How to tell TiddlyWiki render just links in a tiddler?

vuk · May 22, 2026, 2:32am

I have a tiddler and its text field is for example:

[[foo 1 - *]]

* bar

//baz//

{{something}}

each line is wikitext markup.

If I save the tiddler with default content type, each line is rendered accordingly in view mode.

If I save the tiddler as plain text, it is displayed in view mode as it is typed.

What if I wanted my tiddler to get rendered selectively? For example if I wanted to see it as it is typed (plain text), but [[something inside]] parts to get rendered as links to other tiddlers (not necessarily existing ones)? Is it possible? Is it possible without having to write JavaScript? Does the process involve creating a custom content type?

TW_Tones · May 22, 2026, 2:37am

You can use back ticks like here to mark inline text/don’t render or double back ticks to include single backticks

Triple back ticks for block code

There are other ways

Try searching tiddlywiki for @@ include the space at the end to find other ways.

If the above is not sufficient there are other ways to do the same and similar, just ask.

etardiff · May 22, 2026, 2:41am

See Pragma: \rules.

In this case, I think adding \rules only prettylinkto the top of the tiddler should do what you’re looking for.

vuk · May 22, 2026, 3:18am

That’s a long list and many names there are intuitive. But are they documented? I searched for ‘prettylink’ on tiddlywiki.com and got zero results.

Also, I would like to keep the text field of such special tiddler(s) intact. Is it possible to apply this pragma implicitly somehow? Like do it for all tidlers that have a certain tag?

TW_Tones · May 22, 2026, 3:37am

If I understand you correctly you don’t want any wiki text rendering except the wiki links inside [[title]]. Perhaps if you step back and tell us why? because it is an unusual request and there may be a another solution if we understood the root cause/need.

vuk · May 22, 2026, 3:52am

Are you suspecting an X-Y problem?

My use case is that I’m investigating storing chess games in PGN format in tiddlers. They also have FEN strings enclosed in [[ ... ]] and I want them to be clickable links to tiddlers, so I could annotate positions identified by those FEN strings, outside of the games, in their own per-position tiddler. The problem is that if I store the PGN game in a tiddler with default content type, TiddlyWiki tries to render parts of PGN as wikitext and it looks ugly. If I save the tiddlers as plain text, FEN strings are not rendering as links.

etardiff · May 22, 2026, 4:25am

Not in a user-facing way, to my knowledge. You can use Advanced Search > Shadows to find the relevant JS tiddlers, which typically include some documentation on their use. For instance, searching for prettylink brought me to $:/core/modules/parsers/wikiparser/rules/prettylink.js, which includes the following description:

Wiki text inline rule for pretty links. For example:

[[Introduction]]

[[Link description|TiddlerTitle]]

Hmm, I’m not sure. Normally I’d suggest using a custom ViewTemplate, but that gets tricky when, by definition and design, you’re disabling all wikitext parsing other than links…

If you can list the specific strings that get parsed as wikitext, it may be easier to construct a ViewTemplate that parses all wikitext except those strings, rather than only prettylinks.

pmario · May 22, 2026, 4:57am

I also think, you should give use some examples of text, that gets rendered in the wrong way

I did find this info at Wikipedia: Portable Game Notation - Wikipedia about the notation

But I do not really see anything that is rendered in the wrong way with the default TW type.

So it seems you want to create your own syntax, that is different to the spec. … So we need examples.

Springer · May 22, 2026, 10:48pm

Stuff inside double-brackets already //should// get rendered as links to “missing” tiddlers, unless you’ve disabled the Basic Setting:

So it sounds like it’s really only the transclusions as in {{missing title}} that you’d like to see handled differently. Transclusions are not designed to offer links, at least by default — or even to be recognizable as transclusions in view mode. They’ll just be empty unless there’s content there, and will render any existing content (at that tiddler) seamlessly.

It’s easy enough to build a variation on transclusion that adds a clickable link. I’m not sure how easy it is to make it work with the shortcut syntax {{title}} though… (My understanding is that transclusions play a big role throughout TiddlyWiki’s core, and you might be surprised how an intervention that changes how all transclusions function could pretty quickly trip up the “just works” stuff that you’d otherwise take for granted.)

Edit to add: The best variant on transclusion — for making sure you see links, including links to missing tiddlers — is translink. It can be tweaked in various ways if needed.

TW_Tones · May 23, 2026, 9:09pm

@Springer I understood unrendered text except for links that should be active, somewhat unusual.

@vuk what if you just display the whole tiddler as text but extract and list links above or below in the viewTemplate?

I have some code somewhere that would assist with this, which I could find if wanted.

Scott_Sauyet · May 26, 2026, 1:26am

I’m not sure if this is the sort of thing you’re looking for, but we could update the body cascade with a new tiddler that does some simple parsing:

title: $:/_/PGN/config/ViewTemplateBodyFilters/PGN
tags: $:/tags/ViewTemplateBodyFilter
list-before: $:/config/ViewTemplateBodyFilters/default

[all[current]tag[PGN]then[$:/_/PGN/ViewTemplateBody]]

title: $:/_/PGN/ViewTemplateBody

\whitespace trim
\define link-regex() (\[\[[^\]]+\]\])
\define link-wrap() §§§$1§§§
\define sep() §§§
\define link-match-regex() ^\[\[[^\]]+\]\]$
\define open-brackets() [[
\define close-brackets() ]]
<pre class="pgn-body"><$list filter="[{!!text}search-replace:g:regexp<link-regex>,<link-wrap>split<sep>]" variable="seg"><$list filter="[<seg>regexp<link-match-regex>]" variable="ignored" emptyMessage="<$text text=<<seg>>/>"><$let target={{{ [<seg>removeprefix<open-brackets>removesuffix<close-brackets>split[|]last[]] }}} caption={{{ [<seg>removeprefix<open-brackets>removesuffix<close-brackets>split[|]first[]] }}}><$link to=<<target>>><$text text=<<caption>>/></$link></$let></$list></$list></pre>

pre.pgn-body {
	white-space: pre-wrap;
	font-family: monospace;
}

This should do pretty well what you’re asking for. But I personally would go a little further and also parse PNG headers, annotations, and variants. This is a version that does so. You should be able to download the following and drag it onto any wiki:

PGN_links.json (7.4 KB)

It is naive and does not handle nested variants – which is a real weakness, because they are fairly common. It uses simple regex-parsing, and therefore cannot handle the full context-free grammar that variants require (arbitrary nesting.) But it’s useful enough for many cases, and it probably wouldn’t be too hard to build a more complete parser.

Sample Game

With a Link

vuk · May 26, 2026, 2:56am

Here’s one (post this into a body of a new tiddler straight on tiddlywiki.com and save the tiddler; notice that in view mode not all FEN links are rendered)

[Event "?"]
[Site "Riga"]
[Date "1896.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Nimzowitsch"]
[Black "N.N."]
[Result "1-0"]
[TimeControl "120"]

1. e4 { [[rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR b KQkq e3 0 1]] }
1... d5 { [[rnbqkbnr/ppp1pppp/8/3p4/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq d6 0 2]]
} 2. exd5 { [[rnbqkbnr/ppp1pppp/8/3P4/8/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR b KQkq - 0 2]]
} 2... Qxd5 { [[rnb1kbnr/ppp1pppp/8/3q4/8/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0
3]] } 3. Nc3 { [[rnb1kbnr/ppp1pppp/8/3q4/8/2N5/PPPP1PPP/R1BQKBNR b KQkq - 1
3]] } 3... Qd8 { [[rnbqkbnr/ppp1pppp/8/8/8/2N5/PPPP1PPP/R1BQKBNR w KQkq - 2
4]] } 4. Nf3 { [[rnbqkbnr/ppp1pppp/8/8/8/2N2N2/PPPP1PPP/R1BQKB1R b KQkq - 3
4]] } 4... f5 { [[rnbqkbnr/ppp1p1pp/8/5p2/8/2N2N2/PPPP1PPP/R1BQKB1R w KQkq
f6 0 5]] } 5. Bc4 { [[rnbqkbnr/ppp1p1pp/8/5p2/2B5/2N2N2/PPPP1PPP/R1BQK2R b
KQkq - 1 5]] } 5... Nc6 {
[[r1bqkbnr/ppp1p1pp/2n5/5p2/2B5/2N2N2/PPPP1PPP/R1BQK2R w KQkq - 2 6]] } 6.
O-O { [[r1bqkbnr/ppp1p1pp/2n5/5p2/2B5/2N2N2/PPPP1PPP/R1BQ1RK1 b kq - 3 6]]
} 6... Qd6 { [[r1b1kbnr/ppp1p1pp/2nq4/5p2/2B5/2N2N2/PPPP1PPP/R1BQ1RK1 w kq
- 4 7]] } 7. d3 { [[r1b1kbnr/ppp1p1pp/2nq4/5p2/2B5/2NP1N2/PPP2PPP/R1BQ1RK1
b kq - 0 7]] } 7... Qb4 {
[[r1b1kbnr/ppp1p1pp/2n5/5p2/1qB5/2NP1N2/PPP2PPP/R1BQ1RK1 w kq - 1 8]] } 8.
Be3 { [[r1b1kbnr/ppp1p1pp/2n5/5p2/1qB5/2NPBN2/PPP2PPP/R2Q1RK1 b kq - 2 8]]
} 8... Qxb2 { [[r1b1kbnr/ppp1p1pp/2n5/5p2/2B5/2NPBN2/PqP2PPP/R2Q1RK1 w kq -
0 9]] } 9. Nd5 { [[r1b1kbnr/ppp1p1pp/2n5/3N1p2/2B5/3PBN2/PqP2PPP/R2Q1RK1 b
kq - 1 9]] } 9... Kd8 {
[[r1bk1bnr/ppp1p1pp/2n5/3N1p2/2B5/3PBN2/PqP2PPP/R2Q1RK1 w - - 2 10]] } 10.
Bc5 { [[r1bk1bnr/ppp1p1pp/2n5/2BN1p2/2B5/3P1N2/PqP2PPP/R2Q1RK1 b - - 3 10]]
} 10... b6 { [[r1bk1bnr/p1p1p1pp/1pn5/2BN1p2/2B5/3P1N2/PqP2PPP/R2Q1RK1 w -
- 0 11]] } 11. Rb1 {
[[r1bk1bnr/p1p1p1pp/1pn5/2BN1p2/2B5/3P1N2/PqP2PPP/1R1Q1RK1 b - - 1 11]] }
11... Qxb1 { [[r1bk1bnr/p1p1p1pp/1pn5/2BN1p2/2B5/3P1N2/P1P2PPP/1q1Q1RK1 w -
- 0 12]] } 12. Qxb1 {
[[r1bk1bnr/p1p1p1pp/1pn5/2BN1p2/2B5/3P1N2/P1P2PPP/1Q3RK1 b - - 0 12]] }
12... bxc5 { [[r1bk1bnr/p1p1p1pp/2n5/2pN1p2/2B5/3P1N2/P1P2PPP/1Q3RK1 w - -
0 13]] } 13. Ng5 { [[r1bk1bnr/p1p1p1pp/2n5/2pN1pN1/2B5/3P4/P1P2PPP/1Q3RK1 b
- - 1 13]] } 13... Ne5 {
[[r1bk1bnr/p1p1p1pp/8/2pNnpN1/2B5/3P4/P1P2PPP/1Q3RK1 w - - 2 14]] } 14. f4
{ [[r1bk1bnr/p1p1p1pp/8/2pNnpN1/2B2P2/3P4/P1P3PP/1Q3RK1 b - f3 0 14]] }
14... h6 { [[r1bk1bnr/p1p1p1p1/7p/2pNnpN1/2B2P2/3P4/P1P3PP/1Q3RK1 w - - 0
15]] } 15. fxe5 { [[r1bk1bnr/p1p1p1p1/7p/2pNPpN1/2B5/3P4/P1P3PP/1Q3RK1 b -
- 0 15]] } 15... hxg5 { [[r1bk1bnr/p1p1p1p1/8/2pNPpp1/2B5/3P4/P1P3PP/1Q3RK1
w - - 0 16]] } 16. Ne3 {
[[r1bk1bnr/p1p1p1p1/8/2p1Ppp1/2B5/3PN3/P1P3PP/1Q3RK1 b - - 1 16]] } 16...
f4 { [[r1bk1bnr/p1p1p1p1/8/2p1P1p1/2B2p2/3PN3/P1P3PP/1Q3RK1 w - - 0 17]] }
17. e6 { [[r1bk1bnr/p1p1p1p1/4P3/2p3p1/2B2p2/3PN3/P1P3PP/1Q3RK1 b - - 0
17]] } 17... fxe3 { [[r1bk1bnr/p1p1p1p1/4P3/2p3p1/2B5/3Pp3/P1P3PP/1Q3RK1 w
- - 0 18]] } 18. Rxf8# {
[[r1bk1Rnr/p1p1p1p1/4P3/2p3p1/2B5/3Pp3/P1P3PP/1Q4K1 b - - 0 18]] } 1-0

@etardiff if I add \rules only prettylink at the top of this, as you suggested, I still don’t see all FEN links rendered.

PS: this is the answer to an early post in this thread, I’m digesting the help I’m getting much slower than I’d like to, my feedback will come with delays.

vuk · May 26, 2026, 3:38am

This is not an option, because this way FEN strings are logically detached from the moves that produce the board positions said FEN strings are describing.

etardiff · May 26, 2026, 4:18am

Okay, looking at your data, I don’t think the issue is that other wikitext is getting parsed — it’s that the “broken” links contains internal linebreaks, and this seems to prevent them from being parsed as wikitext links.

I assume you’re copy-pasting text from another source, linebreaks included… are they important to the content as you’d want to see it? If not, the easiest solution might be to just convert the linebreaks to standard spaces when you’re creating the tiddler. For instance:

(Here, I used \rules except wikilink to prevent “TimeControl” from being parsed as a link; if you’ve turned CamelCase links off in your wiki, you could omit this step.)

If this looks like a workable result, here’s a custom editor button I made for just this purpose some time ago: linebreak remover.json (1.5 KB)

Simply highlight a chunk of text and press the button to convert any linebreaks in the highlighted text to single spaces.

vuk · May 27, 2026, 3:44am

This works well, thank you

I also learned how to tune the output of pgn-extract[1] so it puts each halfmove on a new line, which shall prevent FEN splits over multiple lines, so when the PGN source will be from there, additional processing of data should not be needed.

pgn-extract: Portable Game Notation (PGN) Manipulator for Chess Games

vuk · May 27, 2026, 3:46am

Thank you, I have tried this with the PGN example above and the results are great. I’ll see how it goes with more complex examples.