OneNote as a Wiki front-end

Microsoft June 12th, 2003

It just occurred to me that Microsoft’s OneNote, the application “for capturing, organizing, and collaboratively sharing information”, would work well as a front-end to a Wiki.

For example: A Wiki server could act as repository for publishing shared OneNote pages that in turn can be collaborated on either via the browser (in the true Wiki sense) or within the OneNote application itself.

IMHO, this type of integration would push Wiki’s into corporate environments where knowledge management seems to involve too much post-processing work.

I believe this is in part because the tools don’t focus enough on the edges of knowledge gathering. Specifically, where and when knowledge is captured (e.g. ad hoc in meetings, email, blogs, the coffee maker et al)

Of course I’m simplifying the process and the technical hurdles, but there certainly seems to be synergy between a Wiki and OneNote. Perhaps even integration with SharePoint as a dashboard would suffice the corporate enterprise enough to make it viable.

However, the technical obstacles could be simplified if OneNote’s file format was XML-based, but unfortunately this is not the case, according to MS Office Group Program Manager Chris Pratley:

“The file format is not XML, but it’s a very structured binary format that can quickly become XML. We decided not to do XML on this release because it wasn’t core to the basic note-taking. But we architected it for the ability to do XML in our next release very easily.”

Although there’s hope for future releases of OneNote and there’s also the XML file format in Word 2003 (WordML) and other Office 2003 applications like InfoPath to consider, but my question to the LazyWeb is whether the opportunity to integrate OneNote with a Wiki is worth the effort today?


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8 Comments to “OneNote as a Wiki front-end”

  1. Gus Mueller | June 12th, 2003 at 2:06 am

    I think that’s a great idea- I hope someone on the windows side comes out with something like that (I’m not too familiar with OneNote)- and for the macintosh side I’ve been creating an app called VoodooPad where I’ve been recently adding remote wiki editing support to it:

    http://gusmueller.com/archives/2003/6/6.html#884

  2. anil dash's daily links | June 12th, 2003 at 2:06 am

    MS OneNote as a wiki front-endhttp://www.hatch.org/b2/archives/p/1226…

  3. steven hatch | June 12th, 2003 at 4:06 am

    Gus — VoodooPad looks very cool. Too bad I don’t have access to a Mac, but perhaps you’ll inspire me :-)

  4. steven hatch | June 13th, 2003 at 2:06 am

    Indeed, OneNote is Windows specific. However as far as I know, you can practically get a Wiki server to run under almost any web server and scripting/programming language.

    In particular, OpenWiki.org, the one I mentioned in the post, is ASP-based and runs under IIS/PWS, which are both Windows based.

    However, there are many-many alternatives:
    http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Groupware/Wiki/?tc=1

    Thanks for the comment!

  5. steven hatch | June 13th, 2003 at 2:06 am

    More Wiki Links:
    http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?WikiEngines

  6. -b- | June 13th, 2003 at 12:06 pm

    From what I understand, OneNote is windows specific. Are the wikis your proposing here cross-platform?

  7. Leon | June 16th, 2003 at 9:06 am

    I’m not sure this will be possible with the coming version of OneNote

    I’ve been playing with the beta, and there appear to be only two options for exporting notes. Either “Publish” - which means save a whole notepad full of notes in a binary format - or, “Export” to .mht (and perhaps another format I can’t remember at the moment but not html). While certainly you could share notes, I don’t think live collaborartion or a front end to a wiki is currently feasible.

    OneNote is cool though, and if someone thinks of a way to use it as a wiki front end, I’d be interested.

  8. John Abbe | January 3rd, 2004 at 6:34 pm

    See wikidPad — http://www.jhorman.org/wikidPad/