In creating contents for lengthy long tiddler, one can create a tiddler containing whole the material without transclusion and dynamic generation of any kind. The other solution is to create complex tiddler with many wikitext scripts to dynamically produce contents. Each has pros and cons.
Definition
Pure tiddler: is a tiddler contains only basic wikitex and no transclusion
Pure tiddler always shows the same content. It does not depend on any state, or data, change during the life of a wiki contains this tiddler.
They do not have any side effects
They can be found in standard search, when one search for content
Impure Tiddler: is kind of the opposite of a pure one
They have contents generated dynamically and may be affected with some state variable
Impure tiddler doesnât predictably produce the same result.
They may cause side-effects.
Master Tiddler: is an impure tiddler, its contents created by dynamic transclusion
Master created from contents of pure tiddler by transclusion
Master tiddler may not appear in standard search because they really have no content, but get their contents from other tiddler
Remarks:
Note: This discussion related to content creation in Tiddlywiki dealing with lengthy, long contents
Note: Creating a linear structured text like a Novel, a Thesis, an Essay, is different from simple note taking
Question: what do you think about these definitions? What is your recommendation for creating long lengthy text?
What name do you propose for length, long text?
Important Note: we know a novel is NOT a single tiddler, here a long tiddler is a section and a part of text cannot be divided more into subsection!
Our time is limited, so donât waste it living someone elseâs life.
Donât be trapped by dogma â which is living with the results of
other peopleâs thinking.
Example of Impure Tiddler
Title: Albert Einstein Quote
Text:
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.
{{Some Tiddler}}
I like âpure tiddlerâ. I put forward âindependentâ and âstaticâ as alternatives.
But âimpureâ doesnât evoke the right mental image for me. I like âmixed tiddlerâ more because it reminds me of mixed fractions.
âMaster tiddlerâ is great.
What do you think a stream (streams plugin) would fall under, master tiddlers or impure tiddlers? While the the stream root tiddler functions like your definition of a master tiddler, it can hold content in its text field if the user wants to.
In my case, Iâll flesh out the definition of a term, say, Bird, inside the text field of the stream root tiddler. Then Iâll make child nodes under it for the kinds of Birds. Does this count as a master or an impure tiddler?
Other stream users call their streams âcompound tiddlersâ.
I use a mix of all three kinds of tiddlers. Personally, pure tiddlers are necessary. Writing many paragraphs needs a proper text editor. (Streams is hard for prose) I use impure tiddlers when I synthesize my notes and transcluding term definitions. I recently used master tiddlers for listing tiddlers about basic theorems (which are short, self-sufficient notes)
It would be helpful to have some terminology to describe tiddlers with different dynamics, so kudos to you for bringing up this issue.
Pure and impure are words that carry moral or judgmental overtones, as if one is better than the other.
My vote, for what itâs worth, would be with
Changing pure tiddlers to Simple tiddlers. I think this is easy to grasp without needing explanation.
Changing impure tiddlers to Complex tiddlers as a short phrase to contast with âsimpleâ tiddlers. (a fun alternative might be transcludlers! ). Or simply âTiddlers with transclusionsâ.
The politically correct enviroment is moving towards eliminating the use of âmasterâ because of its association with slavery, which in the United States is tied to race. I have mixed feelings about jettison longstanding language, but can appreciate the desire to be sensitive. So maybe it isnât the time to introduce master tiddler as a new term. Index tiddlers is an alternative that describes what is happening - a tiddler that indexes other tiddlers with a list filter. So my vote would be for that.
I was originally going to suggest âindependentâ and âdependentâ tiddlers. But that creates a conceptual problem: in grammar, the dependent clauses are branches inserted or attached to the main clause. But in creating an article with transclusion, the transcluded tiddlers are usually the short pieces that are inserted or attached to the main article. So to call the main article tiddler a âdependentâ tiddler turns things upside down and is probably not the way to go, it would be confusing language.
@Mohammad I also think that @CodaCoderâs take on it interesting and relevant. Interesting in a different way.
Why? I often think we need âtermsâ no one else uses.
Why? Because we need to point to the uniqueness of TW and terms you rarely see used with other online-software has great merit and @CodaCoder is very much that way âŚ
Thank you all. When writing documentation or explaining TW to others these terminology are important!
While in programming world pure function is a well defined term, but as most TW users are non-programmer, I think what suggested by @DaveGifford is simpler and semantic here!
I am only not sure if Index and complex tiddlers are good terms here or not! In Microsoft Word, master document is a document include all chapter document into one!
So, please vote for
Simple tiddler (e.g pure tiddler)
Complex tiddler (e.g. impure tiddler )
Index tiddler (e.g. master tiddler)
I will later edit the original post while you also can edit and improve it!
@CodaCoder - I love your terminology, chemists/chemical engineers would delight to use this terminology!
FYI @Mohammad & @DaveGifford, purely linguistically, Index, in English, is clear. But there is a something ambiguous with Complexity in that it implies âwho knows what?â What is itâs scope?
In the OP (âimpureâ) simply means a tiddler with a basic translusion âŚ
Is that âComplex?â My point is: it is actually not so complex!
This process of establishing terminology is very interesting to me. TiddlyWiki itself introduces a handful of neologisms (âtiddlerâ, âstory riverâ,âshadow tiddlerâ etc), but it makes sense that the community needs to evolve terminology that stems not from the mechanisms of TiddlyWiki but from the emerging usages and practices shared in the community.
The problem with terms like âpureâ, âsimpleâ or âcomplexâ is that they are essentially relative adjectives, and donât provide much concrete meaning.
Adjectives with stronger meanings like âcomposite tiddlerâ, âcompound tiddlerâ or even âpatchwork tiddlerâ might be more helpful. Short phrases like that canât be entirely self-explanatory, but are more evocative.
I think what the OP calls a âmaster tiddlerâ is what we call a âtemplate tiddlerâ in the docs.
Yes @TiddlyTitch I agree that Complex tiddlers is not as clear as âTiddler with transclusionsâ which is a mouthful, but is much clearer.
The term âComplex tiddlerâ isnât my favorite, either, because it is a tradeoff. It sacrifices a some clarity in order to gain brevity, to be the opposite of âsimpleâ, and communicate that there is more than one type of content in the tiddler.
A complex or impure tiddler contains complex (more than one type of) content, but that content is often not too complicated, as you point out. Here there is a slight difference between complex and complicated. Though often we use the two words interchangeably.
IMHO Simple tiddlers vs tiddlers with transclusion would be the best if transparent clarity is crucial. Simple vs complex would be best if we are willing to trade a little clarity to make the two terms briefer and more parallel.
This is a fun discussion, I am enjoying everyoneâs comments.
oooh just saw Jeremyâs post after posting myself.
I think simple still communicates well.
But I think composite is a big improvement over complex. Much better.
I have no strong opinion regarding index vs template tiddlers. But the term template tiddler, to me, communicates that the tiddler will be used to create other tiddlers with the same characteristics. And Mohammad was talking rather about tiddlers that have list filters in them to display transclusions as list items. Seems like two different ideas to me.
Count my vote for composite! Agreed that a tiddler with transclusions isnât immediately complex.
But Iâm not so sure about âsimpleâ. I understand that it comes from English grammar. But Mohammad said he was referring to long texts, and for me, âsimpleâ and âatomicâ are too close to âshortâ. An essay inside a single tiddler would be a pure tiddler, but it would be weird to call it âatomicâ.
I only remember now that I do use the word âindexâ to refer to my master tiddlers. So I also vote for âindexâ tiddlers over âmasterâ tiddlers. âIndexâ is a tool to group tiddlers, while âmasterâ has the idea of hierarchy embedded in it.
Edit: On second thought, I think there are two kinds of grouping/master tiddlers.
For me, index tiddlers group atomic/short self-sufficient notes together. I have a wiki for notes on some short stories. An index tiddler lists instances of a certain trope across stories. Every instance is a tiddler. The index tiddler indexes notes, but those notes can be indexed by other index tiddlers.
Then thereâs the master tiddler that weaves paragraphs together to form a long text. I write the outline of an essay with Streams, I overwrite every node with coherent sentences, then I join them together on a separate tiddler. It makes sense to call this tiddler a âmasterâ tiddler because it does have a hierarchy. It doesnât make sense to call it an index tiddler because its children belong to the master tiddler.
What we (the discourse community of Tiddlywiki) have, is a shared language (aka buzz words) which are used in an echo chamber of our own making. And as Jeremy intimated, itâs all derived from the mechanics of TW.
That, is a barrier to entry for the masses at large (possibly one of many).
And that, is a shame.
Kudos to @Mohammad for exposing our soiled underwear.
Itâs hard to say whatâs wrong, but what I can say is, itâs unreasonable â unreasonable in the sense that it cannot be reasoned about with/to a 12 year old with little to no experience of TiddlyWiki. And without reasonable (able to be reasoned with) language, itâs difficult to progress.
If that 12 year old is your target audience (she should be) then (as the fabled Irishman would say) âI wouldnât start from thereâ.
). Or simply âTiddlers with transclusionsâ.
So I also vote for âindexâ tiddlers over âmasterâ tiddlers. âIndexâ is a tool to group tiddlers, while âmasterâ has the idea of hierarchy embedded in it.