Last request of 2022 (?)

#1

Hi everyone

I didn’t make it a New Year’s resolution, but I am going to try to settle down and USE TiddlyWiki more, and not TINKER with TiddlyWiki this year / anymore. I have everything I would ever want for my notetaking process for me. I made some breakthroughs over Christmas break, and wow, everything clicked together. Thanks be to God, and to all you helpful souls here.

I only have one request, and if I get it, I think I will also finally arrive at the vision I have had for a long time for the notes I publish in Spanish. See below.

As a personal note, I have been tinkering with TiddlyWiki solutions for so many years it feels like an obsessive mental disorder. I sometimes wonder if I would have been more productive with my life just working with MS Word or Dynalist or a vanilla TW and pumping out pdfs. But I have felt compelled because of visions in my mind of ideal workflows. The TiddlyWiki goodies weren’t advanced enough yet. My abilities weren’t advanced enough yet. But now everything seems to be clicking.

The main reasons for vacilation and changing my mind so much over the years are these:

  1. In my Spanish materials, I wanted something I could turn into a printed course packet, yet I also wanted to take advantage of the cool things that can be done in a hosted TiddlyWiki. These goals conflicted with each other. Also, statics are less confusing, and load faster, and these characteristics are good for my target audience, but on the other hand statics lose too much functionality. It has been frustrating navigating these options. The losses are real no matter what decision I take.

  2. For my own notes in English, I have had a longstanding internal debate:

  • Should I take notes in a tiddler for a chapter or book, then somehow move the ideas into tiddlers for the multitudes of topics I like to track?
  • Or should I take notes directly into topic tiddlers? (which saves a step or two, but requires me to either open or create a topic for every single note)
  • Or should I create a tiddler for each note, and somehow have it appear under both the tiddler for the source and the tiddler for the topic(s)?

Each tactic has its pros and cons, and I bounced between them. Complicating things was the need to create a hierarchy for the topics, since some need to be grouped on multiple levels. There are different ways to do this, each with its pros and cons.

I don’t think this years-long quest was wasted time on my part. I made some interesting new tools for me, some of which have been adopted by others. I documented some of the solutions at my documenting.tw site and I have seen a few people link to that. I have learned a lot. I can now quickly do things that a year or two ago would have seemed impossible for me. And I have seen the kindness and patience of all of you, providing key components generously. Thank you.

That said, there is the one last request I wrote about. It is:

  1. An editor toolbar wrap button, to combine three steps I know how to do, into one step.
  2. I want to be able to use this ‘wrap’ button to paste <<strex content:"" id:"">>.
  3. I would like, in the quotes for the id parameter, the current date and time in this format: YYYY-0MM-0DD-0hh:0mm:0ss
  4. I would like, in the quotes for the content parameter, the current text of the tiddler ‘$:/.giffmex/Current.source.text’, as text. e.g., Index, a history of the (Duncan). I.e., I don’t want solutions that transclude that tiddler, since its contents will change each time I take notes on a different source. And it needs to be done in a way that I can manually add the page number in that book after using the button to paste all this.

So, the output of the editor toolbar button would be something like this: <<strex content:"Index, a history of (Duncan)" id:"2022-01-03-08:42:38">>. And then I would manually add the page number at the end of the content parameter. This would allow me to use the TextStretch plugin as an inline footnoting system.

I know how to do each of these things as three separate buttons, and in fact I created the three buttons to do it as a three step process. But I don’t know how to combine them into one button action. Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

I may run into a pinch here and there, but I think if I can get this solution, I can shift gears this year and use TiddlyWiki for great things. After many years, the vision in my head finally is coming together.

As a thank you, I plan to do two videos, one of my English note-taking process, and one of my Spanish publishing process, once I have refined things and have used them both long enough to make sure I am not overlooking something. For people who don’t use TW, the videos will hopefully be entincing windows into some things that can be done in TW. For the typical developers and power users here, they will hopefully spark ideas that lead to more of your own endless generativity.

Sorry if this post is overly personal or long, but at the start of a new year, it felt like a good time to sum things up, explain my years of strange behavior, and justify yet another request on my part. Blessings to each of you in 2022!

5 Likes
#2

This is similar to: An Editor Toolbar Button to Insert User Signature with Timestamp

Your code would look like:

\define mytext() <<strex content:"$(mycontent)$" id:"$(myid)$">>
<$vars 
  mycontent={{{ [[$:/status/UserName]get[text]else[Anonymous]] }}}
  myid=<<now "YYYY-0MM-0DD-0hh:0mm:0ss">>
>
<$action-sendmessage
	$message="tm-edit-text-operation"
	$param="insert-text"
	text=<<mytext>>
/>
</$vars>

The trick is to:

  1. create your /define macro using $(name)$ substitution
  2. defined the $(name)$ values using $set
  3. insert the now substituted values into your edit-text.

My noob $0.02 :slight_smile:
Jeff

#3

Oh - don’t forgat to chage the $:/status/UserName to your file - $:/.giffmex/Current.source.text

#4

Hi Jaguart

This is very helpful! Thank you. I am going to have to study up on vars. That is just what I needed. And studying the snippet helps me see how to do other similar things that might come in handy. Blessings!

2 Likes
#5

Ciao @DaveGifford, actually I love and appreciate this kind of “personal story” post. I think they are very informative. In particular your post neatly outlines why you use TiddlyWiki and your “journey” using it to achieve real aims. This helps users, especially longer term users, better grasp the nettle.

I have little I can practically help with on your Last Request Of 2022 though know you will do what you need anyway. Patience and persistence are definitely two of your virtues. As is your lovely dog.

TT

#6

@TT

jaguart covered the request part. Thanks for your kind words on the personal sharing part. Blessings to you in 2022. And on your winged cat - is that a new image?

#7

The winged cat could be used if we Get Redbull to sponsor tiddlywiki :nerd_face:

2 Likes
#8

No. It is what I have used on Twitter a long time. Actually the first version was made for me by @jeremyruston and @telmiger later tweaked it a bit, when the AVI’s went circular there, to keep the tail intact. :smiley:

3 Likes