A multi-column Layout / Storyview

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1

Hi Tiddlywikians,

I’m currently working on a multi-column TiddlyWiki Layout
It’s in a rough pre-alpha state and looks like this

I’m looking for inspiration by you folks
Would you use this?
What should it be able to do?
What have you always wanted in a multi-column layout?

Best wishes and saluti,
Simon

2

Hi Simon,
This is very interesting! Having the control to simply add/remove columns is great!
It should be as simple as possible! Switching can be automatic or manual! That means one can control the number of columns and simply switch!

3

Hi Mohammad,
Currently there are three columns hard-coded
Making it so that one can add/remove columns needs a bit of work
Automatic switching of columns… how would you do that?

Best wishes,
Simon

4

May be automatic is not a good word here. The use case in my mind is like below:

  1. One can set the number of columns to two
  2. By shift + click (or other combination) can open a tiddler in second column (or first column = this can be configurable). The column will be added if it is not existed

So you can have two columns layout and open a tiddler optionally in the first or in the second column.

Side note: One can use the above configuration and use one column for edit and the other for preview.

6

I can definitely see benefits with two columns - but could someone give use cases where it is practical with three?

7

I have those ultrawide screens in mind which would benefit from three columns

Best wishes,
Simon

8

Hi Simon, if you haven’t already I recommend having a look at Jeremy’s work with TWPub which supports dynamically adding/removing stories: GitHub - TWPUB/TWPUB-Tools: Tools for creating and viewing TWPUB files

9

Thanks @saqimtiaz , the layout is indeed heavily inspired by the twpub-tools
I just haven’t yet figured out the mechanism @jeremyruston uses for the dynamic stories

10

Have a look at the tag $:/tags/PageLayout/MainColumn and the tiddlers it tags, the rest is flexbox CSS.

11

Ah yes I remember how Jeremy did it
But it needs quite some adjustments for my case
Especially the setting of a certain column as the active column… if columns are dynamically creatable I need to figure out a good mechanism for it

12

Ciao @BurningTreeC

Very interesting. Especially given your previous work!
I need a couple of days to formulate a response. I’m going to look at how I use columns and how they used on web a bit and see if I can make a coherent answer to …

Buongiorno
TT

13

Hi @BurningTreeC and all,

Oh my, late for the party. That’s some sweet looking Wiki you have there.

As for my use case I would definitely benefit from the 3 column view. I have a wide screen and would store all of my tech info and tips of which I have scattered everywhere. This looks like the perfect type of Wiki iteration for such. I would love to see how your work evolves.

All the best,
Julio

14

Except for three columns how will it differ from the current two column that the existing plugin - name escapes me - that @DaveGifford popularised. I will find the name tomorrow.

I agree there will be some use cases for three columns but the effort may be better spent on extending the current plugin.

Heaps could be done supporting multicolumns. Perhaps so tiddlywiki looks like a kanban. The trick is how each tiddler and column, their stories etc can interact and be managed such as drag and drop and keyboard alternatives.

Also the murri pluging offers even more bespoke layouts including accross multiple screens free from columns.

15

I think the one Tones has in mind is Stories:

https://giffmex.org/stroll/stroll.html#%24%3A%2Fplugins%2Fsq%2FStories

16

Stories is a very crude two story implementation that only works with the default theme and layout and was packaged specifically for Stroll. Any attempt at a more flexible solution requires a new page layout at which point supporting more than two stories is not particularly difficult.

17

@saqimtiaz we would appreciate a more flexible solution from you for sure. In part my example of “Stories” is the icons that allow you to push tiddlers between stories and other UI elements perhaps worth emulation in your solution.

More than two “Stories”, say seven (7), may particularly work if someone created a different tiddler view that lent itself to more narrow tiddlers, and operated more like a kanban board. It is in this context that I see value in providing interstory drag and drop and other tools. however we can not be sure how others may leverage your multi-story solution if it is available in new innovative ways. For example a second story (or more) could display a prior tiddler version, a tiddler annotation, the “next tiddler”, a reference or helper tiddler along side the primary story. Perhaps even one day we could replicate something like the old “google wave”.

The above ideas make me wonder if there were a way to align a tiddler in one story with that in another, introducing white space in either column (if they are of different length) so that scrolling one story/the page of left hand tiddlers align with the right hand tiddlers.

Love your work

18

Did you mean to address this to BurningTreeC?

19

I did mean to address @BurningTreeC sorry

20

The website with the current state of the layout is now online at:
https://burningtreec.github.io/tiddlywiki-multi-columns/

21

Very interesting.

I think the points given by @Mohammad are important. I will add in the tab Open of sidebar the story rivers, it can be usefull if you want go a openened tiddler, but you don’t remember in which story river is it.