Do you know all features in Tiddlywiki?

#1

In another post @EricShulman compared a code in Tiddlywiki 5.2.0 and old version of Tiddlywiki e.g. Tiddlywiki 5.1.18 or older and he showed how a solution can be developed in much more semantic, short and easy to understand way!

You may know, Tiddlywiki has very high backward compatibility, so you may be able to run a plugin from 5.1.5 in 5.2.1p, and you may develop solutions for a single problem in many ways!

But, it may be recommended to prepare a subset of Tiddlywiki syntax (widgets, filters, operators, etc.) for better scripting!

A more radical question is do you know all features of Tiddlywiki? In my opinion it has many features and few people out there knows all the structure, features, syntax, … in Tiddlywiki

So, I believe it is itself a project to reveal the power of Tiddlywiki and prepare docs/demos/examples (we had a long thread on this) to let users/super users realizes how they can use TW in a better way!

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#2

I am a beginner. I think your advice is quite a good idea.

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#3

I always look at the new features with every upgrade, and sigh and think, someday someone who understands how to use them and for what, will share a snippet I can use.

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#4

Do you know all features in Tiddlywiki?

  1. Did I ever know them? — Yes
  2. Do I use them all? — Definitely No
  3. Do I know them all right now? — No

There are too many possibilities. Especially the “filter syntax” has grown quite a bit.

  1. Do I know, how to look them up? — Yes.

I’m following the development of TW5 since the code became available at GitHub. I think it’s important to see the different features in the context when and why they have been developed.

In this post I’ll describe, how I do lookup the history of a feature if I need / want to.

The starting point for the history are the TW release notes: About: Releases in the TOC

There are 8 Alpha Release tiddlers, that start at: 8. Nov. 2013 and end at: 12. Dec. 2013. They are written in plain text – bullet point lists.

It’s very interesting to read through them. @DaveGifford was mentioned in 5.0.0-alpha 13 … Hi Dave :wink:

It’s very interesting to see, how the different widgets, system-tags, the ControlPanel and the UI templating system evolved. … Most of those definitions and functions are still valid today.

There are 17 Beta Releases from 15. Dec. 2013 → 17. Sept. 2014

It’s nice to see, that the release notes got more and more structure. They are in plain text, but they are now structured into: Improvements, Bug fixes, Internal Changes and so on.

Up until 5.0.5-beta there was only 1 link back to the GitHub repository. Like See GitHub for detailed change history of this release which showed all the changes from 1 version to the next version, related to the whole release note.

Starting with Release 5.0.6-beta, every bullet point got it’s own link to GitHub, with some text like:

  • Added … You can easily search for this term :wink:
  • Extended
  • Fixed
  • Improved
  • Updated
  • … and so on

Which makes it possible to follow every bugfix, improvement or newly invented feature down to the code that was changed or added at GitHub. …

The code itself may only be of interest for developers, BUT the conversation that is also part of different commits can be interesting for everyone, if you want to know the thoughts and reasoning behind different features of TW.

There are 26 Stable Releases starting with Version 5.1.0 at: 20. Sept. 2014 up until now to v5.2.2 from 25. March 2022

The structure of the release notes hasn’t been changed much since 5.0.6-beta.

So you still can find every “historical” info about any TW feature, down to the lines of code that have been changed, if you are interested.

I can only recommend everyone to read the release notes once, without the need to click the links. You’ll probably see something, that may be completely new to you :wink:

have fun!
Mario

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#5

I definitely don’t know all the features of TiddlyWiki and I’m not sure how often I end needing them until I do. It is possible to be a long time user of TiddlyWiki without being an expert in all of the features.

#6
  1. Did I ever know them? — No, although I may have come close a few times
  2. Do I use them all? — Definitely Not, but I try to, even just to test
  3. Do I know them all right now? — No, never will, I love this fact

I actively help people all the time in talk.tiddlywiki.com (Google Groups before) because I like helping people but I also learn something all the time.

Each new release opens the possibilities even further, because “tiddlywikis bones” are so strong new features regularly open a whole new world of possibilities.

  • I regularly return to the summary of previous releases and step through to check I have not missed something or not made full use of improvements.

I have taken a number of other paths like with @pmario and his custom wikitext project that also multiply the possibilities by “degrees of magnitude”.

A personal objective is to make use of advances to try and simplify the way complex or simple problems can be solved with a view to making it understandable for the whole community.

I consider TiddlyWIki a Platform and ideal for “Rapid solutions/application development” so I cultivate and design component solutions, that I can rapidly bring together to solve any problem. see this Bookmarklets, Just in Time install, Windows work flow and Timimi short video I made showing some. However I actively try and find and challenge any barriers or limitations I can find and participate here and Gut-hub to break down these barriers.

Recent work by @jeremyruston to expand the transclusions and parameters in a future release is just another example of something likely to occur in TiddlyWiki that will again expand the possibilities or allow more intuitive solutions. I feel it is my role to be a super user but not a developer to represent the designer/user perspective.

  • Those with javascript skills often resort to javascript solutions and I have observed this is also often unnecessarily. Why need a plugin when the solution can be native tiddlywiki?

My Biggest re-occurring mistake?

  • Is to almost always reinvent the wheel and not relying on the massive library of existing solutions by searching existing solutions from Mario, Eric and Mohammad to name a few. But then doing it myself I learn more, and find new ways.

Tiddlywiki could be an inspiration for a book?

  • My book idea is “Occam’s Electric Shaver” about how we can build solutions to complex problems but these can then in turn be simplified, such that we can tackle even more complex problems and simplify these in turn.
  • It is iteration into the complex that then collapses to the simple.

[Edit] I must also call out Jeds substantial resources such as bob and his plugins
Saq’s resources such as streams.
and Fibbles relink

Here are 5 Plugin libraries in a package, install then open the get new plugins to review;

  • Do you know more plugin libraries?, please share

others-plugin-libraries.json (1.9 KB)

3 Likes
#7

#Do you know all features in Tiddlywiki?

No.

Nor do I need to.

Nor is it possible.

Other posts here concentrated on the brilliance of TW “filters” and suchlike.

I’m as much interested in it as a gateway to CSS, HTML & Javascript … Why??? Because it’s base architecture is radical.

TW can be used as a tool to TEACH CSS, HTML & Javascript interactively really well.

A comment, TT

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#8

I bet @jeremyruston does! :crazy_face:

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#9

Right. Some bears are super-duper.

#10

Fun question! I spend a lot of time inhabiting TiddlyWiki and generally think that I know my way around it, both in the sense of using it and of navigating through the code. However, after all this time working on it, I do regularly have the experience of encountering functionality and code that I had completely forgotten about. I relish those occasions! Sometimes it is contributions from others that I’d forgotten about, and best of all it is sometimes things that I’d done myself and subsequently forgotten about. A pleasure of working on a project for such a long time is that I am engaged in a continuous dialogue with my past self…

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#11

I find it fascinating.

I lost myself in 2020. Can you find me? :slight_smile:

Seriously, I think it fascinating YOU stuck with one project so brilliantly so long. In a way you can see it already way back in you as a teenager (though you likely not want the embarrassment ??). Way back (1983) you were dedicated already :).

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#12

Do you have any specific moments / stories that come to mind, @jeremyruston ?

Seems like devs finding their old code have experiences ranging from “Why / how does this work the way that it does?” to “Wow, I did something special here.”