Those Pesky Brackets

Tips & Tricks
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#1

:link: Those Pesky Brackets

As there are plenty of recurring “what’s up with all these brackets!!! Single brackets? Double brackets! TRIPLE BRACKedsfdsfsffddsbagel‽” threads lately so I wanted to give explanations another way in case they can be of any help.

The basics are mostly done (I needed something to do last week, in between many hours of sleep, while I was holed up with Covid).

I’ll add more bits to it as I think of them, but I think there’s enough to help a beginner out.

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#2

Well done! I have only skimmed through the short table summaries, not the full text explanations, but it clarified some things for me and I learned something new (I didn’t know you can use transclusion inside a filter like [{Hello There!!created}]), even though after almost a year of using TW I don’t consider myself a total beginner. I’d say there’s value to it for experienced users as well, as a quick reference or reminder. Good idea to separate {...} and {{...}} from {{{...}}}, this helps in explanation.

The official documentation on tiddlywiki.com lacks exactly this kind of explanation, see this issue on GitHub: [IDEA] Have a closer look at the TW "brackets" mechanism docs · Issue #7581 · Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5 · GitHub

I think it might be more worth to include your work in official documentation, that way it will be easier to discover and use as reference. It would have to reformatted a little bit to match the rest of the documentation. Or if you want to keep your version as it is, it will be a good starting point for anyone taking on the official documentation issue.

I see that {{{...}}} are on your coming soon list. Are you also planning to explain other “bracket like” entities, like $...$, $(...)$, <__...__>, pipies | vs exclamation marks ! in transclusions? There are some new things introduced in v5.3.0 and some other are considered deprecated (these do not require elaborate explanations then).

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#3

Thanks @Brian_Radspinner that’s very helpful.

I would be happy to see those tiddlers in the core docs. The approach reminds me a little of this tiddler that @btheado contributed a few weeks ago:

https://tiddlywiki.com/prerelease/#Variable%20Usage

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#4

This is a fantastic resource! I wish I had it available at the time I posted Lost in <[{<brackets}]>.

I’m with @vilc : I would love to see the extensions to such bracket-like syntax.

Thank you very much for sharing.

#5

@Brian_Radspinner , A great resource, thanks for sharing. Pity I did not find it earlier, it might have saved my sanity :slight_smile:

#6

Thank you very much for the mention, here and in other threads.

I started this with a fairly silly attitude to make it easier for me to get going and worry less about giving perfect information.

I would like to continue to expand the wiki, but I can only explain what I (think I) know.

As I feel comfortable with a subject, I will try to keep adding more. I like having a lighter tone than the official docs, but I need to revise some things to be a bit less silly . I also need to also start putting links to official doc tiddlers related to what I write.

I’m not a quick learner, so I can’t make any solid promises—it took over a year to get around to adding Backticks info. :disappointed:

The likes of Eric and Tony are surely much better suited to continue on how they’re doing rather than to start dragging me along with them. :crazy_face: I try to absorb as much as I can from their posts as is.

For now, I’ll keep on with what I can. Feel free to drop any corrections, suggestions, questions, etc in this thread or in a msg here; I’ll see what I can do.

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#7

This sounds like an episode of Scooby Doo: “And I would have got away with it too, if it weren’t for those pesky brackets!”

But seriously, I am bookmarking this. Thanks! Nice.