Do a User Manual or written tutorials exist?

[Pierosparviero]

I would like to start using TiddlyWiki and appreciate its virtues as a note manager and desktop (private) wiki in order to compare it with other instruments, like Zim.

I stared looking for a comprehensive documentation, like a user manual. Maybe I wasn’t skillful enough, but I didn’t find it. I found instead a web page (“Hello There”) divided into several sections, the first of which (“Quick start”) looked promising. It offers four choices. The of them was easy to deal with, since it addresses companies or teams.

The first (left-to-right) of the three other lends you the possibility of creating an account for an online TiddlyWiki. Sounds interesting: yet I would have liked to see something like: “TiddlyWiki offer you the possibility of working online or on your desktop. This and this are the advantages of working online, that and that are the advantages of working on your desktop”.

The third option (“DIY”) directs you to another mysterious thing, i. e. TiddlyHost. Probably a very interesting thing, but before spending time in order to understand through testing, I would have liked to know what it is and which are its advantages and disadvantages.

The second choice was the most appealing to me: to download the desktop application. I thought: “So much the worse for the 2 other options! I’ll take that one. It seems to be the kind of thing that I am already used to” (You know, I’m just a poor “boomer”, forgive me!).

But then I tripped over a different kind of obstacle. I was happy to see that there is a kind of tutorial (“Introducing TiddlyDesktop”). But (oh millennial horror!) it’s a video. Now, I suppose you don’t want to reserve the usage of Tiddly to US citizens or US residents. But this is exactly what a video tutorial achieves. For a foreingner, understanding a spoken message is much more difficult than to read a text.
If the video soundtrack had been made by James Stuart, Robert Mitchum or some other performer of the last generation of actors whose pronunciation was easily understood by anybody who had learned English anywhere, it would be ok. But that’s not the case. And it cannot be the case. Nobody speaks clearly enough. Written English is an international language, but there are hundreds of spoken English. At least not, if the person who speaks is not trained like a video journalist or an actor of commercials.

After this long explanation of my difficulties, I ask you whether there are 1) a WRITTEN and LINEARLY STRUCTURED introduction to TiddlyWiki and its branches and 2) a USER MANUAL for it/them.

I hope you will answer this questions and perhaps retain from the explanation of my problems some hints about the difficulty that very likely other possible users experience.

I want however express my gratitude for the effort made by the community that wrote the programs and for the team that organized it.
Sincerely yours,
Pierosparviero.

[Terry_Jones]

There is “Grok Tiddlywiki” at Grok TiddlyWiki — Build a deep, lasting understanding of TiddlyWiki

That’s about as close as you’ll find right now. It’s good for what it does, but concentrates a lot on the use of custom fields, which may not be what you’re looking for.

I, too, have looked for such a resource, and have considered trying to create one, but don’t know how many people would benefit from it, and it’s hard to keep up with all the great new plug-ins, add-ons and tricks the users in this community keep finding and writing. Each of the modified and specialized versions are so different for the end (normie) user, that some of them seem like different products. So creating such a beginners text-book still written manual, with consequent videos, can be a challenge.

[TW_Tones]

Keep in mind tiddlywiki.com is the definitive documentation for tiddlywiki and has plenty of examples and good search. Perhaps start with learning and browse through community.

Unlike many other forums we welcome new users and even dumb questions so consider these forums a primary resource.

TiddlyWiki’s filters can be a conceptual leap for many however the power of them is substantial and a good investment in time to learn.

Otherwise most of tiddlywiki is driven by HTML, CSS and some javascript, although you can use it without knowing these, they are global standard technologies and all they do is contribute to “life long learing” and highly transferable skills.

Open source, Open community, and standard technologies based I use almost nothing else

[Pierosparviero]

Thank you Terry_Jones and TW_Tones.
I’ll try to follow the tracks you recommend.

[Scott_Sauyet]

@Pierosparviero

I stared looking for a comprehensive documentation, like a user manual. Maybe I wasn’t skillful enough, but I didn’t find it. I found instead a web page (“Hello There”) divided into several sections, the first of which (“Quick start”) looked promising.

If you look at the tabs in the right-hand navigation area (Open, Contents, Recent, Tools, More), this page will usually default to Open. Switching to the Contents tab will give you a much more thorough sampling of the information available.

I don’t think you can treat any of this information as a comprehensive tutorial, but some of the Learning pages will help. And Grok Tiddlywiki helps cover that gap. When you’re looking to do more sophisticated things, some of the Reference topics should help.

I often find the main site tricky to navigate to solve particular problems I have, and I end up resorting to asking questions in this forum. It’s a friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable community; answers usually come quickly.

The trouble with using the main page as a learning resource is that teaching is just one of its main purposes. A year or so ago, the founder and chief maintainer of Tiddlywiki, Jeremy Ruston, described it like this:

@jeremyruston

tiddlywiki.com serves the needs of several distinct but overlapping groups of users:

• It is the landing page first encountered by prospective users
• It is the online demo for prospective users to explore
• It is the online documentation reference for current users
• It is the community test bed for quick tests and proof-of-concepts

And perhaps there are more.

This multi-focus does demonstrate the power of Tiddlywiki, demonstrating that you can use a single wiki for all that, but it can mean that the content you need is not always clearly in front of you. A number of people here (including me) have talked about ways to improve this documentation, but nothing very concrete has come out of it.

[Springer]

@Pierosparviero

I was happy to see that there is a kind of tutorial (“Introducing TiddlyDesktop”). But (oh millennial horror!) it’s a video. Now, I suppose you don’t want to reserve the usage of Tiddly to US citizens or US residents. But this is exactly what a video tutorial achieves.

@Pierosparviero I share your aversion to videos! In my case, it is because videos are unfriendly to the kind of browsing/scanning that my brain prefers. But the language reason is also important.

One thing to keep in mind is that the most impressive tutorials can be funded only by commercial software. Since this is open source software, there is nobody being paid for user support. And even if someone put many hours into making generic documentation (such as Grok TiddlyWiki, mentioned by others), that same documentation is soon incomplete, because the core continues to evolve.

Even when someone makes a tutorial or tool for a certain purpose, it’s likely to neglect some other ways TiddlyWiki can be used. Unlike a tool like Zim (if I understand Zim correctly), TiddlyWiki can function not only as a personal information manager, but also like a powerful website, and also like a relational database. Depending on your likely uses, different capacities of TiddlyWiki will be most interesting, and different users here are likely to suggest helpful resources and tools based on overlapping interests.

Given the fact that the code itself is free, flexible, and evolving, I think the best thing the community can offer is a welcoming place to come with your questions.

I do recommend TiddlyHost heartily as a super way to get up and running for anyone with regular internet access. Unless your information is extremely sensitive, a non-public site at TiddlyHost is a flexible and convenient personal space for developing a project without any concerns about how to save and access your stuff. If you decide later that you prefer keeping your wiki on a local machine, you can always port the html file to run with local (desktop and browser) saving solutions.

Cheers!

[linonetwo]

For desktop app, you can try tiddly-gittly/TidGi-Desktop, we are preparing a bi-lingual website for it, telling beginner how to do (how to use pre-bundled 100 plugins), with links to official tiddlywiki website.

What’s special with tidgi is that it pre-bundled many plugins, making it looks like the Notion. And does not need to config how to save and backup.

[linonetwo]

Also I think official website lacks tutorial about “create tiddler”, which can be auto generated from page control buttons, if we write detailed usage in “description” or “usage” field, and list transclude them…

But this may increase empty html’s size, so in this perspective of view it is not good as writing a standalone usage manual.