Nobody, luckily. Now let’s get back to Mohammads question.
No one was offended, as far as I can tell. My comment was because twMat went out of his way to stress that he did not want to insult or offend anyone. I was just affirming him, that what he wrote was not offensive, at least to me.
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Caro, A non issue you raised, okay!
Thank you all! I want to summarize this topic! Later we can have a poll!
Based on discussion, and my understanding we can propose the below terminology
Plain tiddler
(other names: pure, simple, atomic, independent, static,…)
- Features
- Plain 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
- Plain tiddlers only have wikitext and NO transclusion of any kind
- Plain tiddler always shows the same content. It does not depend on any state, or data,
Template tiddler
A template is a tiddler that serves as a starting point for a new tiddler. The word “Template” here means "a pre-formatted tiddler that can be used to quickly create a specific tiddler. A template itself is invisible to reader.
Compound tiddler
(other names: impure, mixed, complex, trnascluder, molecular, composite, dynamic, master)
is kind of the opposite of a plain one!
- Features
- They have contents generated dynamically and may be affected with some state variable
- Compound tiddler doesn’t predictably produce the same result.
- They have wikitext including transclusion of different type
- They may cause side-effects.
A special form of compound tiddler which has no content, but its content is created programmatically by dynamic transclusion and is equal to a master document in Microsoft Word is called patchwork tiddler.
- patchwork tiddler created from contents of plain tiddler by transclusion
- patchwork tiddler may not appear in standard search because they really have no content, but get their contents from other tiddler
Some references
I like the new tiddler terminology as below
Tiddler Terminology (Author Point of View)
- Plain tiddler
- Compound tiddler
- Template tiddler
- Patchwork tiddler
- Yes
- No
- I can propose better terms
0 voters
So Sad I came so late to this discussion. This being a favourite area of interest - nomenclature and I believe the experience to back it up, yet the sense to negotiate with others.
I support Mohamad’s objective here, think @Mohammad is taking it in the right direction but I think there are some fundamental mistakes being made.
I hope I still have the opportunity to contribute towards this important discussion.
- As much as I like the use of words for general and conceptual meaning I do not think this is the right circumstances for any uncertainty in the definitions. See next point.
- To give the terms to be used some real meaning I think we can resort to existing tiddlywiki rules, literally the rules pragma. Will the tiddler continue to be of use if only a subset of rules were in use? I will say more about this below.
- Composite/compound are both needed but can have different meanings
- Stand alone tiddlers are not composites or compound tiddler but may be part of others.
- Composite made up of other tiddlers and content ie not a standalone tiddler
- Compound tiddler made up of and dependant upon subtiddlers for its content, these subtiddlers are primarily for the content of the compound tiddler.
- A tiddler may be both composite and compound at the same time.
- Please do not use “index tiddler” as proposed.
- With all due respect to those suggesting that index tiddler is equivalent to a compound tiddler it is not. Some composite tiddlers could be called index tiddlers but most can not be. Index’s have a specific purpose in many parts of computing but this would be an edge case.
- Tiddlywiki internals has indexes, JSON and data tiddlers can act as indexes, One could call a Table of Contents or a glossary an index, even a list field or searchable list would be an index.
- Please don’t use this term generally, it would become overloaded, if not already.
- Fine say some composite or compound tiddlers may be indexes, but the reverse is untrue, not all compound or composite tiddlers will be indexes.
Rules based definitions;
Because I am late to the conversation I am reluctant to do the work unless other support this argument. I believe the “clear terms we use” should be able to be defined in terms of tiddlywiki pragmas.
For example Plain Wikitext/Pure/Standalone/atomic tiddlers remain usable as intended if they complied with a particular list of rules, in fact in some ways these are the most complex because we say what they are not eg;
\rules except macrocallinline import filteredtranscludeinline macrocallinline transcludeinline filteredtranscludeblock macrocallblock transcludeblock
In fact any other tiddler compound or otherwise could be made into a “plain wikitext” tiddler by applying these rules. As per my extending the type field idea (linked below) to support these definitions we could have types such as;
- Plain wikitext (above \rules)
- Compound includes transclusions but not other widgets/macros Plain wiki text + some more rules
- Composite transclusions from anywhere and other widgets and macros
So each of these type(s) will have the rules pragmas applied as per the community definition
Other items
- I think Master is not appropriate except in some very special circumstances but more fundamentally (than race relations, although I do not dismiss this in the U.S. context), Unless it controls the subtiddlers it refers to it is not a master. The subtiddlers are independent entities and can be changed without the master. A special case of compound tiddler which manages and provides access to its subtiddlers but there is no other UI to manage the subtiddlers could be a master tiddler.
- Template is too fuzzy in tiddlywiki, we need to start to qualify them
- ViewTemplate (as currently used)
- Display template used to display the content of the current tiddler
- Tiddler template used when creating new tiddlers or to apply to the current tiddler
- Content templates - content that someone may transclude into another tiddler reusable (although may be used once)
- Content template/templates or content template^2 - tiddler templates specifically for the purpose of cloning, editing and using as a content (possibly just a tiddler template)
- I also argue for the development of user types for tiddlers here Extending the type field for user types? in which case there will be custom Tiddler and Display templates associated with a tiddler “type”.
- In this case we may have a type of user/plain-wikitext OR user/compound etc… that not only calls out what kind of tiddler it is but also applies the rules,
- and promotes understanding of the terminology discussed in this topic.
[edited]
In my proposal users can continue as they do now. However we have a formal definition for the other types of tiddlers that can also be formally enforced. An additional opportunity arrises with such a systematic set of definitions;
- One could take a composite or compound tiddler can change it into a text/plain or user/wikitext and as such it is “deactivated” And acts and documentation. You could then point to another tiddler where it is text/vnd.tiddlywiki or perhaps user/compound
- Perhaps we could also include a filter or field list that allows compound tiddlers to be dragged as one to another wiki. Eg a “streams” compound tiddler.
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Thank you @TW_Tones for your in depth discussion!
My understanding
-
For template, given definition is valid but based on details given by Tony, templates can be furthered categorized into
- Static template: used to create new tiddlers and after creating the need tiddler, there is no connection with template tiddler
- Dynamic template: used for rendering a tiddler (in any mode: view, edit, etc…), tiddler uses these templates always dependent.
-
considering Tony suggestion/explanation the poll still valid
@TW_Tones - I appreciate to summarize this and come to a concise, short and simple terms.
I think patchwork is redundant. Compound is enough.
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@CodaCoder - from above post, I agree that, it is compound tiddler! but as argued for the term master tiddler, here patchwork is an alternative for master tiddler!
by the way patchworks here has no content and generated by something like
<$list filter="[tag[demo]]" template=mytemplate/>
So, they are somehow special compound tiddler! what do you think?
They just have many sources. Patchwork and Compound are synonymous, IMV. I much prefer Compound.
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Patchwork brings up, for me anyway, three less than helpful images: 1) Grandma’s patchwork quilting (old-fashioned image, probably not what we want to project), 2) Something thrown and cobbled together with whatever scraps one could find. 3) Something that needed patching, i.e., something that was defective but got fixed belatedly. The words composite or compound do the same semantic lifting but without any negative connotations. FWIW.
To me patchwork means the careful selection of small pieces of material, colour and pattern. The pieces are cut into different forms to fit into a pattern, that can be rather complex. Out of a lot of small pieces of limited or no use is produced something, that can be useful and beautiful in new ways.
In earlier times patchwork was done due to necessity Surviving examples from long ago are now sold as very costly antiques!
Patchwork was the work of women - made out of love for the family. Just as they historically spun the wool and weaved the cloth - or prepared and formed the fur into useful clothes.
Men and children needed warm clothes to wear!
Today we talk about the times when women did not take part in the workforce - they were staying at home taking care of the home. (I guess work is defined as only stuff you get paid to do? - or is it only work when it is done by men?).
Today patchwork is done by some as an art form and produced in several often rather complicated ways. Some colouring the pieces and fusing them together to form a sculptural feeling - or more like a painting.
Popular as hobby too - try to repeat Dave’s description in a crafty forum . do you dare doing that?
Or just enjoy - Coat of many colours
I welcomed the word patchwork tiddler.
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Hi Birthe,
Many thanks for the beautiful description of the patchwork! You explained the real patchwork where making patchwork is an art!
A type of Persian carpet which is also expensive, is called patchwork = Chehel Tikeh (means forty pieces: چهل تیکه)
and is very beautiful!
Also there are some other handicrafts called patchworks like below (Forty-piece model clay pot)
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Thank you so much for those beautiful pictures. I am totally taken by the Persian carpet. The beautiful colours and the best of patterns all in one carpet.
The patterns we know from the old carpets have been reused in simplified form in many crafts. Knitting and crochet patterns, embroidery. Something else but can still be beautiful.
Now we can use your SE plugin to weave our own tiddlywiki beauties.
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Hi Birthe and Mohammad,
Just to be clear, I was not trying to belittle patchwork quilts or the fine people who make them. It is a beautiful art form, as displayed by Mohammad’s example. I fully appreciated and enjoyed both of your posts.
That said, I stand by what I wrote. My first point was that software conjures the image of new and modern and cutting edge. Patchwork quilts typically project a very different image. And so my opinion, right or wrong, is that patchwork isn’t the best word in a software context. Compound and composite are better.
The other two points in my post come from a different image, that of patching software, which is based on patching holes in clothing. That is a negative image in a software context, the admission that a piece of software needs patching up. The comment about cobbling things together with whatever scraps one can find comes from this image, not from that of patchwork quilts.
I hope that helps to clarify. Blessings.
Sorry I’m so late to this discussion – also of philosophical interest to me!
Metaphors of “flatness” (as in flat, non-reflective paint as much as flat file) or “opacity” or “thinness” strike me as potentially helpful for tiddlers whose content doesn’t shift much according to one’s angle of view. “Static” is also helpful, and maybe “basic” (at the base, straightforward). Perhaps also “concrete” to get at the tactile sense of where one comes up against solid stuff, or self-contained. (So some complementing terms might be: deep, refractive, holographic, entangled …)
One worry about “compound” vs “simple” rhetoric is that (what I’m calling) “basic” tiddlers (or concrete, etc.) can still be quite structurally complex – not only potentially long, but chock full of fields.
And that fact brings us to a further question of clarification:
Is it just by examining the text field that we’re determining whether a tiddler is static / plain / flat / basic?
REASON/CONTEXT for YES: For most of my purposes, I do often implicitly make such a distinction with reference to the text field only; there are so many contexts (such as an expandable TOC, or expandable rows in Shiraz dynamic tables) where what’s displayed is just the wikified text field… (So I do a little “Doh!” when I’m forced to remember how some apparently ordinary tiddler – camouflaged among others that all “look” simple in view mode – doesn’t really contain what I thought it did… I may have lost the thread because the tiddler was “knotty” – or is it “naughty”? 
)
In those cases (mentally tracking which tiddlers behave straightforwardly under transclusion), it’s usually immaterial whether helpful dynamic elements might be hanging out in other fields; the tiddler is still effectively flat/self-contained in terms of the predictability and “portability” of its essential contents. (Those dynamic elements may just be linkstyles which pull from icons or color templates beyond the tiddler, for example.)
REASON/CONTEXT for NO: There are situations where the “refractive” aspect of other fields may really matter. For example, suppose a tiddler contains student work in the text field, and elements of my feedback and evaluative rubric in various fields. Sometimes a field contains a substantive but frequently-used “boilerplate” comment, which I house elsewhere and transclude. If the source-tiddler housing that comment were deleted (or if my content-tiddler were dragged to another wiki without that detail), some of my content seemingly evaporates. And that’s one issue I’m implicitly wanting to track when I think about which tiddlers are “basic” / portable / flat / static.
Of course, any particular metaphor we choose is likely to come up against some limits or need for situation-specific qualifying remarks… but brainstorming resonances, and thinking through some of those limits in advance, is something a forum like this can do well.
Best regards to all – enjoying the patchwork of insights here!
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Thank you for detailed explanation @Springer
I like to add two of important points you discussed in your post
- plain tiddler are portable (very good adjective, I love it)
- no transclusion in any field (we should not only focus on text field)
By the way, in my real work I highly relay on portable tiddlers!
I am summarizing this thread in TW-Scripts, and I would use the terminology in kookma plugins!
@DaveGifford
In reality we will use plain tiddler and compound tiddler most of the time! but let me use patchwork tiddler NOT patch tiddler note to the work in patchwork as special subtype of compound tiddler! Using composite instead of patchwork which is very similar to compound makes confusion! Please remember the Persian rug when you hear patchwork tiddler! 
I love the philosophy of tiddlers as described in official documentation see: https://tiddlywiki.com/#Philosophy%20of%20Tiddlers
The purpose of recording and organizing information is so that it can be used again. The value of recorded information is directly proportional to the ease with which it can be re-used.
The philosophy of tiddlers is that we maximize the possibilities for re-use by slicing information up into the smallest semantically meaningful units with rich modelling of relationships between them. Then we use aggregation and composition to weave the fragments together to present narrative stories.
TiddlyWiki aspires to provide an algebra for tiddlers, a concise way of expressing and exploring the relationships between items of information.
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I’m not super passionate about the subject, but want to lend support that I agree with @DaveGifford’s position on meaning patchwork in the software realm. I’m coming from a Canadian-American perspective, and (at least at first) I would be a little insulted if you called software I provided as patchwork. I can see that in different cultures that negative association would not apply (or would be a positive one) which is great, but it’s a little bit of our duty here as a diverse community to at least make others that come from different cultures aware of those connotations.
At Patchwork Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com, you can see a little bit of context - synonomous with
hodgepodge, irregular, improvised, incongruous variety of pieces.
I think the distinction made between patch and patch-work is not great enough to separate things. Essentially I interpret it as the opposite of solid, organized, and of singular vision. I would interpret patchwork software similar to the expression “held together with duct tape” - so working, but in need of a rewrite to bring consistency back.
Just my two cents. I already have to avoid other “official” terminology (tiddler, tiddly) for different but adjacent reasons, so if patchwork is the consensus, I’ll add it to the list of things to mentally rename.
@stobot
Please also see American Heritage and Oxford dictionary
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/patchwork?q=patchwork
By the way having plain and compound, what do you propose for a master document equivalent?
or the patchwork tiddler suggested here!
Please do not propose: complex, composite, master, index tiddler!
Example of Patchwork Tiddler
Title: Life Quote
Text:
<$list filter="[tag[life-quotes]]">
<$transclude mode=block/>
</$list>