Things we take for granted in TiddlyWiki

#1

We often focus too much on shortcomings but not on the things that TiddlyWiki does so well that we just take for them granted.

Drag and drop.

It just works, within the same wiki, from a different wiki. From a different browser!!! Copy entire tiddlers or plugins by drag and drop.

Rant:
I am working in Notion at the moment for a client project and even with the Notion desktop app installed, I cannot drag a block from one page to another. Doesn’t work in the browser either. :expressionless:

I have to manually cut and paste blocks and then deal with the weird formatting blocks not matching up… not having a plain text editor makes this harder than need be.

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#2

First off I do want to say “right!” Architecturally on desktop it is true.

BUT, there is the residual issue (NOT a TW issue per se) that because smart phones and some touch screens are primarily d-n-d already conflicts arise. IMO, for long-term smart-phone devs it remains an issue how to deal with it?

Just a comment
TT

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#3

It does work well on some modern devices. Here’s a quick video of dragging a bunch of tiddlers from one wiki to another on an iPhone running iOS 15:

(I found I’m not able to upload videos to talk.tiddlywiki.org, or at least not from an iPhone).

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#4

On reflection perhaps it’s not fair to say “modern devices” given that iOS 15 runs on the iPhone 6S which was released in 2015.

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#5

Hi @TiddlyTweeter - in GG you had a thread: Why I love Tiddlywiki! Why do not have it in Talk?

Hi @saqimtiaz ,

Tiddlywiki has a lot of amazing things, that is why we fell in love with Tiddlywiki at first sight!

It may be of your surprise, with a lot of customizations and plugins for Tiddlywiki, I love Tiddlywiki Vanilla (naked Tiddlywiki) the most :wink: !

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#6

Thanks. Very interesting to see. My experience on Android phones is that TW d-n-d is, unfortunately (not it’s fault), awkward.

TT

#7

Robust markdown.

I’ve been forced into using agile boards at work that have a primitive markdown implementation. After years of using TiddlyWiki, it seems I should be able to rattle off a simple table or highlight text or customize styles as I type anywhere I can put asterisks around a word to make it bold. :smiley:

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#8

Yep. Everyone wants WYSIWYG but it takes me on average two attempts to bold some text on Notion and it totally breaks the flow of typing.

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#9

Ditto! Tiddlywiki’s markup allows you to nest dissimilar list items, setting classes (@@), real blockquotes, and most of all, supports definition lists. I particularly enjoy that italics and bold use different markup. Unlike in markdown, where italics is (*) or (_) and bold is (**) or (__). Tiddlywiki’s tables are also much easier to type than GFM or Multimarkdown’s tables.

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#10

Yes. I Wanted wysiwig in the early days but have lost interest as I now can do much more in wikitext. Its like shorthand. There is always preview and use inline edit when needed.

#11

Did you know most wikitext accepts classnames like this?

*.classname list item

I have for example a class d for done

*.d list item

This marks it green as done. .e for error and more.

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#12

Thanks Tony, it’s by far and away THIS. And…

The ability to add elements so easily where the whole tag is pre-styled the way I want (as discussed elsewhere recently).

<done>Do that thing you keep forgetting to do</done>

DONE Do that thing you keep forgetting to do

When @pmario releases his custom markup/parser tool, I’ll probably explode with excitement :wink:

#13

On my Android 8 phone, attempting to drag an item brings up a link/share dialog instead.

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#14

I was never much of a markdown guy to begin with, but after adopting TiddlyWiki’s wikitext back during the Classic era, it’s become difficult to use most flavors of markdown without a tiny bit of derision for the “bad choices” it makes compared to TWtext — like *italics* rather than //italics//.

I realize TW’s wikitext was built on the shoulders of giants, but it makes it hard to work with less fluid, less extensible, less adaptable alternatives.

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#15

Did you know most wikitext accepts classnames … ?

Game-changer!

Not on my day-to-day platform :frowning: , but still – !

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#16

That is a NEAT tip. Nice one.

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#17

Displaying Maths.
The KaTeX plugin was the hook that got me into the TW platform.
It’s surprisingly difficult to display maths nicely on the web.
It’s a bit easier these days than it was but five (six?) years ago TW was the best solution I found for maths.

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A note on Jeremy Ruston
#18

Right. D-n-D on Android smartphones does seem problematic (and to an extent on Chromebooks in tablet mode too, on mine at least). I’m no expert on this kind of thing. What I subjectively see is that the OS overrides the TW D-n-D much of the time. Essentially it stops behaving as it would on desktop.

I think it maybe needs an expert programmer’s eye to examine what is going on?

Best wishes
TT

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