Fitness for purpose and the cool factor

#1

This is more a stream of consciousness post. Think of it like a tiddler/journal entry.

I’ve been using TiddlyWiki for well over 20 years now. I use it every day. I also work at a place that is very tight on how information is managed on my daily work machine.

I discovered that TW was a perfect solution for my work notes because it was a full wiki with excellent features, filtering, macros, and a philosophy of brain dumps (tiddlers). Best was that it is a single page web app that runs in my main daily app the web browser (pinned tab). Having a Node service running allows me auto-saving and file backup options.

However, almost every month or so I see company slack messages asking what productivity note taking apps are we allowed to use due to our restrictions on installing 3rd party applications to the operating systems. And I dutifully reply the advantages of using TiddlyWiki for that exact purpose.

Oddly when I do I typically get blank stares or even push back because TW is not Obsidian or Notion. As if there was something about TW that offends them despite its philosophy of design fitting the purpose better then those others that need special permission to install.

There is enough propaganda on the use of things like Obsidian that it even gets mentioned on company approval lists. It bothers me that these 3rd party tools seem to get all the attention when customized self driven solutions like TW are snubbed at or ignored.

Is this a flaw in TW itself? Is there something about having a personalized solution to a problem that makes it invalid as a solution? Why doesn’t TW ever get more recognition for the amazing tool that it is?

#2

It is hard sometimes competing with reduced functionality or commercially advertised products.

Personally I think calling it the “tiddlywiki platform” lifts it higher and more seriously. It also suggests it’s what you build on top of. I also think pointing out it’s open source, with a strong community.

To be honest I am not sure you should take too much notice of people who only want cool, I found “a non-linear personal web notebook” cool, but then I am a :nerd_face: people who try and be cool often follow fashion’s and can be fickle, quickly moving to the next thing.

if you need tiddlywiki in a professional situation perhaps actually force a real evaluation using facts not feelings to support choices.

#3

While TW is very convenient, I’d say its biggest drawback is that it is tied to a web browser. This convenience comes at the price of sacrificing flexibility and simplicity. It is simple to save a text file. It is not trivial to save/overwrite a single file TW. You want to tap on a wiki file on Android and have it opened in a web browser? It’s not possible. Somehow you managed to serve it via HTTP locally and open it in the browser, now you want to save your changes? Good luck with that, see above. TW is “doomed” to carry the “browser curse”.

#4

Obsidian doesn’t advertise. It’s all word-of-mouth.

Especially on Android, where, I believe it is now impossible to do so in modern browsers.

There isn’t another note-taking software that I am aware of that forces you to figure out on your own how to save your work.

#5

Do look at the TiddlyDesktopTS for android