BACKGROUND:
I’m finally getting around to testing the powerful ExternalContent Plugin offered by @saqimtiaz here:
https://saqimtiaz.github.io/tw5-plugins-sandbox/#ExternalContent
This is a great tool for at least two reasons (in my case):
- to minimize redundant storage and bandwidth demands.
- to have a single authoritative source for, say, my bibliographic records and glossary definitions
** The alternative (which is my current workflow) is having duplicate tiddlers housed in wikis that I serve up to different audiences — where inevitably corrections end up getting made in one location that then need to be replicated across all doppelganger tiddlers.
For both of these reasons, the receiving / client wiki should not save (make its own copies of) the external tiddlers.
(Of course, when I do have any correction to make, this solution will force me to load the source / master wiki each time, which is fine — or to make the edit locally, and then drag the corrected tiddler over before the end of my editing session. To avoid confusion, I may just add css to hide the edit buttons on the external tidders, so that I’m disciplined to edit only at the source wiki.)
In my brief trials so far, the loading process went smoothly (one can load things at startup, or load on demand with an action-specific button — the latter being super for testing!). This is really a fantastic plugin!
PROBLEM:
The save process is not behaving as expected… I wonder whether there’s something specific to TiddlyHost that would make a difference? I followed Saq’s advice (in the plugin documation) to set the tiddler $:/publishFilter
to add this condition:
-[is_volatile[yes]]
However, the external tiddlers are still saving. They also remain marked as is_volatile[yes]
— but the fact is that edits to those tiddlers —made in the client wiki — are being retained on save, and a fresh load is not wiping the slate clean as it should.
I have also tried modifying the shadow $:/config/SaverFilter to exclude these tiddlers, in two different ways:
-[is_volatile[yes]] -[externalTiddler[yes]]
You can see my setup documented here at my quick-demo site:
Of course, none of you can’t actually replicate the unwanted save behavior (since you are not logged in as me). But perhaps someone can poke around and make a guess or two about what’s going wrong.
Many thanks!