How I got here:
So, some time ago, I was at work; and I was taking all my notes in Tiddlywiki for various procedures that I was documenting for, IT and Operations.
Well, IT didn’t want to use Tiddlywiki because the Casino Industry isn’t exactly awash in smart IT people. (I didn’t want to work there, but, it was the job I could get, does that make me stupid? Maybe… I don’t care 
).
So IT, as well as Food and Beverage Operations requested instructions, and I was told to convert it to word documents, and so I did, I used Links to link between sets of instructions in the word documents, and then when they all complained about it not being linear enough, I gave the documents TOCs with links to the various other instructional word documents that each would have been their own tiddler.
In the end, the people in Food and Beverage Operations, decided to print out the word documents and put them into binders (despite having access to the documents in Sharepoint Online and in MS Word on their computers); and funny thing about links when they’re on paper, you can’t follow them.
So I lost the project to some guy that can barely run his Food and Beverage system at another casino because he could print linear instructions for stupid people. I had to train him in person how to do it, he couldn’t follow my instructions because they were non-linear.
So, fast forward to 2025, I’ve lost my job at the Casino and in 2024, on the way out, the guy who fired me and his boss want everything done on paper. “Paper? WTF?”, said the IT team.
What do you know? Paper maybe isn’t as stupid as it sounds:
But as it turns out there is a really great use case for paper; QR Codes for storing GPG and SSH keys and linear instructions to follow in the event of complete catastrophic system failure in which the IT department has to rebuild everything from scratch.
I recently discovered that my msecure password manager is getting too expensive and so I am switching to using the Linux password-store utility pass, which uses GnuPG to encrypt passwords and storing them in a git repo encrypted in the cloud or as I like to call it “somebody-elses-computer” is a really great way to go about it (provided the encryption holds up, for now until, quantum come) you can store it and pull it with an ssh ed25519 encryption deployment key from either github or codeberg (though I’d recommend codeberg).
But the problem then becomes…how the do I store the GPG Keys and SSH deployment keys without purchasing another 3x hard drives, assuming I might go broke and lose all of my passwords when my very last hard drive breaks and I refuse to use Windows 11, both because of the AI watching my every move and because I don’t wish to pay for being surveilled myself.
The answer is QR Codes and instructions stored on non-other than that invented by the Ancient Egyptians Papyrus.
I feel I’m a little late to this game, but I’m not used to 21st technological innovations coming from ancient societies, yet, but it seems the future will hold more of the same.
Let’s make some paper:
So, that said; I’ve found myself reading this article splitting it into smaller and smaller tabs and sub tabs of instructions, whilist also creating a print version in another tiddler using transclusion.
And where the tab version is arranged like this:
.
└── paper_backup_and_recovery_guide_for_password-store_SSH_and_GPG_keys
├── 1_Intro
├── 2_Initial Setup (tabs)
│ ├── Add SSH key to clone password repo
│ ├── Generate GPG Key used to encrypt and decrypt data
│ └── Setup passwd
├── 3_Backup Necessary Keys On Paper (tabs)
│ ├── Backing up the GPG Secret Key slash Private Key to QR code and text for printing
│ ├── Backup GPG Public Key as QR Code and as text for printing
│ └── Backup SSH Deploy key as QR Code and as text for printing
└── Restore and Recovery (tabs)
├── Possible Troubleshooting Problems
└── Setting up a new computer
Where as, the print version gets organized like this, but the issue with the print version is that it still prints the tabs, and like links in Word Documents printed on physical paper, they only cause confusion for the user of the paper since the tabs and whatever item is selected are printed and then their content duplicated again when the parent tiddler is transcluded along with the others both with and without the tabs resuling in a structure like this:
paper_backup_and_recovery_guide_for_password-store_SSH_and_GPG_keys
1_Intro
2_Initial Setup (tabs) # With let's say "Add SSH key to clone password repo" selected and transcluded through the tabs
Add SSH key to clone password repo # Which is repeated on the paper because it is selected above...
Generate GPG Key used to encrypt and decrypt data
Setup passwd
3_Backup Necessary Keys On Paper (tabs) # With "Backing up the GPG Secret Key slash Private Key to QR code and text for printing" selected
Backing up the GPG Secret Key slash Private Key to QR code and text for printing # Which is repeated on the paper
Backup GPG Public Key as QR Code and as text for printing
Backup SSH Deploy key as QR Code and as text for printing
...
And so you see the problem; there needs to be a way to include the headers of the parent in the paper document without including the tab UIs.
Is there a way to filter these out when creating a paper document?
Thank you,
helpdeskaleer
