I was going to ask something, but now I'm not so sure

#1

Let me start with a “confession”. Many years ago, I used the Classic TiddlyWiki in a work context. I used it for about three months, and I was very impressed by its flexibility and ease of use. I don’t recall now why I gave it up. As the years have gone by, I decided to give it another try, in a home user context. Of course, I found that now we are at TiddlyWiki 5.

I started reading Grok TiddlyWiki and watched a few relevant videos on YouTube. I went through about two thirds of Grok TiddlyWiki but then I gave up, because it had become too complicated and difficult to understand how I could possibly use TiddlyWiki in practice. I then looked elsewhere and having read something about Obsidian as an alternative to TiddlyWiki I decided to try it. I think that it was seeing a demonstration of the graph view in Obsidian that attracted me to it. I spent a few months using Obsidian, but I was frustrated by the difficulty of doing customized searches, similarly to what had frustrated me with TiddlyWiki. I was also unsure about whether to customize Obsidian with folders or tags or a combination of the two. Overall, I could use Obsidian, but I felt that I would have to rely a lot on support from the Community for particular queries and other needs.

More recently I had a look at Logseq and I have been using it for a couple of months. Again, my biggest problem with it is about queries which I find are too complex to construct without specialized knowledge.

So, this brings me happily back to TiddlyWiki. I believe that the experience of using Obsidian and Logseq for a few months has taught me a lot about what my expectations should be, based on my level of knowledge.

I spent a few days trying to find tutorials and other resources about TiddlyWiki. There aren’t many on YouTube, but there are a few websites that have a lot of information about it. I’ve already started reading Grok TiddlyWiki again(!) and I’m determined to go through with it. I understand it better on second reading.

My biggest frustration and fear come from the fact that TiddlyWiki is extremely versatile. I know that based only on the resources that I have gathered I could literally spend weeks reading and learning and even then, I’ll have some doubts if I read enough about it.

My question to you then is, how long did it take you to conclude that you have learned enough about TiddlyWiki and have adjusted and adapted it to your needs in an optimal way for you?

#2

You deserve a bigger answer but in short I have and expect there will always more to learn because tiddlywiki intersects both posibilities and needs. I think the trick is learning how to start simple, use then enhance. Start a journey and evolve. This can be done because you totaly own your own solutions. I used extensive software expierence to realise tiddlywiki was worth my investment in as a tool set. I just committed to a journey which has side effects like learning about html and CSS. But always independant of third parties.

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#3

First, thanks for sharing the background story.

This is probably not the answer what you’re hoping for but: I never stop tweaking. BUT this is (1) because I like to tweak and experiment with TW and (2) because new needs arise for me. At least for my most important wikis.

BUT, if you don’t like to tweak and if your use case remains “static” in its needs then it is only a matter of setting it up and then you’re set. I mean, TW is usable out of the box so it could be really fast.

The more demands you have, the more time it’ll take to shape TW to meet them. If you change or add to your demands all the time, then… ain’t no end. AFAICT, the alternative would be something less flexible where you have to compromise on your demands.

Another aspect regarding when “one has learned enough”; TW uses HTML, CSS, JS and can interact with an unlimited number of other systems and contexts, so “learned enough” is not only a TW matter…

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#4

I think the trick is learning how to start simple, use then enhance. Start a journey and evolve.

This indeed is something that I’ve learned in my brief journey into this kind of software though maybe I’m a bit impatient.

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#5

I like to tweak too! In fact the more tweaking, the better. I’m always worried though if I have attained the best possible solution, whatever that may mean. That’s why I try to learn a lot about any software that I use, but I often become frustrated because I may not possess the technical knowledge to use it fully.

I should learn to enjoy the journey and hopefully I won’t be spending all my time tweaking the software, but I’ll put it to some actual use.

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#6

Almost everyone who uses Obsidian ends up using Dataview for searches. But Dataview isn’t part of the core. Which makes it a bit tenuous, IMHO. In Obsidian you could also structure things with links. You can do that with TW too (and Stroll does), but you’re heavily dependent on a 3rd party app, Relink, to maintain those links.

For TW, and searches, you just need to understand the List widget, and how to make a filter run using operators “search” and/or “regexp”. You could probably have those basics down in an afternoon.

There are 3rd party search engine tools, like context searches, that you can discover at links.tiddlywiki.org.

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#7

Thank you for your suggestions about searches in TiddlyWiki. I’ll pay particular attention to these.

For persons in my position, that is newcomers to TiddlyWiki (or other software) who are not very competent in programming aspects there are two questions in our mind: Do I know what there is to know about the program (fear of missing out)? Also, have I found the best solution to what i want to achieve?

Having said the above, I realize that I’m looking at it in the wrong way, but I can’t help it. I should first decide what it is that I want to achieve and then search for specific answers or solutions. The problem is that the more one reads about versatile programs like TiddlyWiki the more facts one finds about the program’s capabilities. It’s then that you say to yourself “Wow! I didn’t know I could do that with TiddlyWiki. What more could I do?” and then you start spending more time investigating more of the program’s features thus detracting from time that could be more productive if it were focused on actual note taking. It’s an obsession… :slight_smile:

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#8

For TiddlyWiki, this is worth it and necessary, but only if you have the right ways of saving and syncing it, otherwise you may abandon it again.

I’ve spent over a year researching TiddlyWiki, and I’ve created many small things, but ultimately most of them I didn’t end up using. But I’m still happy, because these experiments helped me understand TiddlyWiki further, allowing me to use it more efficiently now.

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#9

Wikster, Thanks for starting this thread.

Like you I was deep into tiddlywiki Classic (TW2), and when TW5 came I was not in a life place to invest in the upgrades to >10 TW2 setups of mine. I still used TW2 and it continued to work well enough but I did try a foray into Joplin for 2 years which was good but I kept feeling TW would be better. So at beginning of this year I invested the time and created a new TW5 template with tools I found useful for my needs. It took quite alot of time and I wondered if it was going to waste of so much of my time. I was re-enthused with the import of several old TW2 files with hundreds of tiddlers as a good process. Yes more tweaking for some code changes in tiddlers to work with TW5 but it was just running so smoothly. A few mistakes but I had aggressive backup protocols and any failure was overcome in minutes by just renaming last backup for the current TW5 I was working on.

This forum and TW Google group helped a lot.

It took very little time then to realize just how much it was far better for managing my needs and particularly the Projectify plugin for my GTD approach. I still have some more conversions of TW2 files to do but I have a pro-forma template that makes that relatively easy.

For me I expect to do more tweaking but for a while I try to focus on my actual GTD usage. Meanwhile I am subscribed to this forum and shunt all interesting queries into an email folder for working through when I have time.

The early investment to set up a pro-forma TW5 with GTD (Projectify) was quickly thoroughly justified and my life coping is so much better with;

  • a feeling of control of projects across my life,
  • ability to quickly review and prioritize tasks to suit daily needs,
  • far less fear of missing a due date or important elements of a task (I edit task notes when I have ideas or issues as they enter my mind or research),
  • a sense of success in each task resolved no matter how small it is in the greater project objectives,
  • a record of how I got tasks completed and notes on how problems were resolved for future reference when doing similar tasks (very useful for computer fixes and upgrades),
  • probably a lot more than the above but anyway I have a lot more feeling of coping capacity with my life and preparation for when external factors bring challenges for how I can deal with it.

Best of luck and life with using it and do it the way that suits you best. That is the over-riding power of TW over any other Task and Note taking software I have ever looked into.

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#10

I too began in the Classic days. I have been a continuous user since 2005 or so, but I took a while to upgrade to TW5.

I don’t think it makes sense to be anxious about whether one has taken full advantage of TiddlyWiki’s versatility; there’s an Alice-in-Wonderland rabbit-hole quality to the versatility (witness posts by @Siniy-Kit for mind-blowing ways of putting TW to use!).

Instead, I’d suggest getting your most important ongoing project up and running with a good-enough structure, and a storage setup that’s really workable for you. (In my case, it’s tiddlyhost for almost everything, whether it’s a public site or a personal one.) Then explore the additional depth when you have the motivation and attention needed to tinker with some frontier of possibility.

Like @seasamin, I have experienced tremendous relief since setting up a TW5 home-base for all the personal and household info and lists and reminders that are otherwise free-form bits. In my case, when I try to go full-on “systemic” GTD with it, I fall off the wagon (maintaining it becomes another thing-to-do, after all, and it’s healthy for me to have some screen-free days). But it’s superb for being the place where anything goes when I want not to lose it, and where I know I can add more dimensions of data and connectivity on the fly over time.

No matter how much I pack in (with the notable exception of non-trivial images, which behave better if not imported), the presence of the trivial or fun or half-built never gets in the way of focusing on whatever needs to be in the story river on a given day. It makes me think of the Dungeons & Dragons equipment, the “Bag of Holding” Also the Tardis from Doctor Who. It’s bigger on the inside. :wink:

Many of my uses are teaching-related, and they grow organically. There’s no way I could have envisioned, at the outset, how my little hub of teaching notes could have evolved into a vast many-dimensional resource (notes, quizzes, tips, models, PDFs, glossary, schedules, custom-individual feedback) with a totally different “front door” for myself and for each student (enabled by ReadOnly plugin, plus custom permaview iframes for each student accessing via campus LMS (moodle)).

I didn’t need to know, at the beginning, what the “final” result would look like, because the process of discovery continues to take place in tandem with the time I’ve taken to build and tinker, to find solutions and ask questions here, to try plugins, etc.

I hope you’ll feel the path opening nicely in front of you!

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#11

It’s very reassuring and comforting for me to read how long-time users @seasamin and @Springer use their TW. I feel that by returning to TW I am completing a circle. By trying other software along the way to reach this position I learned a few things and not all of them were technical. Now I’m more confident and committed to settle with TW.

#12

I often come here searching for answers, but seldom “ask” anymore since I fear the responses will be far too “advanced” for my understanding. Often I don’t really know what to ask.

Yes, and in my case comprehended, right? I can almost say I’ve learned enough but I know there are things I could do better, easier, IF only I had a better grasp of wikitext-coding-syntax.

Trying to use TW-com as a learning resource is frustrating to the point of tears — it’s a horrible mess, dare I say an example of a Wiki done badly. It’s not easy to follow a concept to a satisfactory conclusion, and half the examples I’ve copied from TW-com haven’t worked for me.

Someone once suggested that I didn’t have to know how something works to use it… but when it doesn’t work I need to understand the syntax. Picking out the parts and fiddling is very hit and miss. It would be wonderful if TW had syntax highlighting!

Does it have to be “a trick”?

I’ve been using TW since October 22… maybe not long enough? I know HTML and CSS, so Wikitext formatting no problem. But figuring out the syntax < << <{...}> and how all the bits should work together is very hard going.

Out of the box TW is pretty good… I love tags and the flowy interface but it’s kinda clunky until you learn to use widgets — coding knowhow that’s not intuitive for everyone (me). BUT I’m very pleased with my setup — it’s rudimentary and works. I’m a couple of tricks away from saying “this is all I need”.

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#13

This will be always be an issue between breadth vs. depth users, even coming in with a bit of tech background, because latter group will always be far down the rabbit hole. On a different planet as it were. I almost go mental when asking what though a very clear question and it ghosted with some seemingly irrelevant tangent or answered in way that hazmat suit needs to be donned to extricate pertinent information. Just nature of the beast!..

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#14
  • perhaps you have not noticed but we do invite questions of any level, and we will help you in this forum. Everyone starts without knowledge. Unlike many other forums you can just ask a question rather than be told first to search (though that may help).

I know it is different to other forums, let us know your level of understanding and we can adjust our advice for your understanding level.

A skill that is worth developing however is learning how to ask questions, but this skill can be used in any part of life, try and ask a question with examples, keep it simple, share a simple case on a tiddlyhost wiki etc…

  • If you ask a big question, it can take a lot of effort to answer, and not everyone has the time. It is easier to ask smaller question more often, and smaller answers often answer your next question, before you ask it.

The trick here, is letting go of the natural human desire to understand it all, right away. TiddlyWikis capabilities are so large we would need Spock and a “mind meld” but it is not presently an option. This is a trick we all need to learn, it’s not a magicians trick.

In closing

This community appreciates naive questions, silly questions and misunderstanding or the miss reading because it informs us where we can do better.

This all comes to me as the result of being an active participant for more than 10years, please take my word.

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#15

I think the best way to ask something is a plain text description (no code) of what you want to achieve. Some examples how your current tiddler structure looks like. Plugins that are used.

IMO this gives others enough info to make educated suggestions for improvements.

-m

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#16

This discussion has helped me a lot as a new user and learner of TiddlyWiki. I decided on a plan of action.

I’m going to continue reading and doing the exercises in Grok Tiddlywiki, but I know from past experience that not everything will be easy to comprehend. However, at least I’ll have a broad idea about TiddlyWiki’s features and capabilities, and I’ll return to Grok TW in future if I have to do a deep dive into a specific matter.

I’ll need a Journal template, because I find it useful to start my day with journal entries where I record things to do, thoughts about my day etc.

The next step will be to investigate and if necessary install a few plugins. I’ve already come across a few possibly useful plugins including Stroll and TiddlyMap. I’m going to need something about task management, nothing too complicated, but something that will help me with repeating tasks, for example things that I have to do monthly. Projectify looks quite good.

The final stage will be a gradual transfer of my current data from Logseq. I don’t have much to transfer, but it’s something that has to be done.

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#17

There are some plugins that many of us see as “auto-includes”. I suspect pretty much everyone would agree about Relink (so that if you rename a tiddler, links to the old name can be modified to “follow” along with the renaming). My sense is that many of us would like to see this functionality in the core.

For me, several plugins by @Mohammad are also auto-includes, including Shiraz, Tiddler Commander, and Utility. For me these are auto-includes because they reduce the labor required to build and troubleshoot any project, and none of these — at least “out of the box” — impose new or distracting changes from vanilla TW, beyond the small buttons or submenus that open up their possibilities.

-Springer

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#18

Thank you! I’ll add them to my list of plugins to install.