The essential editions of TiddlyWiki

#1

In support of an Idea I just raised in Make TiddlyWiki your own - discussion - #16 by TW_Tones I see value in developing a small package of TiddlyWiki editions or solutions that will be of interest to most potential TiddlyWiki users. This also in responce to issues raised in this very popular thread How to stimulate User Growth of TW?

The idea is to motivate users to install Browser addons and/or Local Applications or even a Bob or WebDav solution.

So a small suite of very useful solution’s with broad appeal will help motivate people to install or configure their device to use tiddlywiki. This discussion is a call out to the community to suggest and where possible share what you think;

The essential editions of TiddlyWiki

Once we have a collection perhaps we will have a poll to find which are the top ideas.

  • These editions may already exist.

For example the following may have appealed to me when I first found tiddlywiki, or what I may have being looking for at the time.

  • Personal NoteBook: A Non-linear searchable Web Notebook in which you can store unlimited text and organise it with tags, trees, categories - in fact however you want.
    • A place to store links and content you can later reuse in blog, books websites and more later.
    • Private local storage without any need for online cloud services.
  • Personal Productivity: A tool for building quick personal or project based to do lists to Get anything done.
  • Documentation and training materials: A tool for building sharable interactive documentation or learning materials for yourself, school or further education and work.
  • Your Personal productivity Website: Publish a simple website on your computer to share with family, friends and colleagues on the Local Network.
  • Workflow development and Documentation provide guided How To instructions to people to do anything.
    • Include smart interactive and adaptive content
    • Easy to share by email or publish online

Please let us know what you think would be an Essential Edition of TiddlyWiki

or nominate an “Essential Edition” and tell us what you think it should include?

Remember essential means broadly applicable to users and somewhat “clear and simple” to use, so lets use the KISS - Keep It Simple Sweetheart - principle.

[Edited x 2] Other editions raised for consideration as Essentials

  • WYSIWYG editor edition, could share features in Personal NoteBook: edition
  • Zettelkasten edition
  • Personal Database edition
  • Slide shows and Presentation versions
  • Book publications such as TW Pub
  • Play and script Writing
  • Student and class notes for in class and review, including flash cards/repetition learning
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How to stimulate User Growth of TW?
Essential Editions: Personal Notebook edition - development and feedback
Make TiddlyWiki your own - discussion
Make TiddlyWiki your own - discussion
The "nut behind the wheel"
I am building an edition for the community - how do we handle this in Discourse
#2

More details on the Personal Notebook Edition

See here for the First draft of this Edited to direct visitors to Essential Editions: Personal Notebook edition - development and feedback

In many ways this is the “First” solution that comes to mind with tiddlywiki. I feel the freedom to create needs to remain open with this edition, it should perhaps Look a lot like TiddlyWiki.com and include features that are not too hard to use, ideally intuitive.

Features to include?

  • Table Of Contents with simple guidance and easy for users to extend.
  • Activate all relevant View and Page buttons
  • Install Menu bar and TiddlyWiki internals
  • Easy to use history and other features so no Tiddler is Lost
  • The ability and guidance to make use of categories, keywords and subjects in addition to tagging to organise information -
    • enhance standard search to include these.
    • Ability to review and query all of the organising information
  • Provide additional tag handling tools via the tag pill dropdown such as open/close all tagged
  • Breadcrumbs
  • Open tiddler tabs
  • Jump to tiddlers open in the story - menu bar dropdown
  • Adjust clone button to store “tiddler-source” in new button.
  • Provide a simple New tiddler template and creation tool
  • About button/menu describing this edition

Possible options

  • Activate code Mirror
  • Basic user interface customisation such as themes and dark mode etc…
Essential Editions: Personal Notebook edition - development and feedback
Preview request for comment - Link protocol handlers
#3

More details on the Personal Productivity: Edition;

Another very common use for TiddlyWiki is getting things done GTD. This can be a very personal thing but providing a preconfigured version with an emphasis on the ability to more any user content into other “GTD” tiddlywiki will also demonstrate the ease of interoperability and sharing content between wikis.

Features to include?

  • Journaling tools and extension’s
  • Projectify tasks and projects
    • Additional references and archive features provisioned
  • Streams and Streams Fusion for Rapid capture and live note taking
    • Extended to support stream items conversion to Projectify, todo, reference or project
  • Home tiddler and button set
  • Protocol handling links (will explain elsewhere)
  • Task clone tools

Possible options;

  • Activate Stories (2nd Column)?
  • Timer tools and calendar handling?
What makes me love Tiddlywiki
#4

Is this maybe the same thing as the digital Zettelkasten movement is describing? A commonplace book, personal knowledge management, a Zettelkasten. We should probably use these popular phrases if they fit.

In that case, @sobjornstad has a fine example in https://zettelkasten.sorenbjornstad.com

A crucial feature is backlinks.

Essential Editions: Personal Notebook edition - development and feedback
#5

Yes that would be a great Idea, I would ask @sobjornstad to publish a Zettelkasten edition and perhaps he could add features found in my Soon to be published Personal Notebook Edition, and I from his, however since I do not use the “Zettelkasten method” it’s best I do not.

  • A Key thing to remember is once a single file edition is built it also needs to be published, ideally along side a static HTML rendition, to increase its internet searchability.

Of course this can be taken further, but backlinks is a standard part of TiddlyWiki, as in many of the features found in other solutions. In fact tiddlywiki has so many features under the hood I am confident most people don’t use near enough of them. Often it is just looking behind the tiddler info button, or using a macro or plugin that “Surfaces” a feature with additional user Interface elements.

Essential Editions: Personal Notebook edition - development and feedback
#6

Other editions we may consider, somewhat based on those mentioned above;

  • Zettelkasten edition
  • Personal Database edition

Important features when publishing editions;

  • Online accessible with download or “Make it your own” button
    • Should also be hosted with static HTML content for search engines - ideally with links to the full version
    • Splash screen installed for slow Internet access - no white screen of death
  • Entry on TiddlyWiki.com and on Links.tiddlywiki.com and other reference aggregation sites
  • Provide contact information the author (Without obligations to respond) perhaps in talk.tiddlywiki.org

What other features do you think editions should include?

#7

I was planning to add “edition list” in the TidGi (and Tiddloid will have that too!) Technical specification in Choosing starting Template, a TW edition (wiki template) list API JSON example - #11 by linonetwo

But you know I am working on slate-write WYSIWYG editor recently so not working on this any more…

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#8

I would be interested in contributing to an edition designed to assist in producing documentation which has templates based on the Documentation Style Guide. Would be helpful for TW documentation.

The ultimate goal possibly the ability to create/customize template sets to implement differing documentation styles. Especially important in education as instructors have their own individual style preferences when it comes to paper assignments.

HTML rendering that is import friendly to document processors such as MS Word and Libre Writer would be needed as in some cases required for publication and distribution.

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#9

Great @poc2go do keep in mind if you export a tiddler to a static html file it can be imported to word. With a little work setting breaks open a tiddler in a new window then print to pdf also works well. Also there has being a lot of work done on tw pub. However I think documentation tools and publishing actual tiddlywikis offers the most interactive and media rich solutions.

#10

I have one: My TiddlyZettelKasten — Say something clever about it here

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#11

This is a proposal for producing a TiddlyWiki edition which assists the user in following documentation style guides. The TiddlyWiki Documentation Style Guide will be used to build a prototype of the edition. The prototype will be used to evaluate the scope, resources, specifications and feasibility of the project.

Purpose - we live in a world of documents.

The purpose of this edition is to write content once - and distribute in multiple styles.

There are documentation layout requirements imposed by employers, educators, and peers when submitting work. The layout is usually described in ‘guidelines’ which must be followed for the document to be accepted for review. Although guidelines normally are based on accepted standards, commonly these standards are adapted to meet the needs of the organization or audience.

Anyone that has had to submit a resume for a job knows how important following the expected guideline is paramount to lead to an interview.

In most cases the content of the document, regardless of the style, remains the same. TiddlyWiki allows content to be organized into discrete tiddlers thus allowing the same content to be reformatted to match style requirements of differing guidelines. By using ‘view templates’ (a fundamental mechanic implemented in TiddlyWiki) the author of the content can custom tailor a document’s style to target a specific audience based on the style guidelines of that audience.

Objectives …

(abrupt step on the brakes!)

Oh wait, I do not have the skill set required to produce this edition by myself grrr…

The ‘growth’ topic has inspired @TW_Tones to focus on, respond, and organize an ‘enough talking - let’s do!’. Good job community! Let’s follow his lead.

I am trying to respond to that call to arms and submit a possible project that I think would be handy to onboard new users/educators/students to promote TiddlyWiki. My idea may ‘die on the vine’; nothing ventured, nothing gained.

If interested in contributing to this project - even cheerleaders are helpful when things go sideways! - then please send me a message. If enough interest - will create a topic for discussion.

#12

FYI: I just updated the Personal Notebook Edition post above to link to my draft for this edition. It’s a continuing work in progress.

#13

How would a style guide you think about look like?

#14

Just as I/we are working on Make TiddlyWiki your own - discussion which would be an ideal inclusion in Wikis.

So would a generic guide for using tiddlywiki, just a basics of getting around. Some nice ones existed in the Past, but a sharable guide we collaborate on for inclusion in published wikis makes a lot of sense. Perhaps as a plugin so updates can be retrieved, and an extensible custom component for each editions designer to supplement.

  • Navigation
  • Creation
  • Organisation
  • WikiText or WYSIWYG

Here I would also like to nominate a WYSISWYG edition as discussed and in Progress by @linonetwo as for many new users to realise the value of Wiki Mark-up is is not the first thing they will do, with content people think of documents with rich text and WYSIWYG first. As a long as they can generate HTML and Edit in TiddlyWiki’s it stays true to what tiddlywiki seems to be.

A generic guide for using tiddlywiki?
#15

I have edited the last reply to include a link to a new discussion on A generic guide for using tiddlywiki? please contribute if you have ideas or content.

The idea is to make it for optional inclusion in any Wiki edition, especially the “Essential editions” raised here to help getting started.

Selective extraction from tiddlywiki.com and other resources is fine.

Essential Editions: Personal Notebook edition - development and feedback
#16

The style is from the organization that the document is to be submitted; college, instructor, forum, or publisher.

A common style difference is footnotes vs hyperlinks. If the writing is to be published on the web most publishers favor hyperlinks. When is an instructor or paper magazine they generally want footnotes. TiddlyWiki, from the same content can produce/export hyperlinks and/or footnotes by using templates. Saving on a lot of ‘style’ grind work when submitting to multiple publishers.

I don’t really have any style preference. I try to follow the style other people have submitted. This Discord has a more free style. When writing software instructions I tend to be more formal, terse and precise.

I question if warrants to being an edition or better served as a plugin?

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#17

Whenever a solution can be packaged as a bundle or plugin this is preferred especially is it can be added to any TiddlyWiki, because this allows the interchange of features and their application where ever needed.

  • Carful design helps and solution be applied when and where needed while allowing other solutions also.
  • Allowing tiddlers to be selectively/conditionally targeted or settings to be changed to alter appearance, operation or visibility helps with modularity and compatibility.

About Editions

However Editions make a lot of sense when developing a meta-solution that involves multiple customisations, plugins and macro’s. Basically we are talking about pre-packaged solutions where the install and configuration work is already done.

  • One way to identify when an “edition” is of use is when you are inclined to copy a whole wiki to start a new one.
  • Editions capture knowledge of multiple plugins and techniques to achieve particular results outside of any individual feature.
  • In my view the number of editions could be unlimited, however as per this thread “Essential editions” are a subset of possible editions that a lot of people would be interested in, and have a clear and well defined function.
  • Another approach that Editions offer we have not really explored is where a suite of features are packaged and the experienced user, or good internal documentation, allows the user of the edition to customise, remove from and add to their own copy.
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#18

I suggest adding to the list a “Tabletop” or “Dungeon Master” edition :slight_smile: That way players are also included.

#19

FYI: Links above updated to tyhe new Topic for a particular Edition Essential Editions: Personal Notebook edition - development and feedback

I hope to use this as an example of what is possible and call on the community for input.

#20

What if we give each Edition a custom plugin library of selected plugins/add ons?

  • What do you think?
  • What could we include in such a library?
  • How do we manage updates from the publisher?
  • Would they only be versions tested against the edition?

My First edition Personal Notebook has multiple libraries installed.