Another way to create new tiddlers - Content first

Folks,

I thought I should share a few Ideas of mine to stimulate discussion.

Background

It is very common to hit the new tiddler, or new tiddler here button to start to create a tiddler. I also have numerous ways to create tiddlers in context like new project name to do etc…

I have noticed I often create a tiddler (often in context as above) then populate a field with a html link, name the field, add the title and possibly a note in the text field.

A solution I have scans the current tiddlers fields and identifies those who’s value is prefixed with a supported protocol such as http and displays them from the tiddlers viewtemplate using the fieldname as the pretty link and the http link open in new window/tab.

Observation

The whole reason for the new tiddler is to store the link I typically past into a field. The manual fieldname is typically based on the domain name in the link such as talk.tiddlywiki, thus the link reads “talk.tiddlywiki”.

A New way of creating tiddlers? content or link first.

This made me think what If I build a mechanism where I simply paste a http link and let this be parsed to identify its protocol, choose a fieldname and set its value, create a tiddler with a generated title, and display the link.

  • We could call this a content first approach to new tiddlers

This could be useful for adding a link to an existing tiddler as well.

Another example may be paste an email address, identify you may like a contact tiddler, name it automatically from what appears before the @ and set the organisation to the value after the @ and apply other standard contact fields to the tiddler.

Key features

  • Using the content of a paste to identify a protocol and fieldname in which to store said content
  • use content to suggest a fieldname in the editor and other information for the creation of tiddlers
  • Use the protocol or content in a field value to determine how it is to be displayed on the view template.

Further developments

So inspired by the above approach I wonder if we could develop a way to create tiddlers based on content we wish to paste rather than + then provide the details, paste then suggest the details.

  • Using field values to suggest the fieldname in the editor
  • Developing a cascade for determining formats/protocols from content and describing the actions to do.
  • Selecting a context to be used by such tools to be applied to new/modified tiddlers. Eg domain/project/tiddler type or Role(s)

Your thoughts?

Can we extend this concept further?