Multi-Column Layout / Storyview

May I suggest some kind of a navigation bar for each column as illustrated below? It doesn’t have to be necessary, maybe users can opt to use it or not.

1 Like

Hi @Sparrow

I think this would become cluttered if there are many tiddlers open in a single story river
Maybe a dropdown?

3 Likes

That’s an even better idea.

@BurningTreeC

A graphical ‘glitch’ happens, i.e. the excise prompt gets '“cut”, when I try to excise contents of a tiddler. This happens when there are two columns. See picture below

Also, one workaround the problem is to expand the width of the column containing the tiddler one wants to excise the contents of:

Can you also possibly look into adding the save/file changes indicator as seen from the picture below? The reason I’m asking is that I sometimes forget to save my tiddlywiki file when I use the plugin. Also, it is cumbersome to expand the sidebar just to see if there is/are new tiddler modification(s)/addition(s).

Hello @Sparrow

Columns don’t overflow in x direction and that’s the problem here

I’ll see if I can fix that by making them overflow auto

Yes, good idea @Sparrow

I’ll add that

1 Like

Hi @Sparrow

  • The columns now overflow in x-direction if there’s content that makes them overflow
  • I’ve added the save-wiki button to the bottom right panel
2 Likes

Cool. Thanks @BurningTreeC

@BurningTreeC I tried deleting the the plug in and re-installing it. Still the configuration option remained as limited as in the demo wiki. I even tried to add the tag $:/tags/MultiColumn/Config manually using Commander plug in. Still it was not working. But it worked on a empty fresh wiki. What to do now?

@arunnbabu81

You need to delete the config tiddlers, not the plugin

Anyways I rebuilt my wiki using a fresh copy of the MCL and CM6 plug ins.

Now I want to create a keyboard shortcut to toggle the user sidepanel.

I tried to create a button which can do this.

<$list filter="[$:/state/user-panel/visibility]match[no]]">
<$button class=<<tv-config-toolbar-class>> >
 <$action-setfield $tiddler="$:/state/user-panel/visibility" text="yes" />
 <$action-setfield $tiddler="$:/state/sidebar-focussed-tab--383080953" />
{{$:/images/svg-icon/home-question}}
</$button>
</$list>

<$list filter="[$:/state/user-panel/visibility]match[yes]]">
<$button class=<<tv-config-toolbar-class>> >
 <$action-setfield $tiddler="$:/state/user-panel/visibility" text="no" />
 <$action-setfield $tiddler="$:/state/sidebar-focussed-tab--383080953" />
{{$:/images/svg-icon/home-question}}
</$button>
</$list>

I tried to reproduce it to the keyboard shortcut like this

<$list filter="[$:/state/user-panel/visibility]match[no]]">
 <$action-setfield $tiddler="$:/state/user-panel/visibility" text="yes" />
 <$action-setfield $tiddler="$:/state/sidebar-focussed-tab--383080953" />
</$list>

<$list filter="[$:/state/user-panel/visibility]match[yes]]">
 <$action-setfield $tiddler="$:/state/user-panel/visibility" text="no" />
 <$action-setfield $tiddler="$:/state/sidebar-focussed-tab--383080953" />
</$list>

With this shortcut I can close the side-panel, but side-panel doesn’t open with this shortcut. Can you help @BurningTreeC

Hi @arunnbabu81

there already are keyboard shortcuts to open and close the panels

alt-shift-s and alt-shift-u

2 Likes

wow…I missed it. That is so useful. thank you @BurningTreeC

@BurningTreeC
Instead of text widget can a link widget be used to display the river header ? This is my failed attempt to implement this.

Also I tried to add a dropdown button showing the story list in each column.

But dropdown appears to be hidden. How to correct these ?

Hello @BurningTreeC, thank you very much for this amazing plugin. It has eliminated four plugins for me - most sidebar related because TW doesn’t support multiple columns.

As you requested ideas, I have some feature requests:

  1. To either disable or turn off the animation for the wiki title when bringing up the sidebar.
    If you wish to give it a further polish: the wiki title is not currently aligned with the top panel options when those are enabled.
  2. To be able to show the column on the top river panel when that is active.
  3. It would be fantastic if the sidebar tab ‘Open’ could show what is in which numbered column similar to Stroll (which is limited to left/right column).
  4. For a ‘minimum columns’ feature. I like to turn on automatic column closure but it would be nice to always have two columns available at all times.

Further on my 3rd suggestion, I think Horizontal View doesn’t work yet? It is not a feature I am personally interested in, but just highlighting that it can lead to strange behaviour when Horizontal view is enabled.

Finally, this is outside the scope of the program itself but it would be amazing if Tobias Beer’s Preview would work.

1 Like

Hello @yan and welcome to the community :slight_smile: !

Thank you for your ideas and feature requests, I’ll try to answer them one by one:

I can turn off the animation, yes.
About the alignment: that’s a little bit brittle. There can be more top bars or none. It won’t ever be aligned correctly.

Yes, that can be done. I don’t know if I should color the top river panel or if I should make its border stronger… I’ll play around with it

You mean that it shows every column?

Ah yes, I understand that feature request. But I don’t know if I can make it possible that easily as I started from the beginning with 1 column as the minimum amount…
I’ll think about this.

What doesn’t work in horizontal view? I must admit that I also don’t use it often, but I thought it would work. :grin:
If you can describe the strange behavior, that would be a lot of help.

Hmmm… I’ll need to look into the plugin itself and see what makes it not to work with MCL. I’ll report back.

Thank you,
Simon

Thank you for your reply!

That’s fantastic thanks. I mostly notice it as it extends the time it takes for the sidebar to go away once closed.

Apologies, I missed a word. I meant to say the column number (which I have enabled for the sidebar also). With that said, I appreciate any solution you come up with will be more imaginative than mine!

Yes, currently it shows a list of all the tiddlers on the specific column.

Ideally I would prefer it shows each column and its tiddlers in ToC style, e.g.

  • 1:
    • Worklist
    • Example Tiddler
  • 2:
    • Kemet
    • scratchpad

In both Firefox and Chrome, it doesn’t seem to do anything. The layout remains vertical for me.

It was strange when I experimented with it yesterday. I think it’s because I was changing the window size a lot. You would sometimes get columns covered etc, but I cannot reproduce it today.

Of course I am a typical TiddlyWiki user and have 20 plugins installed at any one time. :smiley: But apart from the fact that stories remain vertical, at least it doesn’t lead to odd glitches anymore!

Also following up on the Preview plugin, I realise now it was because my column could be too narrow at times. I have a lot of buttons at the top so when the preview is trying to appear, it will move the title out of the way and therefore move everything down very slightly. It is more of a me problem, sorry to take up your time with it @BurningTreeC. It is one I think you will appreciate yourself though for personal use. :slightly_smiling_face:

Edit: okay, sometimes. It seems the popup can appear below the columns now and then, which makes it impossible to see.

One more follow-up, to argue against myself

While it would be nice to list them there, the independent columns of the Multi-Column Layout are likely a feature for many people. If you hit ‘Close other tiddlers’ for example, it will only close tiddlers in that column.

I’d only really want a full list of open tiddlers I could easily jump to, but I realise now it likely isn’t straightforward while keeping independent columns (which are a useful feature).