Can the title be made an optional field, not a mandatory one? The main content of a tiddler is its core substance, while other elements can be considered optional fields.
Tiddler title fields are used to uniquely identify each tiddler, without regard to the “main content” of the tiddler. The title is also essential for creating links between tiddlers, as well as transcluding content from other tiddlers.
Eric is correct, of course.
I think what you are getting at though, is there are instances where you want to take a note and don’t want to also summarize it in the title as an extra step. You can set up a TiddlyWiki so that new custom tiddlers are created that have a date and time stamp as the title. That way you just write or paste into the text field and hit save.
The conditions for that to be helpful are these:
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you have the text fields transcluded somewhere, such as items in a list widget.
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you have a way to access the tiddler with a link. I have sometimes done that with
<$link>*</$link>in the text of the tiddler itself, that way if it is transcluded, you can click the asterisk to open it and edit it. -
You have a way set up to search the text field contents, rather than searching by titles which is useless if they are date and time stamps.
So while they can’t be optional fields, there are ways to get around taking the time and mental energy to think of tiddler titles. I don’t recommend it, and when I have done it I usually have regretted it. But it can be done by adding a custom new tiddler button in the Page Controls area, a button that adds the current date and time to the title field. I think it would be title=<<now "YYYY-0MM-0DD 0hh:0mm:0ss">>
can be done with Streams plugin as well
The unique title as a key to any record is essential in any database however tiddlywiki’s strength is placing this at eye level.
Sometimes, especially with automation, we may want to create titles with generated titles and it is less important we place this at eye level.
In many lists just using the caption is enough but it is quite easy to alter how a subset of tiddlers are displayed including using the caption if it exists, alternative title fields and more.
I and a few community members have developed solutions of virtually every combination and the title cascade is there for this reason.
So the answer is no, but you can treat tiddlywiki as if the title was optional.
Recommendations / tips
- only do such changes to a subset of tiddlers which means you need a way to identify such tiddlers
- i often use the title as the text field containing as much as a sentence.
To fully answer you question it would be better to outline what you are doing that led to this question as many of us have been there already, but for now we are only able to guess.
You can try a different approach, as to my knowledge while there are character type limits, there is not a character length limit to fields, so you can just store your main content within the title field, and treat the body as a description or addendum?
albeit this is not an ideal approach if you plan on writing more than a sentence or two and need to use linebrraks or characters that are illegal for the title field, but this approach is often seen when making basic task managers in tiddlywiki, so it has some viability.
for long titles, wouldn’t this slow down a lot the search as you type, on older devices especially?
depending in the size of the wiki and the length of the titles im sure it will have some impact over tiddlers all having very brief titles, but any new content is going to add to the size of the wiki.
now, if you mean when filtering, I would imagine it is how you filter for it, or just using the normal search fields, so yes, there could be performance impacts, which is why it depends on what would best work for you, since the title field is none the less a required field.
As Eric points out, the tiddler title is the only field a tiddler must have.
So the answer is no.
Since you’re a first-time poster, I’m not sure that the //technical// answer is the most important answer.
So, welcome to the forum!
And, my take is: there’s gotta be a title //in there// (the unique identifier that’s like the hanger that your tiddler-content is attached to)… BUT that doesn’t mean you have to see the title field or interact with it!
Tiddler titles could be made optional in the sense of optional //to interact regularly with//. And in lots of database solutions, that’s already effectively the case. That is, the software is assigning some unique identifier behind the scenes to each table and each record — but you don’t have to think about it or see it as an end user.
It’s not as though I have a ready demo or proof of concept; the GUI work needed to have tiddler TEXT be what’s in the sidebar, what’s searched-for, etc. (while tucking titles out of view) would be beyond a quick task (after all, TW was designed around titles — and putting all your content into titles would be much more straightforward than attending always and only to the text field).
But the Streams plugin comes close, if I understand: it auto-generates unique titles, and lets users focus on the pithy content for each short tiddler, tracking its uniqueness and structural connections to other tiddlers behind the scenes…
Exactly. That is what I was trying to explain in my post. Streams hides the title completely. A new button with a now macro for the title means you don’t need to interact with the title, you can just focus on the text. But as PMario and others have said, the tiddler must have a title.