Offline TiddlyWiki as Universal Config App Target

#1

I think mostly this is summed up to deal with the idea of enhancing TiddlyWiki or Tiddly Desktop to be able to serve in a capacity to configure hardware peripherals through cross platform web interfaces built with custom TiddlyWikis with individual TiddlyWiki plugins.

The largest version of this idea would be for the core developers to charge a small fee to develop these web interfaces for companies who create these peripherals, of which there are many to market to.

Because TiddlyWiki can be portable, then these configurations could be stored and transferred across platforms, consistently, longterm. Enticing.

A company could distribute a plugin, or a specific TiddlyWiki, with their plugin. This way, the plugins could be included and compiled into collections as users see fit, as long as they weren’t themed too uniquely.

The more participants, the merrier. If TiddlyWiki can build more and more clients to make it an attraction. Users being able to store these plugins in a collections could also be a marketing thing to these companies. These little obscure programs are awkward to keep track of individually, and they frequently only work on one particular Windows version.

(Now, I’m a Linux freak, so that’s a big aspect of this for me.)

There are many, many things you look at online that have these little configuration programs, and they’re mostly very utilitarian. They don’t need a lot of frills, and in fact it might actually be beneficial if they are similar in some ways. TiddlyWiki could market itself as a quicker way to create these configuration utilities if they made sure there was the right avenue to system access to do so cross-platform.

Smaller Idea Version

Some form of this idea can already be done by creating plugins that work for hardware peripherals that use configuration files. There are keyboards and mice and game controller devices and programs that implement portable config files.

TiddlyWiki interfaces could be used to create and modify these configs for other programs utilizing images and options to create the configs. (although these might not be worth charging for generally.)

Other configs

The idea could also be expanded to store and maintain configs for more complex configs for software like web browsers, browser-specific bookmark formats, and anything else that uses rule-based configs.

Exporting File Formats

Although it’s not too difficult to modify exported tid files, it would be great if TiddlyWiki could export to any particular chosen file extension. Now, maybe there’s a way to do this, and I don’t know, but it’s worth mentioning.

Suggestion

Anyway, it’s just a thought. I know a lot of these devices that you shop for have these little programs that only work on Windows, and it’s very frustrating. It might be a matter of marketing the idea as TiddlyWiki being offline and portable, and easier to develop than full JavaScript application from scratch, and cross platform through Tiddly Desktop’s NW.js foundation.

It’s really up to the core devs “in the know” about the hardware technicals on Linux/Mac/Window implementations. These products have different technical nuances etc.

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#2

@wattahay Thanks for sharing this idea with the community and I think it has " a lot of merit", I worked on something similar years ago not for direct config but for documentation. I don’t recall how hard I tried but I did not manage to raise a large enough community to make much progress.

I few notes to build on your idea;

Its trivial to add a single html file on a wide range of devices that have some computing involved such as phones, routers, media equipment etc… Remember though those devices need only share the file and the user need only load that file into a browser, then a lot of the smarts are realised in that browser. That is the device itself need not have a browser/server built in however if they do you are more likely to be able to manipulate the config on the device.

  • This is why I went to including documentation and resources on the “device wikis” and It also means I could “connect a USB Thumb drive to any device”, then using an OTG Cable on a phone tablet open the wiki for that device.
    • On some routers I could plug it in and access it from the network
  • I bought a Subaru Outback and put all the manuals on a USB device that sits in my car until today.
  • As you can see from the above, the key is the ability for such a wiki to read (trivial) and write (more complex with security issues) so I think we need to start with devices that have these facilities we can call API’s or remote management.

I suspect a simplified layout with less demands on user knowledge will help here

I think these are more achievable and a great place to start but they may need to be installed on the host side like TiddlyDesktop/TWexe and the hta file to have local file access

yes this is already possible, start by looking at custom exporters.

This may be true but it is amazing what a little hacking can do, see my real world example, my smart router.

My smart router

My smart router which was for broadband also had USB file sharing, Cellular network backup and sophisticated protocol and firewall options, it did not have searchable menus, bad design decisions meant it was often hard to find something, I knew was there on returning to the device website after a few months of longer.

Once you log into the device web interface I discovered most of the config changes and menu links were simple html. I discovered as long as I was logged in to the device I could copy these links and config items into an independent wiki and clicking them would open the desire page or set the config item.

So with this information I was able to build a whole new interface into the Smart router, make my options searchable add additional keywords, and direct to the appropriate page deep in the devices menus and on the whole even make active config changes. However it was just as easy to navigate to the correct place on the devices own webpages and make the config changes. I even harvested hacks and generic documentation from the internet and included it in my wiki, it became a curated meta resource for the device.

I hope this information inspires you further.

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