CanvasWiki vs. TWiki vs. MediaWiki vs. ProntoWiki vs. XWiki

General Features CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki
Version
1.2.101
TWiki-6.1.0
1.32.2
1.0.1
16.3.0
Last Release Date
2006-06-14 (17 years ago)
2018-07-15 (5 years ago)
2019-06-05 (4 years ago)
2024-05-04 (1 day ago)
2024-04-29 (6 days ago)
Last Update here
2008-09-01 (15 years ago)
2019-07-19 (4 years ago)
2019-06-21 (4 years ago)
2006-08-23 (17 years ago)
2024-04-30 (5 days ago)
Author
Raymond Camden
Peter Thoeny, TWiki community
Magnus Manske, Brion Vibber, Lee Daniel Crocker, Tim Starling, Erik Möller, and others.
Clay Alberty
XWiki Development Team
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
Apache
GPL
GPL
BSD
LGPL + Free hosting on https://myxwiki.org for individuals/non profit
Programming Language
ColdFusion
Perl, JavaScript
PHP
C#
Java
Data Storage
Database
Files, RCS
Database
Database
Database, RCS
License Cost/ Fee
0
N/A
0
Free
0
Development status
Mature
Mature
Mature
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
Mildly technical
Large enterprise; small to medium businesses
End Users/Desktop, Education
Enterprise, Workgroups, Developers
Hosting Features CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki
Storage Quota
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Bandwidth Quota
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Other Limits
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Topic Restrictions
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Corporate Branding
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Yes
Own Domain
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Yes
Ads allowed
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
No
System Requirements CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki
Operating System
Windows, Linux, Solaris
Linux, Windows, OS-X and other
*nix, Windows, Mac OS X
Windows
Any platform supporting Java 11 or greater
Root Access
No
No
No
No
No
Webserver
Apache, IIS
Almost any webserver, typically Apache and Ngnix
Any with PHP support
IIS 5+
Servlet 3.1+
Other Requirements
ColdFusion MX
RCS (optional), cron/scheduler, fgrep, egrep; Plugins may have additional dependencies
none
.NET framework v2.0 or higher
Java 11, MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL/HSQLDB/etc (JDBC Driver required)
Datastorage CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki
Text Files
Unknown
Yes
No
Unknown
No
MySQL
Yes
No
Yes
Unknown
Yes
PostgreSQL
Unknown
No
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Oracle
Unknown
No
Yes
Unknown
Yes
SQLite
Unknown
No
Yes
Unknown
No
BerkeleyDB
Unknown
No
No
Unknown
No
RCS
Unknown
Yes
No
Unknown
Plugin
Other
Access, SQL Server
RcsLite Perl library for version control without external RCS; backend API for other storage
No
SQLExpress or SQL 2000 or SQL 2005
JDBC Databases and in general any database supported by Hibernate; any custom implementation, as the storage is pluggable. Attachments can be saved on the filesystem
Security/Anti-Spam CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki
Page Permissions
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
No
Yes
No
No
Yes
Authentication Backends
Internal authentication; anything Apache supports such as LDAP, NIS, AD, Kerberos
Yes
.NET Membership platform
XWiki, LDAP, custom (Open API), Kerberos, NTLM, Headers, PUMA, SAML, Trusted LDAP, Sun SSO
Host Blocking
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
No
No
Mail Encryption
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
nofollow
Unknown
Plugin
Optional
No
No
Blacklist
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
No
Plugin
CAPTCHA
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
No
Yes
Delayed Indexing
Unknown
Plugin
No
No
Yes
Development/Support CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Code Repository
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
Stars on GitHub
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Common Features CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki
Preview
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Minor Changes
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Change Summary
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Page History
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page Revisions
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Revision Diffs
Between all
Between all
Between all
Between all
Sitemap
Yes
Yes
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Plugin System
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Special Features CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki
Unicode Support
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
Unknown
No
Yes
Unknown
No
Interface Languages
0
19
Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, German, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Ukrainian, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
140
Afar, Abkhazian, Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Assamese, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Byelorussian, Bulgarian, Bihari, Bislama, Bengali; Bangla, Tibetan, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Czech, Welsh, Danish, German, Bhutani, Greek, English, Esperanto, Spanish, Estonian, Basque, Persian, Finnish, Fiji, Faroese, French, Frisian, Irish, Scots Gaelic, Galician, Guarani, Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Croatian, Hungarian, Armenian, Interlingua, Indonesian, Interlingue, Inupiak, Icelandic, Italian, Inuktitut, Japanese, Georgian, Kazakh, Greenlandic, Cambodian, Kannada, Korean, Kashmiri, Kurdish, Kirghiz, Latin, Lingala, Laothian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Lettish, Malagasy, Maori, Macedonian, Malayalam, Mongolian, Moldavian, Marathi, Malay, Maltese, Burmese, Nauru, Nepali, Dutch, Norwegian, Occitan, Oromo, Oriya, Punjabi, Polish, Pashto, Pushto, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Quechua, Rhaeto-Romance, Kirundi, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Sangho, Serbo-Croatian, Sinhalese, Slovak, Slovenian, Samoan, Shona, Somali, Albanian, Serbian, Siswati, Sesotho, Sundanese, Swedish, Swahili, Tamil, Telugu, Tajik, Thai, Tigrinya, Turkmen, Tagalog, Setswana, Tonga, Turkish, Tsonga, Tatar, Twi, Uighur, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Volapuk, Wolof, Xhosa, Yiddish, Yoruba, Zhuang, Chinese, Chinese Traditional, Zulu
1
English
40
Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Persian, French, Galician, Hindi, Croatian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Cambodian, Kannada, Korean, Lithuanian, Latvian, Lettish, Marathi, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Sinhalese, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Turkish, Uighur, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
Email notification
Unknown
Yes
Optional
No
Yes
Comments
Threaded
Discussion Pages
No
Threaded
Categories
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Optional
Yes
Namespaces
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Conflict Handling
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Concurrent Editing
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Unknown
Optional
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Structured Data
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Links CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki
CamelCase
Yes
Yes
No
Optional
Yes
Freelinks
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
InterWiki
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
SisterWiki
Unknown
Plugin
No
No
Yes
Image Links
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Optional
Yes
Windows Shares
Unknown
Plugin
No
No
Yes
Page Redirects
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Syntax Features CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki
HTML Tags
All
Some
Some
All
Math formulas
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
No
Yes
Tables
simple + complex
simple + complex
none
simple + complex
CREOLE support
Unknown
No
No
Unknown
Yes
Markdown Support
Unknown
No
No
Unknown
Yes
Textile Support
Unknown
Plugin
No
Unknown
No
BBCode Support
Unknown
No
No
Unknown
No
Emoticon Images
Unknown
Yes
Optional
No
Yes
Syntax Highlighting
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
No
Yes
Footnotes
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
Optional
Yes
Quoting
Unknown
Yes
No
Optional
Yes
Internal Comments
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Custom styles
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
Unknown
Yes
No
No
Plugin
Scripting
TWiki Markup Language, TWiki variables, JavaScript, extensive API
Optional
velocity, groovy, ruby, jython, generic JSR223 & very powerful API
Content Includes
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Feed Aggregation
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
Usability CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki
Section Editing
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
No
Yes
Page Templates
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Double-Click Edit
Unknown
Plugin
Optional
No
No
Toolbar
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
WYSIWYG Editing
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
Access Keys
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Auto Signature
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
No
Statistics CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki
Recent Changes
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Wanted Pages
Unknown
No
Yes
No
Yes
Orphaned Pages
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
No
Yes
Most/Least Popular
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Optional
Yes
Recent Visitors
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
No
Yes
Analysis
Unknown
Yes
Optional
No
Yes
Output CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki
Printer Friendly
Print View
Print CSS
Print CSS
Mobile Friendly
Unknown
Plugin
No
Unknown
Yes
Themes & Skins
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
ATOM Feeds
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Optional
Abbreviations
Unknown
Plugin
No
No
Plugin
Auto-TOC
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Optional
Raw Export
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
HTML Export
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
XML export
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
No
Yes
PDF Export
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
No
Yes
Office Export
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Media and Files CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki
File Attachments
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Media Revisions
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Embedded Flash
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Embedded Video
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Image Editing
Unknown
Plugin
No
No
Plugin
SVG Editing
Unknown
Plugin
No
No
Plugin
MindMap Editing
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
No
Plugin
Media Search
Contents
Keywords
Contents
Extras CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki
Calendar
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Image Galleries
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Presentations
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Forums
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Blogs
Unknown
Plugin
No
Unknown
Plugin
Ticket System
Unknown
Plugin
No
Unknown
Plugin
Chat
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Syntax Examples CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki
Internal Link
WikiWord autolink
Otherweb.WikiWord
[[Spaced text]]
[[WikiWord][label]]
[[a link]]
[[a link|with title]]
[pagename]
XWiki supports 16+ input syntaxes (e.g. confluence, twiki, docbook, mediawiki, xwiki, markdown, etc), see http://rendering.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome#HSupportedSyntaxes for details.

The syntax documented below is XWiki Syntax 2.1 (http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/XWikiSyntax).

[[wiki syntax here>>Space.Page]]
[[Space.Page]]
(Space is optional and is the current space if not specified)
External Link
http://twiki.org/ autolink
[[http://twiki.org/][label]]
[http://example.org The title]
{title|url}
[[wiki syntax here>>http://www.xwiki.com]]
http://www.xwiki.com
Headlines
---+ Level 1
---++ Level 2
---+++ Level 3
---++++ Level 4
---+++++ Level 5
---++++++ Level 6
==Section==
===Subsection===
====Sub-subsection====
!, !!, !!!
= Headline
== Subheadline
=== Sub-subheadline
==== etc..
Bold Format
*bold*
'''bold'''
**bold**
**bold**
Italics Format
_italic_
''italic''
''italics''
//Italics//
Underline Format
<u>underline</u>
<u>underlined</u>
__under__
__underline__
Monospace Format
=monospaced text= and
<verbatim>
multi line text
</verbatim>
<tt>monospace</tt>
##monospace##
Strikethrough Format
<strike>strikethrough</strike>
<s>strikethrough</s>
<<strike>> (using custom tags)
--Strike--
Superscript Format
<sup>superscript</sup>
<sup>superscript</sup>
<<super>> (using custom tags)
^^superscript^^
Subscript Format
<sub>subscript</sub>
<sub>subscript</sub>
<<sub>> (using custom tags)
,,subscript,,
Images
%ATTACHURL%/image.png
http://any.domain/image.png
[[Image:wiki.png]]
{guid} - this is displayed and can be inserted automatically for each image/page
image:img.png
image:Space.Page@img.png
[[image:img.png||width="25" height="25"]]
image:http://some/url/img.png

Starting with the xwiki/2.1 syntax, also:
image:icon:cancel
Aligning Text
| left |   center   |   right |
or HTML
or CSS
<center>Centered</center>
available through custom tags
(% style="... css here..." %)Text
Text Indentation
<blockquote>
multi line text
</blockquote>
: indented line
multiple spaces -> &nbsp;
Non-semantic text indentation through styling:

(% style="... css here..." %)multi line text

Quotes:

> This is a quoted text
Bulleted Lists
* Item 1
* Item 1.1
* Item 2
* Item 1
** Item 1.2
* Item 2
+
++
+++
++++
* List
** list
*** list
Numbered Lists
1. Item 1
a. Item 1.a
1. Item 2
# Item 1
## Item 1.2
# Item 2
#
##
###
####
1. Item 1
11. Item 2
111. Item 3
1. Item 4
Definition Lists
$ Term: Definition
; term : definition
; term
: definition
Horizontal Rule
---
----
----
remove CanvasWiki remove TWiki remove MediaWiki remove ProntoWiki remove XWiki