By Martin Stut, 2009-05-23

Add thoughts quick and easy.
When I set up something or discover an interesting idea on the web, then I want to be able to do add a quick note into the system, without having to set up lots of links. I want to keep thinking on the matter at hand, not on the documentation system.

Use it on the road,
even when disconnected. Mobile phone coverage is expensive (I don't want to pay 35 Euros per month just for that) and patchy, especially in the situation where I have most time to think about things: during multi-hour train rides.

Enable me to find stuff again.
That's what a documentation system is there for. If I can't find the thoughts I entered half a year or just a week ago, I could throw the ideas away in the first place an stop bothering with documentation.

Synchronize it among multiple computers using a USB pen drive.
I want to be able to edit the documentation on my netbook (small and light on the road), my home computer (large screen) and my office computer.

Keep documentation confidential.
I don't want everybody in the world to know about the configuration of VPNs etc. Not even everybody in my office needs to know, how I secured the experimental wiki. So a publicly readable wiki is too open for me.

Be able to retrieve the information in ten or twenty years,
when the software I used for writing it, has become obsolete. So the storage needs to be in a format readable by anything. This requirement forbids proprietary binary formats. Simple text or HTML files are ideal; a method to rip the entire system into a set of HTML files would be an acceptable substitute.

Share parts with others,
file by file, or category by category. The organization I work for has branches. The IT guy at branch A needs to know about the setup in branch A, but not all of my vague, incomplete ideas. My colleague in the office needs to know the setup of many office things, but not the SSID of my home WLAN.