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.