, simply for organising notes or in many other ways.

TiddlyWiki is made up of microcontent called tiddlers, including all the content and the code required to make it function. You're reading a tiddler right now - try double clicking on this text to send it into edit mode. If you have a working knowledge of javascript or css, you can immediately get under the hood, configuring it in any way you like.

Relevant links:

Official TiddlyWiki website: http://www.tiddlywiki.com
TiddlyWiki community: http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki
TiddlyWiki developer community: http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWikiDev
Osmosoft website: http://www.osmosoft.com

How does RippleRap work?

The product at the heart of RippleRap is TiddlyWiki. This product includes all the functionality required to create, edit and save notes on a local html file.
Depending on how RippleRap is configured, the agenda is either obtained from a server in the form of an OPML file, or can be 'baked' into the RippleRap file prior to distribution.
The sharing of notes with other delegates is done via RSS. When you've authorised sharing, RippleRap creates an RSS feed that sends your notes to the server. The notes are combined with everyone else's notes on the server, and the aggregated notes are re-published as an RSS feed for your local copy of RippleRap. Once they're downloaded, they're stored locally and can be searched within your copy of RippleRap.

Why are you doing this?

BT recognises the importance of being a good citizen in the open source arena, and wants to play their part in sustaining and growing the TiddlyWiki community as a whole. The more people who take an interest in TiddlyWiki, the better it is for everyone involved.

All the rights to the TiddlyWiki and RippleRap code have been passed to a non-for-profit foundation called UnaMesa, these rights are not owned by BT.

Do you plan to do something similar at future conferences?

Our intention is to use RippleRap as a vehicle for meeting the above goals; we may do something similar at other conferences we attend. Our work with Confabb means anyone can implement RippleRap at their event with very little effort.

Welcome

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:15:00 GMT

RippleRap is a free, open source, customisable note sharing tool! It's based on the popular open source TiddlyWiki product and is designed so it can be configured to meet your specific needs.

The most popular configuration of RippleRap is as a conference note sharing tool, so that users can:

Have constant, offline access to the event agenda
Create, save and backup their session notes regardless of whether wi-fi is working
Share their notes with other delegates when they have access to the web
Read notes from sessions they may have missed

If you'd like to see some examples of RippleRap being used in this context, we have archives available from two previous events (note you won't be able to log in and create new notes, but you can see what other people have done):

Le Web edition - from Le Web Conference in Paris, December 2007
BlogTalk edition - from BlogTalk in Cork, March 2008 (this edition included experimental Twitter, Flickr and Blog post importing too)

Update, June 2008: We've spent the last few months re-writing RippleRap, improving the architecture, resilience and cross-browser compatibility. The first implementation of this improved code can be seen at the Confabb website. The two developers who wrote this code talk about their recent experience and the current state of affairs in this podcast:

TiddlyWiki

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:55:00 GMT

RippleRap is based on the popular, open source TiddlyWiki product, which is an entire wiki product packaged into a single html file! TiddlyWiki already has a community of developers and enthusiasts helping to develop it and support new users.

There are over 400+ plugins which can be used to configure TiddlyWiki in a multitude of ways. It can be used as a task management tool, a de-centralised collaboration tool, a platform for writing and de-bugging software, simply for organising notes or in many other ways.

TiddlyWiki is made up of microcontent called tiddlers, including all the content and the code required to make it function. You're reading a tiddler right now - try double clicking on this text to send it into edit mode. If you have a working knowledge of javascript or css, you can immediately get under the hood, configuring it in any way you like.

Relevant links:

Official TiddlyWiki website: http://www.tiddlywiki.com
TiddlyWiki community: http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki
TiddlyWiki developer community: http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWikiDev
Osmosoft website: http://www.osmosoft.com

Confabb

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:46:00 GMT

RippleRap has been fully integrated into the Confabb conference portal website, where it is known as Confabb NoteShare. The Confabb service takes care of the following RippleRap requirements:

Delivery of the configured RippleRap file (built from the publicly available subversion repository)
User account creation and hosting
User notes hosting (that is, somewhere to post each user's RSS feed)
An OPML file detailing the location of each user's RSS feed
An RSS feed of the conference agenda

You can see or use this implementation of RippleRap by following these steps:

Register on Confabb.com
View a conference on Confabb.com where the agenda is properly populated
Click on 'Notes'
Download and play!

Confabb NoteShare was launched at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York on 23/24 June 2008. You can see how the product was used - as well as all the notes which were shared! - at the Personal Democracy Forum page on Confabb.

Mojo

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:13:00 GMT

Mojo is a Web friendly (REST) exposure of BT's Web21C SDK. You can use this to initiate telephone calls and send SMS messages from Widgets, Gadgets, Web mashups, etc! Sign up for an account at http://mojo.bt.com.

We've incorporated a simple click-to-call functionality into RippleRap using the Mojo API, so you can see it in action. Download the RippleRap file to see how this works - during Le Web, it connected phones with the Bat phone that was on the Osmosoft stall.

If you're a developer, then you'll be interested in seeing the code. One of the great aspects of TiddlyWiki is that the entire file - including content, the code which uses the SDK, and the code required for TiddlyWiki to function - can all be inspected. Have a play around and see what you think!

Osmosoft

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:03:00 GMT

Osmosoft is a small company of open source developers owned by British Telecom. We're manning a stall at Le Web, so come over for a chat! You can find out more about us at http://www.osmosoft.com.

DefaultTiddlers

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:58:00 GMT

Welcome

MainMenu

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:36:00 GMT

MainMenu

About RippleRap
Download RippleRap

Development: bug reports and fixes

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:36:00 GMT

We're keen to receive Bug Reports and Fixes. Please register these on Trac at:

https://trac.osmosoft.com/Osmosoft/newticket

Development: content

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:36:00 GMT

There are some tiddlers containing helpful content (in /content):

About_your_username
About_your_password
Safari_and_Opera_configuration
Setup_Instructions
Welcome

Development: making notes

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:36:00 GMT

Much of the functionality to support taking notes comes directly from TiddlyWiki, with some minor additions:

The layout of notes (as explained in the User Interface section)
A macro called TiddlerDisplayDependencies to correctly order yours and other people's notes on the page (in TiddlerDisplayDependenciesPlugin)
A macro called MakeNotesControl to display a button for creating or editing a note (in MakeNotesControlPlugin)

Development: server-side

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:36:00 GMT

A general description of the server-side architecture, along with guidelines on setting this up, can be found here.

Development: sharing notes

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:36:00 GMT

This is the major chunk of code in RippleRap and is contained in the RssSynchronizerPlugin:

The RssSynchronizer object handles the PUT-ing and GET-ing of RSS feeds to and from the server
The RssSynchronizer uses the RSSAdaptor server adaptor to handle the interactions with the server, which itself depends on the WebDavLib plugin
The RssSynchronizer calls itself on a timer, configured using the config.options.txtRippleRapInterval variable

There is a generic settings tiddler in the root directory called settings.js

Development: testing

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:36:00 GMT

There is the shell of a test script in the form of a macro called rippleRapTest (in rippleRapTestPlugin). In the words of the author, Martin Budden,

"it doesn't really do anything."

Development: the Agenda

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:36:00 GMT

Instructions for how to populate the agenda can be found here. Items in the Agenda are encoded as hCalendar microformats. The Agenda is laid out using:

The in-built tabs macro to create the tabbed agenda panel
A macro called listRelated to create the lists of sessions and notes associated with them (in ListRelatedPlugin)
A macro called LinkMaker to customize the links to notes on sessions (in LinkMakerPlugin)
Two templates for the display of Agenda items called AgendaItemsTemplate and AgendaSubItemsTemplate (these are tiddlers in /content)
Five tiddlers referenced by the tabs macro called AgendaMain1, AgendaMain2, AgendaStartup1, AgendaStartup2 and AgendaWorkshops (these are also tiddlers in /content)
Macros called dtstart and dtend handle the encoding of the Agenda items into hCalendar (in MicroformatPlugin)

Development: user accounts

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:36:00 GMT

To support multiple users, much use is made of the server (see the Server-side documentation). The client-side code is relatively straightforward:

A macro called ripplerapAccountButton to display a button for creating an account and signing-in (in MakeNotesControlPlugin)
A macro called accountManager to display either a log-in box with browser-specific instructions, or a note saying you are logged in
The browser-specific help is supported by a macro called browser (in BrowserPlugin)

Development: user interface

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:36:00 GMT

RippleRap's user interface is created by changing the content of certain built-in tiddlers (in /shadows):

ColorPalette
StyleSheet
EditTemplate
PageTemplate
ViewTemplate
MainMenu
DefaultTiddlers
SiteSubtitle
SiteTitle

TaggedTemplateTweak is a plugin used to control the view and edit templates of tiddlers that are tagged with a specific word. It uses various templates (in /content):

SessionViewTemplate
SessionEditTemplate
DiscoveredNotesViewTemplate
DiscoveredNotesEditTemplate
NoteEditTemplate
NoteViewTemplate

There are some additional UI elements (in /content):

SignInOption
AccountDetails
AgendaItemsTemplate
AgendaSubItemsTemplate
HeaderControls