Can Hierarchical Navigation Benefit TW Documentation?

[TW_Tones]

@Scott_Sauyet

I felt like that is what we were discussing here. For instance, in TW-com, we have all sorts of documentation on Filters. A fair chunk of it forms a hierarchy.

• I understand some are focused, not on breadcrumbs, and more on hierarchies, but TiddlyWiki needs to cater also for non-linear, multiple stories and journeys and other representations. You could say my first answer to the OT is;

Can Hierarchical Breadcrumbs Benefit TW Documentation?

• Yes they can, but they are insufficient

@Scott_Sauyet

“Breadcrumbs”, like “file”, “folder”, and “desktop” are analogies to commonly-recognized concepts, but are never perfectly correlated. “Breadcrumbs”, like their fairy-tale counterparts, help you navigate your way back. But they don’t track the entire path you took, and they also offer jumps higher back that Hansel and Gretel would much have appreciated!

• To me, Breadcrumbs is a powerful metaphor, that I personally want to retain even if others have trashed its use in the past. I would send a tug out and bring the ship back into port

@Scott_Sauyet

I think @pmario’s story metaphor is great for smaller chunks, without too many overlapping paths. But it breaks down when there are too many links.

• When faced with a problem, we can find a way to address it.

I did not illustrate it, but as I said;

@TW_Tones

having an independent position stored for each story and a current story and to navigate away from the current story always returns to your original position in the current story unless you change story.

Examples may include;

• Using small text for the non current stories, or hide them behind a more
• using sign posts show links to the other stories not every item in each story
• Introduce other graphical representations, or popup etc…

@Scott_Sauyet

Let’s add opt-in breadcrumb functionality. But here I mean web-standard breadcrumbs, and not a full story/pathway/tracks/trail feature.

I am not sure there is a web-standard, there is a broken use. I feel the best way to overcome this is as follows;

• What ever recall it and create describe is as it works, like defining terms
• Since people may expect a hierarchy, others historical crumbs, others stories, journeys or paths lets look at addressing each of these.

@Scott_Sauyet

It sounds fairly simple to implement, so long as tiddlers live only in one hierarchy. (Just give each tiddler that live in a hierarchy a field that notes its parent, traverse the chain until one doesn’t have a parent, reverse the list and display it as a list of links, in whatever pretty format you like

• I have already successfully done this, initially using the KIN operator, subsequently Recursive filter operators to show all tiddlers beneath a tag and all tags above a tiddler
• Based on the TableOfContent root tag on TiddlyWiki.com

@Alvaro

I have doubts about: how/where we would want to display it. It shows new questions about how it could be implemented.

It can be in or below the tiddlers subtitle if relating to the tiddler, and it can be toggled on/off display.

@Alvaro

Would the use of this navigation be stored in any place? Someone might want to move forward/backward, although it would be too work to implement it.

• If we are representing a tag hierarchy such as the existing content there are ways to derive it rather than store it.
• If we are doing a historical breadcrumbs we can store in a temporary data tiddler, or use the existing history (but It is inadequate)
• If we are using stories/journeys etc… we need to store a list and current position in that list.

@Alvaro

Another idea, and more complex, would be a kind of wizzard/navigator (tiddler) for the documentation with its breadcrumb menus and one or more stories to facilitate the navigation.

• Yes, this is what I think is the best approach, even if we all need to work together to get a more comprehencive solution.