Doodling is critically lacking in TW!

[twMat]

My daughter Ella is ploughing through a long list of books that I’ve recommended to her - “These will give you perspectives on life and you’ll understand the world better… Just be sure to take notes along the way to remember stuff and connect ideas… One great tool for this is TW and I can set it up any way you need!”.

Well… IRL, things immediately hit a brick wall

“Dad, how do I doodle in the notes?”

She’s right. If you take notes on paper and pen, it is glaringly obvious that we have a need to be able to doodle stuff and draw arrows and show things that are simply not text for efficient note taking. Our brains simply don’t think in pure text.

The drawing tool we have in TW is crude but, more problematically, it is not integrated well to actually use for note taking. Creating, say, a little sketch between two text paragraphs is a hassle even for experienced users. Adding a sketch next to a paragraph requires serious custom hacking, beyond wikitext. And to, say, encircle a word in your notes or to draw a line from a word in the text to the image is… well, just forget about it, it is not even possible.

Is decent doodling while taking notes just not something that should be possible in a tool that is a:

“unique non-linear notebook for capturing, organising and sharing complex information”

…?

Thoughts? Ideas? Opinions?

[CodaCoder]

@twMat

Our brains simply don’t think in pure text.

Huge topic area, but yes, totally correct, IMV.

I wonder if @Mark_S dynannotate work might provide some benefit here. It would necessarily mean being applied after the fact, but still. Mark?

[TiddlyTweeter]

@twMat

“Dad, how do I doodle in the notes?”

She’s right. If you take notes on paper and pen, it is glaringly obvious that we have a need to be able to doodle stuff and draw arrows and show things that are simply not text for efficient note taking. Our brains simply don’t think in pure text.

The solution is called PAPER.

The human hand free on paper it still light years ahead of any computer for exploration and cross connection.

I don’t wanna see this as a TW issue. It is a generic issue about the limits of Electro-Tech. In many ways Mano-Tech remains superior.

I guess a way would be better interface to handed input streams. Dunno.

TT

[Mark_S]

I thought someone had come up with an overlay thingie, so you could draw on top of text. In fact, I even thought it was Mat. But I always think it’s Mat

@TiddlyTweeter

I don’t wanna see this as a TW issue. It is a generic issue about the limits of Electro-Tech. In many ways Mano-Tech remains superior.

Well, Electro-Tech has been superior for me because I’m a right-hander in a left-hander’s body. Or vice-versa. As a result I learned to type as soon as possible, and was a dozen years of anticipation of when we could use typing instead of writing.

But it’s an odd thought that in a hundred years, people will still be able to read Egyptian hieroglyphics from 4000 years ago, but probably anything we write today will be gone - forever.

[twMat]

@TiddlyTweeter - interestingly I hadn’t noticed there is no thumbs down or dislike emoji in this forum until now.

Anyway, she also commented that she is using Google Keep to take notes which has a sufficient doodling feature and she was just generally wondering why Google Keep wasn’t enough in my opinion.

[Mark_S]

@twMat

Anyway, she also commented that she is using Google Keep to take notes which has a sufficient doodling feature and she was just generally wondering why Google Keep wasn’t enough in my opinion.

I had a similar conversation about 10 years ago with my daughter. I was struggling to learn a particular CAD package and she asked why I didn’t just use Google SketchUp. I explained that Google was unreliable in its support of projects, and I didn’t think they would have any incentive to maintain it. A few months later, Google sold Sketchup.

In a kid’s world you don’t need permanence, because you can always learn something later. But in an adult’s world, you need something that will be around.

[twMat]

Here is one hypothetical solution outline:

If this issue was solved, i.e to have a transparent background on the drawing canvas, then it should be possible to place some “tag” in the text, e.g like this <doodle> (or a macrocall or widgetcall or whatever) and it could be directly “interpreted” to trigger a little drawing canvas in front of the text even in edit mode.

[TiddlyTweeter]

@Mark_S

I thought someone had come up with an overlay thingie, so you could draw on top of text. In fact, I even thought it was Mat.

He did. I just can’t find it.

TT

[TiddlyTweeter]

@Mark_S

But it’s an odd thought that in a hundred years, people will still be able to read Egyptian hieroglyphics from 4000 years ago, but probably anything we write today will be gone - forever

Without getting too depressing, I’d guess most of what we doing now, thinking it will live forever electronically, will just disappear.

[TiddlyTweeter]

@twMat

she also commented that she is using Google Keep to take notes which has a sufficient doodling feature and she was just generally wondering why Google Keep wasn’t enough in my opinion.

I think that a very smart observation by her. That is part of the issue that paper doesn’t have. Integration. Propagation. Electro-Mode inter-communication is very complex with multiple fail points.

I’m still reasonably better with “do it papery first” …

[Mark_S]

Was that done on paper?

You could use paper, and then take a snapshot with one of those scanner apps. External link to a tiddler, and add keywords to find. The problem being that it’s still messy and fidgety to get those external links into TW.

About the green and pink in your picture – where did you get a sample of my handwriting?

[telumire]

OneNote or a pdf reader with annotation tools (PDF-XChange Editor , Foxit PDF Reader, Acrobat Reader, etc) could do the job. Being able to do that within tiddlywiki would be great !

[Charlie_Veniot]

Fun thread of discussion to read.

Hand-drawn annotations on text that won’t change, that’s pretty straightforward. It is an image on top of the text/content.

Hand-drawn annotations on text/content that does/can change/move, I’m thinking that is a bit of work setting up. I’m sure it can be done (“anchors”), but a messy thing to handle when anchors get lost/etc.

Just random thoughts about it .

[Alvaro]

There is a widget for edit canvas called $edit-bitmap, but it doesn’t work in the view mode, when you click inside it then is changed the type of the tiddler to image/png, and then the text content will be deleted.

Edit: I don’t know why it is marked as response to telumire :S

[CodaCoder]

@twMat

it could be directly “interpreted” to trigger a little drawing canvas in front of the text

Cool idea. I hadn’t seen that issue on GH before.

From a CSS perspective, it would need two modes, toggling pointer-events, which would “click-thru” when you need to access the underlying text (to click links for example) and prevent the mouse reaching the text when you want to draw.

In addition to indicating that the element is not the target of pointer events, the value none instructs the pointer event to go “through” the element and target whatever is “underneath” that element instead.
pointer-events - CSS: Cascading Style Sheets | MDN

[TiddlyTweeter]

@Charlie_Veniot

Hand-drawn annotations on text that won’t change, that’s pretty straightforward. It is an image on top of the text/content.

@twMat did a neat demo of that. But like lots of his stuff it i hard to find.

[TiddlyTweeter]

@Mark_S

Was that done on paper?

Yeah.

@Mark_S

You could use paper, and then take a snapshot with one of those scanner apps. External link to a tiddler, and add keywords to find. The problem being that it’s still messy and fidgety to get those external links into TW.

Dead right. It is procedural issue.

As I said, I don’t think this a TW issue; it is a generic interfacing problem.

@Mark_S

where did you get a sample of my handwriting?

LOL!

TT

[twMat]

@CodaCoder

From a CSS perspective, it would need two modes, toggling pointer-events, which would “click-thru” when you need to access the underlying text (to click links for example) and prevent the mouse reaching the text when you want to draw.

Your specific mention of pointer-events indicate that you already know this is possible (i.e it is).

However, doodles on top of the text is probably the most advanced case. We can’t even conveniently create a doodle between two paragraphs. The UI is just too impractical. If we could do that then TW could at least claim that “why, of course, you can doodle as you take notes”.

[CodaCoder]

@twMat

Your specific mention of pointer-events indicate that you already know this is possible (i.e it is).

In theory, yes. Have I ever tested a <canvas> element with/without pointer-events:none? No.

If someone had a mind to try it, I imagine a plugin would be possible. I was imagining @Mark_S annotate thingy (or an extension of it) being able to “scribble” over the text (tiddler body) element.

All this needs (without meaning to trivialise the work involved) is a transparent canvas plonked on top of the text. There’s likely hundreds (thousands?) of “ready to go” components out there.

As for between, paragraphs, not sure I see the point – or the efficacy of the workflow/UI at that point.

[abesamma]

Glad you’ve brought this up. This is an opportunity for the community to really turn what we have now in TW5 into something that could wow people into using it more.