Oscean is a static wiki engine written in Uxntal, a stack-machine assembly language for the Uxn portable virtual machine, intended for people who publish a personal wiki from plain-text tables small enough to fit inside 64kb of memory.
What it is
Oscean is the repository behind the Oscean wiki at wiki.xxiivv.com, and it is a static site written in Uxntal rather than in a high-level language. It lives in the Uxn ecosystem: Uxntal is the assembly language, Uxn is the portable virtual machine that executes it, and the engine itself compiles to a single oscean.rom binary. The database tables are stored as plain-text files deliberately sized to fit in Uxn's 64kb of memory, and the main branch is the live version of the site.
The concrete problem it solves is the weight of a conventional wiki. Instead of a dynamic application backed by a database server that must be running whenever a reader opens a page, Oscean keeps its tables as plain files and emits a static site, so the published wiki needs no runtime database. A pre-processor step generates temporary files that the engine then consumes: entry-log, which contains all the diary logs for an entry, and entry-map, which contains all the incoming links for that entry. The resulting rom has no graphical interface at all; it is driven from a terminal through the uxncli emulator.
Key capabilities
- Assembles a static wiki engine with
uxnasm src/oscean.tal bin/oscean.rom, with drifblim available as the Uxntal assembler toolchain.
- Runs headless through the
uxncli emulator with uxncli bin/oscean.rom, so no graphical interface or browser is required to generate pages.
- Stores database tables as plain-text files designed to fit within Uxn's 64kb of memory.
- Generates an
entry-log temporary file holding all diary logs for an entry.
- Generates an
entry-map temporary file holding all incoming links for an entry.
- Produces a static site, with the
main branch serving as the live version.
- Ships under the MIT licence, while media assets are covered by BY-NC-SA 4.0.
Who uses it and how
- Single-authors publishing a personal wiki or memex from the command line, which is what the
wiki, memex and exocortex topics describe.
- Tinkerers in the Uxn ecosystem who assemble and run the engine themselves with
drifblim and uxncli instead of installing a web application stack.
- Maintainers of the live site at wiki.xxiivv.com, where the
main branch is treated as the deployed version.
- Contributors, since the README states that pull requests are welcome; the repository shows 561 stars, 81 forks and 8 open issues.
Getting started
Build the engine with uxnasm src/oscean.tal bin/oscean.rom, using drifblim to assemble Uxntal, then run it with the uxncli emulator via uxncli bin/oscean.rom. There is no hosted install path and no container image; the workflow is assembling and running the rom locally.
How it compares
Oscean stands alone in this registry as a wiki engine written in a stack-machine assembly language for a portable virtual machine. The facts provided name no competing wiki products and no paid services that it replaces, and the only adjacent tools named are Uxn ecosystem utilities: drifblim for assembly and uxncli for execution.
When to use it — and when not to
Choose Oscean if a terminal-driven, plain-text wiki generated as a static site matches how the site is maintained, and if assembling and running a Uxn rom is acceptable. Do not choose it if a graphical editor, a hosted service or a conventional database-backed wiki is expected, since the rom has no graphical interface and the tables must fit within 64kb of memory. The honest weakness is documentation depth: the README is short and defers readers to on-site documentation for up-to-date details, so much of the operating knowledge lives outside the repository itself.
