There's something really attractive about having a wiki run on your desktop. Wikis provide a conversational context for content way more powerful that the single-category of files and folders view allowed by Windows Explorer. Windows explorer does allow a user to store a HTML file next to folders, but gives no way to generate this. Without lowering the effort required few people bother. Providing the wiki-context would allow for tagging and mapping and (collective) sensemaking / trails that wikis are now embodying, all on the local filesystem.

I first remember running TWiki on Windows back in 2002 when I helped roll out an installation for Arthur Andersen. Yet 4 years later this option is not generally accessible to the public as there is not a sensible windows build. Oh, techies can work it out, after say a couple of hours of effort following the IndigoPerl build instructions, or download the 200mb VMWare build, but long or technical installation instructions and enormous downloads are a real barrier preventing end-users trying out TWiki for the first time.

By opening TWiki to use by end users, would open the door to amplify usage to all the non-technical users, and in the process draw more technical users back into the fold.

To make such a point and click install possible what TWiki needs is a Windows Native build that double-click installs from a .exe and that does not involve an emulation layer such as CygWin or VMWare.

This integration build effort started – see TWiki:Plugins.TWikiInstallerWindowsContrib: we have the components and the approach but not the build. Like too many of TWiki's projects it has failed due to poor coordination.