This is a continuation of this thread. From what I understand the only way to view external images in the TiddlyWiki is to run Tiddloid in “Legacy Mode”
But it’s not obvious how to activate Legacy mode in Tiddloid. Is there something I’m missing? Is there also something in Android which prevents viewing the images even when opening the wiki in another web browser?
Not sure if most Android browsers include a PDF viewer these days. If you can’t view PDF’s from other (non TW) sites, then you can’t view it in TW.
From what I understand the only way to view external images in the TiddlyWiki is to run Tiddloid in “Legacy Mode”
Viewing images in TW on Android is a smaller (and different) problem compared to pdf. What I found are:
Mobile chrome browser can view external images on TW (TW itself in Chrome download directory but images can be elsewhere in local storage). I read somewhere that Mobile Chrome imposes security restriction to access files outside Chrome Download directory but there is now an exception for media files i.e. images and video but not pdf/epub/txt/etc. That seems to be the case on my phone. This may involve a one-time permission prompt from Chrome, I can’t remember exactly though.
Tiddloid Lite or Tiddloid 2 in Legacy mode (activated by pressing and holding “About” → OK button) can view external images in local storage directly without first loading them into its cache. The constraint is you can’t pinch-zoom the image beyond screen size. I also can’t workaround it by invoking another app from Tiddloid to view the images. I believe Tiddloid is using Android’s Webview to view html files so Chrome browser accessing images (above) doesn’t apply to Tiddloid.
PDF, unlike images, is not a native components of html. To view PDF, browsers need to have built-in PDF display capability or support invoking external PDF app. That vary among browsers and their versions, and still evolving. Tiddloid doesn’t support PDF as of now.
Apology if this is too much details. I kind of brain-dump what i know here while they are still refresh, as much for myself as for others. I certainly won’t recall them a few months down.
Thanks all for the information, it’s exactly what I was looking for. I did enable the Tiddloid Legacy mode, but it still did not show my external images. FWIW, I was doing this in a TiddlyWikiClassic. I did end up installing SimpleHTTPServer and it worked to display my external image.
I have the same problems to view external images. I tried to activate Legacy Mode by pressing the OK button long. Very long. There was no reaction nor feedback. After that, external images were still not shown.
How does it work to activate the Legacy Mode? Is there a diffent way to activate it?
I use Tiddloid 2.4.2, Android 9
I think Tiddloid was updated since, don’t need to do the OK button thing anymore. From Tiddloid’s FAQ:
I still want to add
Local (Legacy)wikis.
- Open “WebDAV / Local (Legacy)” and press the button on the top-left corner.
- Or Install a file manager designed for old versions of Android that opening files > by passing
file://URIs, open a HTML file, and chooseAdd to Tiddloid.- Or select some text containing
file://URI, pressShare→Add to Tiddloid.
To test viewing of external image, try copying an image file (rename it to have no space in the filename) in the same folder as your TW file and try <img src="imagefile.jpg" /> in text field of a new tiddler. This is the simplest , most straight forward test I can think of. If it doesn’t work, it likely won’t going to.
Correction: Edited <$img src to <img src.
Thanks for your reply.
I tried “WebDAV / Local (Legacy)”, but when pressing the button on the top-left corner an choosing the folder with my html file, Tiddloid crashes.
All trials with Add to Tiddloid weren’t successfull.
I have not encountered that before. On my Android 13, pressing that button shows a screen to request to “allow access to manage all files”. Maybe try an earlier version as you are using Android 9, or contact the author ?
I love the idea of Tiddloid, using TW like a native Android app, but didn’t use it only bcos I can’t pinch-zoom images to view details. Seeing your post reminds me that there is a handy Spotlight plugin (Spotlight: A Dream to Have a LightBox Gallery in Tiddlywiki - #23 by saqimtiaz). It sort of works in Tiddloid, using zooming buttons instead of pinch-zoom. I will have to explore that further. I would like to use Tiddloid too.
I love the idea of Tiddloid, using TW like a native Android app, but didn’t use it only bcos I can’t pinch-zoom images to view details.
Ok, I found a solution to my issue with Tiddloid’s image pinch-zooming. This seems to be the best place to share it.
When a TW is first opened in Tiddloid, pinch-zoom is disabled altogether, whether on the TW or images. I suppose this is intentional for Tiddloid to behave like a native app. Now return to Tiddloid’s TW selection screen and open a TW (could be the same TW). Pinch-zoom is now available for the entire TW after the second opening !
I guess what happened here is there are some web/css settings on the initial TW opening that are not performed for subsequent TW openings, causing Tiddloid to “misbehave” in exactly the way I wanted 
So, to the author of Tiddloid, please do not fix this “bug”, or if you do, please make provisions to enable pinch/zooming for images in TW. Thank you !
I realized a different solution to my problem. I moved the Tiddliwiki file as well as all images to the download-folder. There erverything works as expected; the images are displayed. But only, if I refer them as absloute path like file://android.com/… ; relative links don’t work.
Mmm, I think “file://…” requires the full URL. Does <img src="imagefile.jpg" /> not work ? The proper wikitext syntax are [img[..]],[ext[..]], <$image ...> etc with relative/absolute path. I use <img src="imagefile.jpg" /> as a test to ensure local images can definitely be shown.
But yes, it’s my experience as well that viewing local images from single file TW on mobile is dependent on many, many things: browser type, browser version, Android version, the mobile phone, where the images are stored, where TW is stored, how the TW is opened, etc. Just have to experiment to see what works for your setup.