Compound links for compound titles

Tips & Tricks
#1

This is sort of a continuation of this discussion which evolved a bit into whether it is a good idea to use compound titles akin to namespaces (hat tip to @pmario) when naming tiddlers.

Personally, I often but not always use titles of the form
Topic A › Subtopic B › Problem C
where › is the separator. There will always be a tiddler Topic A and one called Topic A › Subtopic B, i.e. the “parent” tiddlers exist (and are also used for tagging).

I also have a list of open tiddlers always visible across the top of the window, sort of like browser tabs. This evolved from a combination of the menubar plug-in and the open tiddlers sidebar item, and it looks like this:

image
image803×159 14.5 KB

Now I was thinking that it might be saving me a lot of clicks – and make these compound titles actually useful – if I could go directly to Topic A or Topic A › Subtopic B by clicking on the respective parts of the title (in the open tiddler list). I’ll show an example of what I mean below.

Now, it turns out that this can be done with very few lines of code. And since I’m in a recursive mood lately, it is implemented in a way that doesn’t limit the number of compounding levels.

\define titlesplit(title, separator:" › ")
<$let titleprefix={{{ [<__title__>split<__separator__>butlast[]join<__separator__>] }}} titlesuffix={{{ [<__title__>split<__separator__>last[]] }}}>
	<$list filter="[<titleprefix>!is[blank]]" emptyMessage="<$link to=<<__title__>>/>" variable="void">
		<$macrocall $name="titlesplit" title=<<titleprefix>> /><<__separator__>><$link to=<<__title__>> ><<titlesuffix>></$link>
	</$list>
</$let>
\end

When you call it with <<titlesplit "Topic A › Subtopic B › Problem C">> (or $macrocall if you want to pass the title in a variable), you’ll get this:
image
Clicking on the Problem C part will take you to the tiddler Topic A › Subtopic B › Problem C, clicking on the Subtopic B part will take you to the tiddler Topic A › Subtopic B, and clicking on Topic A will take you to, well, Topic A.

So there you have it. One more reason to use compound titles.

Have a nice day
Yaisog

PS: If your separator has spaces before/after the actual character, you need to include these in the parameter.

PS: I think the usefulness lies mainly in its usage in the open tiddlers bar or a similar list, not as a general replacement for wikilinks.

4 Likes
Naming conventions for related tiddlers
#2

Edited post:
It works just as explained. Tested on https://tiddlywiki.com

#3

Nice idea, I will use that ! Here’s a version without macro recursion :

\define titlesplit(title, separator:"/")
<style>.tc-system-title-prefix a{color: inherit;}</style>
<span class="tc-system-title-prefix"><$list
filter="[<__title__>split<__separator__>]:map[<__title__>split<__separator__>limit<index>join<__separator__>]+[!is[blank]]"><$link class="tc-system-title-prefix"><$text text={{{ [{!!title}split<__separator__>last[]] }}}/></$link><<__separator__>></$list></span><$link to=<<__title__>>><$text text={{{ [<__title__>split<__separator__>last[]] }}}/></$link>
\end

<<titlesplit "One/Two/Three/Three/Two/Two">>
3 Likes
#4

Oh wow, nice. I really like the use of the :map filter run prefix combined with the index variable. However much I would like to use the new :map and :reduce prefixes, I seldom find such a good use for them as you just did.

Have a nice day
Yaisog

1 Like
#5

I believe that it is generally a good idea to exclude drafts from this mechanism.
In the recursive version of the macro this can be accomplished by extending the $list filter:

filter="[<titleprefix>!is[blank]] [<__title__>!has[draft.of]] +[nth[2]]"

Have a nice day
Yaisog

#6

After playing around with it a little more I found that it can be useful to add a unique CSS class to each title component. When the open tiddlers bar is implemented as a flex box, this can then be combined with text-overflow:ellipsis to retain as much useful information as possible.
I have flex-shrink: 0 on the final component, because that identifies what the tiddler is actually about (Problem C); flex-shrink: 1 on the one before last and flex-shrink: 2 on the others. If there is not enough space, the title will then look something like this (all still clickable, of course):

Top… › Subtopi… › Problem C

In order to achieve this, an additional level parameter is passed which is incremented in each recursion and used to build a CSS class, <span class={{{ [[titlesplit-]addsuffix<__level__>] }}}> that wraps the link.

Thought I’d share.

Have a nice day
Yaisog