Here are some of my (a very confused newbie) points:
I feel like TW puts the computer in charge and I have to think for it, instead the other way around.
All those filters and transclusions with their peculiar syntax…
I realize that part of it all is programming, and programming requires an intent, and syntax to express that intent, but I haven’t felt this bad using something ‘scriptable’ in a while.
(I mostly do compiled languages)
Feels like I have to wipe this softwares mouth and butt all the time, even on the essentials…which many others have mastered, I have not.
So, it’s definetely a knowledge or skill issue on my part, but it just feels bad…and I find the documentation kind of unhelpful, too.
Even the companion thing “Grok Tiddlywiki” I find a bit bad.
Nothing seems to really explain the more, at least to me, immediately most important things, properly, or easily, or clearly.
For example.
Transclusion, templates and filters.
I sure don’t know if it’s possible to substitute a list filter by a template that does the filtering. It’s probably real easy but I don’t know it and I do “”“read”"" the documentation.
Starts at that “railroad” illustration system, I really do not like it. One of the critiques is that TW is allegedly stuck in the 90s… well I found 90s interfaces gaudy at worst, but they were functional… so I would say that that aspect is more “modern” where it requires some additional web programming framework knowledge.
Maybe this railroad system is used by many web development frameworks or packages, I never used em. This is pretty much my first ‘actual’ web application I use.
For example:
https://tiddlywiki.com/static/Filter%20Expression.html
For some reason, this, psychologically makes me unable to understand anything. I do think that I have the mental capabilities to understand this but I …practically cannot.
I’m not ‘super smart’ but I think I should be able to understand this, but the way it’s presented just goes in two eyes, out the ears without collecting much/any money while passing go.
I’m not an academic but I feel like one, who knows nothing about PC building and has to build a PC and suddenly even simple “Lego like” stuff is too complex, despite the brains in the head.
But I think I’m going too much on a tangent now.
It’s just so “fussy” why do I have to do so much work to get user fields being useful ,etc. I’m the computer here, I have to do everything…despite the many shorthands. I think the shorthands are lying to me and there isn’t actually any work done by the computer, I have to do it all.
It’s not computing anything. I’m computing my entire wiki and the program just renders it…and even that I kind of feel that I have to do some part of that.
And it’s so difficult too despite looking simple or being presented as simple. I don’t think I’d have gotten even my baby stuff done without this forum, had I been forced to only use the documentation.
My username is not random, I get cheesed big time trying to make heads or tails from it, but because I put documentation above ‘bothering people’ I spend too much time bashing my head against it, feeling stupid, asking for help here, getting excellent help, but also noticing that it’s always some little detail that tripped me up.
If TW is actually TinkeryWiki (which it actually seems to be) then I think that the examples should be overhauled and the entire ‘breadcrumb line’ involved in learning the system …reworked somehow.
If only I have this problem, then maybe not, but from my POV, it …it’s just bad.
It’s probably possible to access which posts and topics I made, so if you did that, you’d see that the same thing tripped me up twice, filter systax and the usage of brackets in it.
I followed the examples but they were either too kurt to be of any use, making it LOOK like I was doing the right thing, for example:
Variables in Filters
Variables can be accessed within Filters using angle brackets to quote the name:
[<varname>]
So I used just that in a filter, but it didn’t work, because …well I now know why it didn’t work but having to write the reasoning down …is not something I want to do right now. I wish I could point at the reason in the documentation but I can’t, not to my knowledge I cannot point to the things I was told by everyone in the thread.
And perhaps they couldn’t do either, and had to write explanatory posts, but I could be wrong.
And its so draining…draining yet frustrating at the same time.
Right now, despite having been told why my filter didn’t work only yesterday, and understanding what I was being told there, the scope of that solution seems very very narrow and tied to one of the contexts…contices TW uses.
I sure couldn’t ‘conceptualize’ a way to use a template as a list filter from it. Again, skill issue I’m sure but…
I just can’t.
<$list filter="[contains:worshipsGod<currentTiddler>!sort[at]]">
<<currentTiddler>><br>
</$list>
works to generate a list of worshipers of a god, and saved as GodWorshiperList
But I don’t know how to use that as a filter for a list that either prints the output of that, or “None” in a table.
I could not intu…te? Intuite? it?
The solution to that, in my expectations can be anything from “You forgot a bracket, m8” to “TW in list mode expects this or that, and it’s done like this and the formatting is a bit different, and here are 3 ways to do it but they only work in this specific context unless you make em more generic and put them in a meta template shadow tiddler and mark them with a prefix and suffix”
Noone has given me an answer like that before, but I would not be surprised at one.
In reality I think I should make the table generator the template and have it use that filter to generate the text buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutttttttt…
I picked up in some promotional thing that “everything is a tiddler, and tiddlers do one thing well” and “it’s like unix, do one thing well” …but in that case, it’s not one tiddler doing one thing, it has to build a table and filter it, the filter is not another tiddler who specializes in it.
Etc.
(Also, don’t provide the anwer to that in here, I’ll make a topic about it later )
I’m so drained…which is low energy, unlike an anger that my username might suggest, but that’s the second state of TW usage…I will be mad again later, don’t worry.
P.S.:
I thought of a better way to express some of this:
I considered TW excellent when I first started it with the minimalist stuff, but Grok TW and the like are too good with the software and went into tinkerland too far, and they make it look it easy cause…I guess ultimately it is.
But that’s where my drainage started. On its own, without all the ‘simpleton stuff’ of the basic, ‘vanilla’ system of just using links and tags, its great…
Perhaps there should be an intermediate level, and I don’t consider “Grok TW” that. I got siren sang into craggy waters.
The allure of the table and the user field. My little raft smashed asunder on the shores.
But to the author…it’s nothing. it’s like frolickin through a meadow of flowers.
And so many of you can just frolick right along… perhaps you don’t even need the documentation and tuts anymore. I do…
) and I had more time available and I was thankful for the distraction.