As you know when “timestamps are on”. tiddlywiki will assign a created date to tiddler once, as its created or if it has no created date and is edited. This date stamp should remain unchanged for the life of that tiddler. Lets ignore intentional change or deletion of the created time stamp.
- There is an assumption that such a date time stamp could be the same for more than one tiddler
I was wondering if and how we may go about modifying the created date time stamps for tiddlers created in a given wiki to be unique? simply by adding a millisecond until it is unique.
This would then allow the created date to act as a (mostly) unique identifier, and hashed versions ie reducing the decimal timestamp to a base 64 version to reference, that date using fewer bytes.
For example you may have a list or data tiddler that can uniquely list title references this can be converted back to decimal then search for the “only” tiddler with that “unique” created date. Remember the created date will not change as a rule.
Why?
- It is an interesting experiment
- Its a type of semi-unique tiddler serial number or unique ID
- We get a unique alias for tiddlers we apply this to
- We can list titles using this alias with less bytes while leaning on an existing value in tiddlers
Rather than argue the relative merits of this, could I first get your advice on how I could make this happen? Through that mechanism we will discover more about its merits and opportunities and limitations.
[After words]
I plan to allow a created date to be modified to be unique “just in time”, when we are looking to list a tiddler with its unique created date reference. We need only check for uniqueness when Creating tiddlers and or/referencing them using the “unique” created date. Otherwise we don’t care what the created dates are.