The toolbar misses format-text buttons -- to make paragraphs stand out

[JuanPalomo]

Sorry if it has already been commented on in any of the previous answers, I haven’t been able to read them all…
Apart from the issue of how TiddlyWiki is promoted on its website, I think it’s important, and I say this as a user for a few years at a basic level, I think it’s important to improve the editing bar for tiddlers.

Although someone with enough knowledge can do incredible things with TiddlyWiki, those of us with very little programming level, or little time to find and understand how to do certain things, have enough problems to do certain things and I don’t think I’m wrong in that many users after a few attempts end up leaving it for other alternatives that have more tools and much clearer handling.

In the editing bar, for example, I miss the existence of icons to tabulate the text, highlight the color of a selected paragraph, or change the color of the text. All this without having to search the help or the forums how to do it.

I think that, although not all, some tools such as those provided by the Shiraz plugin and others like it should be included to make content creation much easier and more beautiful for less experienced users. For people with more time, experience or desire to experiment, the rest of Tiddlywiki’s enormous potential will always be at their fingertips.

It is my humble opinion.

All the best.

[Mark_S]

@JuanPalomo

In the editing bar, for example, I miss the existence of icons to tabulate the text, highlight the color of a selected paragraph, or change the color of the text. All this without having to search the help or the forums how to do it.

These aren’t features of most mark-down languages. They can be done in TW using HTML. But that results in text that looks more like HTML. So it’s a trade-off between final results and simplicity of entry. Probably the full answer would be an official WYSIWIG plugin.

[Charlie_Veniot]

I’ve seen products that, as part of documentation, provide “recipes” on how to do customize a product.

That would be good, but not easy to do without simple processes and supporting tools to get a community contributing to that effort.

Short of that…

TiddlyWiki Editions

It would be good to have a few editions of TiddlyWiki that provide various starting points for the various directions folk might want to take TiddlyWiki. We have the absolutely necessary “empty canvas” that we have now, and then we could have others.

However, the problem this introduces is yet another layer of choices to be made, so adding to starting out complexity. That could be handled by a series of questions that lead a user to what seems like the right choice(s). A bit like the “Choice Wizard” at Wikimatrix.com

[Justin_H]

@Charlie_Veniot

TiddlyWiki Editions

It would be good to have a few editions of TiddlyWiki that provide various starting points for the various directions folk might want to take TiddlyWiki. We have the absolutely necessary “empty canvas” that we have now, and then we could have others.

I’d like to piggyback off this and say that a lot of projects already made by the community would make for perfect starting places, with maybe one or two minor adjusts on case by case basis.

We have wonderfully made TW for teachers, writers, d&d players, researchers, bloggers, and even more.
If we can create uniform guidelines for documenting how each works, basic demonstration videos of how to use them, and have each be easily accessible from the main website, it would greatly improve the availability of them all for new and familiar users.

One of the bigger hurtles imo is how there are some fantastic creations that are only known by word of mouth or occassionaly spoken about, usually found by it being mentioned in a TW thread or by chance when browsing through things made by its creator.

I’d still like to return to my idea of a community TiddlyWiki YouTube channel having playlists like “TiddlyWiki Tricks & Tips”, “Community Showcase” etc, it could bring a good bit more attention to TW as a whole.

Something I’ve started to notice is TiddlyWiki projects are going in the same direction as Linux distributions, where they try to carve out their own paths, rather than improve upon its foundation, but that’s just my surface level analysis, so take it with a grain of salt, because it’s just food for thought. (Hopefully I didn’t stray too far off topic there)

[Charlie_Veniot]

@Justin_H

We have wonderfully made TW for teachers, writers, d&d players, researchers, bloggers, and even more.

That’s the kind of list that ought to be very visible, in my mind to be found in a “proper” (in quotes because I’m sure that is wildly subjective) Portal website.

Now where is this list, and if there isn’t one, should I be setting up a Google Form to collaboratively get such a list together?

[Justin_H]

I was thinking either showcasing them on a youtube channel or maybe having options to choose your archetype, like how we choose which browsers or os we use when picking tiddlywiki from the main site.

using google groups wouldn’t be ideal from TW considering we’ve moved here, and newcomers would probably want to see how the editions are used firsthand rather than seeing a list of links.

Edit: we do technically have a list of links per the links.tiddlywiki.com website, though I rarely visit, in full honesty. It is a bit tucked away, for new time users just skimming the site, it won’t be clear that it exists.

[Charlie_Veniot]

@Justin_H

using google

No no, not Google Groups.

Google Forms (even Docs, Sheets, Slides) for collaborative work. These things support multi-user collaboration something silly.

@Justin_H

Edit: we do technically have a list of links per the links.tiddlywiki.com website, though I rarely visit, in full honesty. It is a bit tucked away, for new time users just skimming the site, it won’t be clear that it exists.

Yeah, visibility/access (i.e. finding it) is a problem. From a cognitive disability perspective, I’m having an insta fight or flight response to that thing. Definitely not made for this sponge.

[Justin_H]

@Charlie_Veniot

Google Forms (even Docs, Sheets, Slides) for collaborative work. These things support multi-user collaboration something silly.

Ahh, I follow- something along those lines would be good for a dedicated team, but for a whole community such as TW, it might become a bit unwieldy. An alternative could be a thread here, in collaboration with TiddlyHost, to submit user sites for review and have an upvote downvote system akin to reddit’s system?

@Charlie_Veniot

Yeah, visibility/access (i.e. finding it) is a problem. From a cognitive disability perspective, I’m having an insta fight or flight response to that thing. Definitely not made for this sponge.

Likewise. ADD is something I struggle with, which makes navigating through multiple articles very challenging when I don’t have context or reason to read the content in question.

For example, I specifically remember when I first started with TW I was trying to figure out how the TOC widget worked, and while reading was bombarded with terminology I didn’t understand, and partial examples I couldn’t plug into a blank and deconstruct.

If it weren’t for google groups, I probably would have moved back to ye olde plaintext docs in a folder haha

[Charlie_Veniot]

@Justin_H

Ahh, I follow- something along those lines would be good for a dedicated team, but for a whole community such as TW, it might become a bit unwieldy. An alternative could be a thread here, in collaboration with TiddlyHost, to submit user sites for review and have an upvote downvote system akin to reddit’s system?

Actually, whole community would scale just fine.

And ugh. Death by the wrong tools and a heavy process. Largely those are the problems of the symptoms folk bring up repeatedly since forever, and none of those things seemingly getting resolved. And every time, nobody interested in trying to prototype something that I’m thinking would help alleviate the problems.

Might or might not, but it would be sure nice to try.

Weird: easier for me to prototype ideas I have with folk who pay me, than to prototype things for folk when I’m trying to give it away. Time to change the way I think, eh?

Cheers !

[pmario]

@JuanPalomo

In the editing bar, for example, I miss the existence of icons to tabulate the text, highlight the color of a selected paragraph, or change the color of the text. All this without having to search the help or the forums how to do it.

I think that would be good improvement and did create a GH issue: [IDEA] edit toolbar improvement for basic text colouring · Issue #6981 · Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5 · GitHub

[pmario]

@Mark_S

These aren’t features of most mark-down languages. They can be done in TW using HTML. But that results in text that looks more like HTML. So it’s a trade-off between final results and simplicity of entry. Probably the full answer would be an official WYSIWIG plugin.

I think it can be done in a similar way as described at: https://tiddlywiki.com/#Styles%20and%20Classes%20in%20WikiText

[Mohammad]

This is available in Shiraz Formatter