How do you use Tiddlywiki in your research work?

[Mohammad]

I asked this question from a postgraduate student: How do you use Tiddlywiki in your research work?

I learnt to use TW as an standalone web page! Like a Word document!
For example, in a project, say solar energy, I have a main folder and several sub folders
Then I have a notes.html (a TW instance), it is dedicated to this topic and stores all notes, links, sources, discussions, image URI, PDF URI, … (relative path to this folder resources, to be able to keep a copy on my organization server drive).

So, you do not use one TW for many projects? No, absolutely not!
TW is great as long as it works for a specific topic, it is very fast, search is simpler and the notes.html file is smaller.

Remarks: She is on Windows 10, Microsoft Edge latest version, with Timimi (Backup method: Tower of Hanoi)

[inmysocks]

That is a big part of why I made Bob. For my research having everything in one wiki wasn’t working, and managing multiple single file wikis was more trouble than I wanted to deal with, so I made bob.

Now I have over 100 wikis for different topics and projects, far more than I could manage without Bob.

[Zheng_Bangyou]

I DO use Tiddlywiki for all my research although I just use TW for a couple months.

The main reason is I

• can use Projectify to manage a TODO list across all projects
• can manage the life cycle of a project (idea, proposal, progress, report, etc)
• develop manuscript across multiple projects
• cross reference notes among different types of notes (e.g. project progress, documentation, meeting notes, literature reviews)

My configuration is Windows 10, node.js, external all images. The performance sounds reasonable until now.

[Mohammad]

Assume you have two similar projects and each has its own Tiddlywiki.
Assume they have some common sources, notes for example both projects use Python and you have several snippets, tips and tricks.

Do you have duplicated notes in these Tiddlywiki? Or you use a tool to cross link them and be able to access from one place? In simple word how do use multiple wikis with some common areas?

[pmario]

@Mohammad

Do you have duplicated notes in these Tiddlywiki? Or you use a tool to cross link them and be able to access from one place? In simple word how do use multiple wikis with some common areas?

TLDR;
I think with different visual indicators, it’s possible to create several TWs, that contain different content types. It’s possible to have them open in browser tabs at the same time and you will still be able to work with them effectively, without confusion.

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It’s possible to eg, create 3 different wikis, where A is for one project, B is for the other and Z contains the common “code”. … eg. Z if for “links only”. … Now A and B can use tw-permalinks to Z. … If all wikis look the same that gets tricky.

IMO “deduplication” comes with a cost: Awareness … Users have to be aware what’s going on.

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eg: I’m a visual type. … My wikis do have different favicons, similar to TW itself.

1. tiddlywiki.com has a blue favicon and tiddlywiki.com/prerelease has a black one
2. my local Node.js dev server has a red one.

That makes the differences visible in the pinned toolbar, without the need to open the tabs.
The second indicator is the relative position. The first 2 are always left and the dev is always right. … That works well for me.

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My wikilabs landing page has a favicon and a wiki title. The different plugin pages only have a title. They are usually not pinned, that’s why I didn’t add favicons for them, even if they have their own icons in the plugin library. See the red boxes.

TiddlyTalk favicons are slightly different to tw-com … But I think that’s enough to “make a difference” … See red underline

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To go one step further: tiddlywiki.com/dev has an orange / yellow(ish) icon a different wiki title and a completely different background color. … For a reason

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tiddlywiki.org, which contains the TW link collection at the moment hopefully is a temporary solution. (because the tiddler colour hurts my eyes) … BUT it is effective.

just some thoughts.
Mario

[pmario]

There are several more possibilities if a Node.js configuration or BOB is used.

That also comes with a cost: Complexity. … May be more on that later.

If users are aware, what’s going on a client server configuration has some powerful tools. One of them are content-plugins. … I know that you are aware of that possibility.

BUT we need better UI handling for that.

[Mohammad]

I use the Searchwikis Plugin — search multiple wikis through index (kookma.github.io) to cross search wikis from a working one!
The worst problem with this solution is I always forgot to update the indexes, because it is a headache to update indexes all the time.
But it works if I frozen a wiki for example belong to a finished project.

I remember @saqimtiaz one day told me, it is possible to have automatic update the index files when you use your TWs with webdav (and his developed tool)

[saqimtiaz]

@Mohammad

I remember @saqimtiaz one day told me, it is possible to have automatic update the index files when you use your TWs with webdav (and his developed tool)

Right, the trick is a modified webdav saver that also saves the index to a central location every time the wiki is saved. All the wikis can use these indexes for searching.

[TW_Tones]

In answer to the Original Question although I do use node and bob occasionally, I do in fact use and manage a large number of single file wikis. Fortunately for me, I have the advantaged of years as a Knowledge/information management professional and have no problem curating content across multiple wikis, this also helps with tiddler naming as well. Sadly it is hard to transfer this experience to others, not that I do not often try to do so.

This is “the way I do it”, I feel I have a good process and share it, to provide others with ideas or methods.

I do “research” both TiddlyWiki and other subjects that interest me like cosmology, philosophy and the other sciences but not professionally.

• I do follow many of the practices @pmario mentions and have used bob in part to host a consolidated index wiki with Mohammad’s search wikis Plugin.
• Functional, project or subject area wikis is the the main way I divide the wikis
• I have a central task management wiki, a multiple private blog wiki, then project wikis.
  • When researching a small subject it lives in the above wikis, only if it gets more complex do I migrate to a specific wiki.
  • So all my research leverages any or all of the tools I install into my key wikis.
  • When I create a specific subject wiki, I install the tools I need when I need them. See Just in time.

On My main research subject “TiddlyWiki” I have the following dedicated wikis

• Annotated copy of TiddlyWiki.com
• TW References - code patterns methods
• TW Plugins repository
• TW Resources (A wiki I go to to find, buttons, icons, system tiddlers, system tags…)
  • This includes specific subject research records where I collect information found during a targeted research activity.
• Because this is about TiddlyWiki I have an extensive collection of JSON files constraining TiddlyWiki solutions, think of these as subprojects, see Just in Time.

However TiddlyWiki as a research subject also exists in my “shared purpose wikis”

• Main todo/project wiki has a few tiddlywiki projects/subproject
• My personal Blogs has a few tiddlywiki related blogs to self, I drop ideas here
• I add important instructions to my “Work Instruction wiki”

Just in time

• I have hundreds of “solutions” in JSON packages that I can import into a wiki as soon as I need it, just in time, also the Plugin repository or community resources.
  • This is code and tools, just in time
  • This allows every wiki to be developed as much or as little as I want, as the need arises.
  • I have a number of the key solutions in Bookmarklets for instant install.
  • This Just in time process is so efficient I have not bothered with custom editions.

My beading edges

• Using the target/window.name I am now pinning key wikis in named windows so any permalink will open in the same tab/window to stop multi-tab wikis.
• Built/building a browser/device/user control mechanism to secure single file wikis from contention.
• Allowing a wiki to take ownership of a subproject (JSON package), then release it, so subprojects can freely move between wikis.

I hope this helps or adds value to someone.

[markkerrigan]

I think one of the most important activities for doing any type of research is keeping track of one’s sources. I don’t do research in the formal sense but I do use a few techniques.

• Daily log: I keep a running list of all the sources I encountered during a specific research session, along with brief sentences of insights encountered along the way.
• Person profile: I research photographers. So I am in habit of creating a specific tiddler for each photographer. I keep a list there of their published books. Sometimes it is a full list of all of their books, other times it is just a “Selected Bibliography”. I also subscribe to this idea of “prefer the person over the work”. If there is a particular book that deserves a dedicated tiddler, I will create it, but I will always keep a tiddler about the person.
• tiddler called “Research”: In it I put links to the databases I use (library catalogs, Internet Archive search, etc).
• General Outline: A tiddler listing all of the various subtopics within the subject you are interested in. A helpful exercise is to try to create a mind map of the general outline as this can help to visual the relationships between the different subject tiddlers.

There are of course different ways to implement these techniques in TiddlyWiki. But these are just a few of the methods I use.

edit: another technique is writing down lists of questions. For example in a previous aviation related job I would get audited by customers and government agencies and they would often ask many different types of questions. Of course maybe I didn’t know the answer to the question right away, but I would often keep lists of these questions and answers because invariably someone would ask me the same question again (maybe my boss). My point is research is often about answering questions, so it’s worth keeping lists of those questions and the ones you have answered.

[HistoryBuff]

While I have TWs for some family history records, collections organization and photo organization, the TW that I spend the most time on and is the most mature is my TW concerning my research into the railroads of the state of Kansas. I started this a few years ago after my father passed. He was a long time railroad engineer in Kansas where I grew up.

Below is a screenshot of what it looks like on startup.

The sidepanel is my main navigation area with a custom tab to get around. I have a select widget to select between various ways of navigating. Below is the railroad selection where I can do various searches to find the railroad tiddlers of interest. The status radio buttons select what I want to show status on with a Harvey Ball showing up next the railroad to indicate complete (solid) or not (circle).

I can also show the predecessors of major railroad companies shown here:

You will note that some railroads are in lighter font and italicized. This indicates that they are “paper” railroads or railroads that were proposed, but never built. There are many more than what are indicated because this is still a work in progress.

The select widget selections between railroads and varioius type of source material which is also in the TW.

The source material is transcribed into individual tiddlers with links back to the railroads that are mentioned in that source. Images from the source material such as figures or maps use external images to keep the TW smaller (it’s still about 14MB as it is). I do use the RefNotes plugin by @Mohammad for footnotes and I intent to start using it for references in the future.

An individual railroad tiddler looks like this:

This uses a view template to display the information and tabbed interface. Each of the tabs contains more detailed information than the summary tab.

For example, I’m in the process of inputting the construction history for the railroads which is shown in the trackage tab:

I also have charts using the bar chart plugin and echarts plugin to show various status items:

I initially wanted the dashboard to be the initial screen, but the TW was quite a bit slower when I did that so it’s just a few clicks away.

This has been a hugely fun project and is ongoing. It’s a lot of work to dig up the information and I spend way to much time on it. But it’s better than a lot of other things I could be doing. Thanks to @jeremyruston for creating such a great tool and thanks to this community for being patient with some of my silly questions and help that has been given.

Regards,

HistoryBuff (aka Damon Pritchett)

[arunnbabu81]

@HistoryBuff it looks like a nicely crafted website. It would be interesting to see the code behind all these beautiful works. Please share a demo wiki (without any personal information) for us to learn, if you are ok with it.

[TW_Tones]

@HistoryBuff’s railroad Wiki demonstrates a key feature of tiddlywiki when it comes to research, by building a research tool that has a well designed user interface into the information it contains, this interface not only makes it possible for the research to be published one day, but is a kind of “self publishing to oneself”. ie the researcher publishes his/here own work to his/herself. This facilitate the ongoing research process because if facilitates the researchers interaction with their own material, helps them discover new links, identify gaps and seek new or missing information.

This also facilitates incremental research projects, side hustles etc… undertaken when the time is available, on a part time basis or returning years later by providing a portal into your research to assist in restarting your research. “Hitting the ground running”.

[Mohammad]

Hi @HistoryBuff
What you did is absolutely amazing! You showed us how a wonderful app we can make using Tiddlywiki. I see how nicely you have used viewtemplates, tabs, tables, sidebar, charts, …

Thank you for sharing and good luck!

[TiddlyTweeter]

@HistoryBuff

my TW concerning my research into the railroads of the state of Kansas. I started this a few years ago after my father passed. He was a long time railroad engineer in Kansas where I grew up.

Below is a screenshot of what it looks like on startup.

Whoa! Seriously good and interesting!

Not sure if you’d ever want to, but this would be a great TW to showcase in an online “gallery” of TWs used for research.

Best, TT

[TiddlyTweeter]

@Mohammad

I asked this question from a postgraduate student: How do you use Tiddlywiki in your research work?

Ciao Mohammad

It has been a very interesting thread! I always like your practical interest in end-uses.

TBH, what I think we need, to build off this kind of thing is, a permanent wiki dedicated to Showcases of real use of TW for research projects.

In the end I think that will eventually bring more people to use TW than anything.

Just a thought
TT

[HistoryBuff]

Thanks to all for the kind words on my railroad research wiki. Quite a bit of work and time has gone into it and it’s good to see it payoff to folks besides myself.

As far as sharing it somewhere, I’m going to have to think about the best way to do that. I say that because there is quite a bit of potentially copyrighted material in it. Since I was basically creating this for myself there is some material that I’ve used directly and verbatim that may be copyrighted. If I can figure out how to deal with this without gutting the wiki too much, I’d be happy to share.

Stay tuned.

[TW_Tones]

@HistoryBuff it could be quite difficult to unweave your wiki and content, so an alternative for you, is to share some component designs people can make use of, or alternatively doing an informal video showing off the features but giving tiddlywiki users some technical insight as to how you achieved it, would also be helpful.

• Another idea may be first to develop a system to mark copywrite material that you can then remove in bulk.

Just some thoughts but dont let me stop you doing the full share. Nice work

[HistoryBuff]

Thanks. Those are great thoughts. I especially like the idea of flagging the copyrighted material somehow. I should also check with copyright holder about what their rules might be.

I will share code behind some of the key features soon. If there are any in particular that folks would like to see, I’ll start there.

[TW_Tones]

@HistoryBuff

Stay tuned

That is very generous of you, do start another discussion when you start sharing. Then place a link here. Once that is happening perhaps I would even remove this reply from this thread.

I think your approach has a lot of value for researchers. Especially dealing with missing information and building over time.

A couple of things I would like to know, that I also think will help the community;

• How you are doing the nicely formatted forms with dynamic content such as in the railroad summary and Dashboard Progress info.
• How do you indicate more information in your Predecessors tree “lighter font and italicized”
• In general how do you approach highlighting “missing or incomplete” information.

In all of the above, for me at least I am interested in your approach, or tips rather than the details but others may have a different view.