A very specific kind of outliner

[Scott_Sauyet]

@TW_Tones

I tend to design content like a database admin and keep the data model separate from the user interface

I do so often too, especially in data-heavy wikis. The TW5-SQL_Playground certainly is designed this way. In an important way, that is the whole point of it. If you open Order/110, you will see that the entire tiddler looks like this:

title: Order/110
tags: Order
caption: Order/110
type: text/vnd.tiddlywiki
id: 110
order-date: 20231119120000000
customer-id: 46
order-number: 542487
total-amount: 1360.00

order-number is left over from the original import from a separate source; at some point I will probably either remove these, or replace the other ids in this tiddler with these original numbers. And there is some significant denormalization here, some for efficient filters, some just left-over from experiments. Regardless, this tiddler consists of plain data, nothing more.

If you look at the other tiddlers related to this one they are all the same: simple lists of data. (Well, except for Venezuela which is a virtual tiddler.)

So yes, I could clearly export my data; in fact, I generated it externally from the SQL scripts for a sample database; I could convert it into whatever formats I wanted for Obsidian and the like.

But that is not the same as exporting my wiki. Raw lists of data do not display things like this:

If you want to explain that we could easily do something similar with raw data in Obsidian, well, … I’d have to see it to believe it. I don’t think their underlying models are flexible enough to support this. I would love to be proven wrong.

@TW_Tones

I understand perhaps what you are looking for may not be available “out of the box” but in TiddlyWiki it is eminently possible to build it, this is not at all guaranteed in many other platforms. You need a two way solution and need the cooperation of the other apps.

Note the context. I’m not looking for this. It would be great if the ability existed, if I could take my TiddlyWiki, run it through some automated conversion process, and have an equivalent version running on a different platform. And then later, if I changed my mind, I could take my updated version from that platform, run it through a reversed conversion and be back on TiddlyWiki, with my recent changes included. But I’m not looking for it, because I don’t think there are any platforms out there remotely near the power and flexibility of TiddlyWiki.

What @tomzheng is concerned about, I would guess, is the notion of vendor lock-in. If you have information in TwiXXer and want to port it to Mastodon, Facebook, or BlueSky, it’s extremely difficult or impossible. Those platforms are similar to one another in various ways, but TwiXXer and Facebook really don’t want it to be easy for you to move. The concern is that TiddlyWiki similarly locks you in.

He’s right that it does, but for an entirely different reason. There’s not some large corporation trying to hoard your data. But there’s no competing platform that you could move to with any sophisticated TW instance. The only solution I know to @tomzheng ‘s dilemma would be to create an interoperable format for only a very small subset of TW’s features. I’m not interested in that, myself.

[TW_Tones]

@Scott_Sauyet

The concern is that TiddlyWiki similarly locks you in.

He’s right that it does, but for an entirely different reason.

You see this is where we differ, I don’t believe there is any lock in here, as individuals we may choose to commit to TiddlyWiki and thus gain both its benefits of its intellectual property and the costs of its intellectual property, but we have room to move and grow on top of it.

• This commitment is a “Buy in” rather than a lock in. Buying in to a free and open source solution is well priced

If someone wants to retain interoperability they can research each of the platforms they wish to transfer; not only structured data, but also come up with other forms of conversion of other elements of the UI and processing logic. Then build this into their own TiddlyWiki, however this would be a large investment for only a possible need.

Personally if this was my concern I would develop an intermediate transfer mechanism and document the interchange process, rather that build a solution, until I need it. Unlike TiddlyWiki, if one side is proprietary you have little or no control or influence about when and how that solution changes, so chances are they will throw a spanner in the works disturbing your solution.

Perhaps one day, we could convert the “whole kit and kaboodle” perhaps via an LLM that understands each platform. It seems to me its the difference between platforms that drive our desire to choose between each platform. LLM’s seem to be demonstrating that if this were possible the results could be slop or at least only beige.

• The key problem is if one or both sides are proprietary, and there is hidden knowledge, TiddlyWiki is not hidden so it is not part of the problem.