Change the default file extension to .txt?

#1

Hi

Is it possible to change the .tid file extension to .txt ? I use some other indexers and editors, this way those would recognize these files as well.

#2

You can set in your machines prefs what editor opens which extensions - if it is that what you mean.

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#3

If it doesn’t matter much for TW, then I think it would be superior with .txt from a marketing perspective. Everyone knows and loves .txt. I even recall some note taking tool using exactly this point in their marketing… “It’s just text!”… somthing like that.

(BTW, I’m assuming we’re talking about .tid, right? We should not change .html/htm of course.)

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#4

This is not for a gui editor for opening from the explorer. I need apps to be able to list files, and they generally take .md or .txt. So .tid is not listed naturally

#5

I am just looking a way to change the default extensio from .tid to .txt so it is compatiple with the rest of the world as far as listing and processing them goes. I am looking for a manual way to change it myself, not necessarily recommending that TW should by default move to .txt.

#6

Curious, what system are you in that doesn’t treat files irregardless of some extension not as text? On most OSes I use I can treat .tid as ASCII text.
Second why can’t it just be renamed? Or the indexing tool be told to scan them?

Personally I would find conflating .txt misleading. It isn’t just text it is also well formatted text in a specific standard. Much like how .md is text but also can be parsed by a markdown interpreter. The extension offers some metadata far beyond just the text encoding used within.

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#7

I presume you are talking about .tids under NodeJS? For servers I would not change this;

  • But in Windows you may add new association’s for handling .tid files in the filemanger.

If however you are doing this from single file wikis its a different story.

  • I suggest leaving the tid format alone
  • I tend now to always export one or more tiddlers as JSON format
  • You can make your own exporters eg export to tiddler(s) to text file
  • Perhaps even make your own import process.
  • They should be configurable or set file association’s in the Operating system. Rather than changing the thing you want to edit/index.
#8

On node.js this is possible, See the section titled File System Extensions at https://tiddlywiki.com/#Customising%20Tiddler%20File%20Naming

Also worth keeping in mind that if you use external tools to modify the txt files, the tiddlywiki server will not pick up any changes until it restarts. You can work around this with tools like nodemon, or by making a PUT request to the server for each modified file.

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