Edit tiddler shortcut

I haven’t found any shortcut to the pencil button icon to edit a tiddler. Have searched all over and haven’t been able to find a way to create a shortcut to it.

I have managed to create

$:/config/ShortcutInfo/edit-tiddler
$:/config/shortcuts/edit-tiddler

And with those I can see an entry on the Control Panel > Keyboard shortcuts. And assign a key combination.

But I’m missing the instructions on how to link that shortcut to the actual action that will click that button or call the function that will activate the edition of the tiddler when I’m viewing the tiddler.

I can not find the correct page in the manuals to understand and complete this last step.

Hope someone knows how to do this, or the page of the manual that explains how to do it.

Thanks.

Hello @Hans_Peyrot and welcome!

Others will have more detail, and maybe even a kind of solution.

But I can at least start out with an explanation of why a solution isn’t obvious :wink: — it’s that there can be many tiddlers open in the story river, and so triggering an “edit tiddler” shortcut wouldn’t automatically “know” which tiddler to put into edit mode.

Various people have been talking about versions of a “focus tiddler” solution — a way that a particular tiddler could count as “on top” for purposes of editing. And something like the zoomin view also has an obvious tiddler “on top”.

Still, the basic idea of a list of open tiddlers is a core idea in TiddlyWiki, and a user is in theory always free to spontaneously edit any one of these tiddlers.

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Thank you for your answer @Springer,

It make sense, probably I do not notice that because I use only see one tiddler at a time, only one is visible in my story line. I think is because I use the zoomin story view. But yes I understand that if you have a layout where the tiddlers are all open above and below, than It make a lot of sense that you would not know which one to open.

Well I guess that’s it, thank you for the explanation.

The method used to display one tiddler at a time (I dont use this view myself) means it would be possible to use that same method to trigger an edit on that tiddler. It does however seem a little odd because it is easier than normal to find the single open tiddler.

  • I often use a replacement of the open tab in the side bar that includes an edit button in the open tiddler lists to click and edit.
    • I do this on a recent tiddlers tab as well, if a tiddler I am working on is breaking my wiki just by being displayed. I can edit it without opening it first.
  • Other methods include a mouse click on any tiddlers body to open it in edit, but I set this to ctrl-click so I can still select text when viewing a tiddler.

I expect the current open tiddler can be found in {{$:/HistoryList!!current-tiddler}} which is in effect the last navigated to.

the more general case of “which tid is focused” in a river is discussed here:

fwiw, I use the Gk0Wk/focused-tiddler plugin for it, where my use-case is solely to style the focused tid in the Open tab (which I have elevated to a SidbarSegment). I got all this from the ‘Seentid’ plugin, as discussed here: Presenting: Seentid - highlight sidebar title seen in viewport

I also did a range of experiments with the concept of focused tiddlers demonstrated here https://focus-tiddler.tiddlyhost.com/ and could be combined with the above solution, but I like the manual by design approach, where you select the focused tiddler, thus can return to it.

The “focused tiddler” problem makes this challenging in “vanilla” TW… but luckily, there are several plugins designed to tackle this issue. Here’s one by @Scribs: Nav - keyboard navigation plugin 🧭

And another linked in the same thread: Demo of tw5-keyboard-navigation — Navigate through your TiddlyWiki using only your keyboard

I think I’ve seen at least one other implementation, possibly back in the days of the old Google Group, but I don’t have the link on hand. You may have luck searching for “tiddlywiki keyboard navigation” in your search engine of choice.

I haven’t tested @Scribs’s version personally, but of the two above it’d be my general recommendation, as tw5-keyboard-navigation uses unmarked e (and so on) for its keybindings. I suspect this would be very quickly frustrating if you use your keyboard for anything else in view mode — say, an $edit-text widget.

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I also did a range of experiments with the concept of focused tiddlers demonstrated here https://focus-tiddler.tiddlyhost.com/ and could be combined with the above solution, but I like the manual by design approach, when I can return to the last focused tiddler.

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that looks very cool and I can see the use for it. It’s solving a different problem to what the above solves, with “focused” being the term used in both cases (and both very reasonably so) yet describing different things. Focus = tid manually flagged as being of interest to return to, vs focus = tid currently in view.

I can see myself poring through your focus solution and seeing which bits I can extract and use in my own setup

Actually it most often is the tiddler currently in view on navigation.

In my mind it is the tiddler my mind wants to focus on, eg I am focused on that task but needed to read supporting info on the screen. I sometimes open half a dozen or more related tiddlers then use what I read there, when composing or editing another tiddler.

I do value the alternate solution but for me I would call this the visible tiddler, which although obvious to me (my eyes), it may be useful for sidebar views or other automation to know what a user is looking at. Perhaps there would even be value that it triggers actions on viewing a tiddler, perhaps no more than once a day/hour.

I certainly imagine that would most likely be the case!

I think I’d find the value of manual selection would be being able to have one tid flagged (tagged? selected?) for extra info (the sidebar tab with the extra fields catches my eye especially) regardless of where it is in the view, separate to the tid which is currently on display and readable (I have it css highlighted it in the ‘Open’ tab, which makes that tab act as the logical (but not visual) equivalent to a mini map.

The new ‘float’ system I have in mind for similar kind of use too - being able to reference two different tid’s at once on screen, even if they’re some distance in the river which I want to keep ordered )

yes, I understand

Tiddlers need not even remain in the story.

when designing my own focus tiddler I realised we can use multiple synonyms for focus, even simultaneously would be useful such as;

focused
selected
nominated
working
targeted
coding

use a thesaurus :sunglasses:

I also made a tool in the past to nominate tiddlers with an alphabetic letter A B C ETC… which allowed quick switch, very helpful when researching and coding across multiple tiddlers. it can be done without touching the tiddlers.

  • this makes me think of a no touch tagging system
  • to avoid conflict perhaps I call it flagging?

“thesaurus” is just another word for a pre-historic reptile :slight_smile:

“What do you call a blind dinosaur?.. a Do-you-think-he-saw-us” (Jurassic Park)

-e

Yeah, but what’s another word for “thesaurus”?

to me “flagging” and “tagging” both imply the possibility of multiple, which isn’t the case here. Apart from that, I think either would be great (and this implication may just be a me thing, but I’d be a little surprised, since both are common terms in computing interfaces and rarely if ever refer to a singleton. With that in mind, "selected’ or “targeted” would be my picks.

Of course, the other way around has merit too - that the manually selected tid be the “focused” and the current in-view tid be named something else (viewed? seen - as per the “seentid” plugin name). (this would match my X11 “sloppy focus without raise” preference, where the active/focused window is not always the one that is the main one in view!)

Neither plugin are mine, though I use one and intend to use the other, so I’m only slightly more than an armchair pundit at this point.

Of both can remain “focused” and it only be slightly confusing (but English has many a well trod path of confusing language reliant on context… what’s one more?!)