So I just lost a month's info cause I thought timimi was working when it wasn't

Got a new computer a month ago. I’ve been using timimi in firefox as a saver for forever.

I forgot to reinstall the timimi plugin when I copied everything to my new computer. I’ve been typing stuff into my tiddlywiki, hitting the save button, it looks like it saves, I happily close the tw, nothing happened, what I put in there is gone.

It was mostly just journal entries of one kind or another, so I didn’t go back and look and notice they weren’t saved.

This is not catastrophic but is a real bummer, I thought I’d post this as a warning.

I did open an issue on the timimi github too.

I don’t know if the limitations of interacting with the filesystem via a browser plugin make this an unsolvable problem or not.

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Timimi uses an browser extension AND a small bit of code that runs on your computer. If you don’t have those bits installed … then you haven’t installed timimi at all.

What I can’t figure out is how you went a whole month without noticing. But if it’s been saying “saved” then all your data has probably been saved as snapshots in your downloads directory.

So if you check your download directory you might see something like:

myfile (1).html
myfile (2).html
... etc. ...
myfiled (24).html

You can drag and drop those snapshots into your current working TW file, import, and recoup your lost data.

I may have been unclear in how I phrased that. The browser extension ended up reinstalled along with all my other plugins when my Firefox profile came over through Firefox Sync.

The bit that you install via the command line did not come over because I forgot to download and re-run the command line installer on my new machine. So I had half of Timimi installed – just the browser extension, not the native utility.

What I can’t figure out is how you went a whole month without noticing.

Like I said, it was mostly just journal entries. I’d open the wiki, write the journal entry, close it, save the wiki, and assume it was still there. The vast majority of this very large wiki was still there, and I don’t usually pop open and re-read journal entries I’ve recently saved.

But if it’s been saying “saved” then all your data has probably been saved as snapshots in your downloads directory.

That would be nice, but sadly it has not. My downloads directory is small and clean and lacking in tiddlywiki files. That would have told me something was wrong, in any case, and as you say, would have saved all the entries (in a series of files which was a copy of the wiki with one additional entry per save.)

What really surprised me was that Timimi went through the motions of saving, nothing saved, and there was no error message. I would have expected some kind of error message.

Maybe there is something about my peculiar situation, with the browser extension reinstalled automatically thru Firefox Sync, and the native extension installer not run on the new machine, that caused this all to happen with no error message.

I appreciate the warning… it’s too easy to forget little steps like that.

In a not too similar vein, I recently got into a scramble when I hadn’t noticed an editing session, from days earlier, still open in a collapsed browser window. Very fortunately I had recent backup to extHDD, since the 7-file Timimi backup didn’t capture the changes and new tiddlers.

Is there a way to have Timimi ring alarm bells when you have 2 sessions/windows open?

I feel for you. Perhaps Timimi could have a feature so ask over here but I think you did.

  • Hindsight is 20/20 they say, but you only needed to test it once in your new browser
  • Always test on install, the whole thing, the rest of the time just check occasionally.

I have also seen Timimi fails in browser if it tries to save some tiddlywiki’s, then all wikis, with extra characters on the URL, and you have to restart the browser. Also sometimes the saver that works by default fails and I use this download button;

download-wiki-with-changes.json (1.7 KB)

But try this, which packages as a bookmarklet you can click to install or drag the link to your bookmarks to click and install on any wiki later.

Download wiki with changes.json (3.4 KB)

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Make sure you test what I gave you before you rely on it :nerd_face:

Hey thanks! The bookmarklet isn’t doing anything for me in Firefox, but the button works great! Adding it to my wiki.

Is it maybe an idea to replace the standard popup “Saved wiki” by something more like “Saving…” ?

The text Saving and the three dots shows the user that the wiki is not saved instantly.

The browser takes time to download large(r) wiki files, even after the message “Saved wiki” appears.

The dots also suggest a dialog might appear. e.g. When you use local single file wiki without any plugins you have to supply a new filename even after the popup “Saved wiki/Saving…”

It also reminds us (and noobs) to check if the wiki is really stored when we are using another/new browser/computer.

In case there are saving issues you can use the “emergency export” to make a copy of your recent tiddlers in json format (BTW according to tiddlywiki.com this is not supported by ios devices, I think a wiki-tag is missing, because the emergency export is universally supported)

The question mark at the end of my suggestion is not part of my proposal, but maybe it should, for first time users.:slight_smile:

I already changed it in many of my wiki’s by changing the contents of tiddler: $:/language/Notifications/Save/Done
(done suggests this message appears after securing the wiki’s data, this is probably the reason why the current popup-text is what it is)

WimM