First, does anyone still use TW classic at all (other than I)? If so, is this also the forum for TW Classic or is there another place for those?
I have so much invested in TW Classic and most of my plugins, mods, customizations are not worth my time to port to modern TW and most likely many of them will not even port. But every since I started using it, till this day, I cannot do my work without resorting to TW. It is probably the software I use most extensively after my OS and my browser!
I have been using TW Classic since … 2005 (yes!) and was “schooled” about JavaScript and TW extensively by Eric Shulman prominently, and by many others on the tw classic forum. But that forum seems to be inactive now!
I initaly resisted the move from tiddlywiki classic for my primary GTD wiki, I could not afford the time to make the transition. Once tiddlywiki 5 matured I started using it for minor wikis.
What I discovered was tiddlywiki could now do things out of the box that classic demanded plugins for, and there was far less tweaking needed. In the end I realised I had mixed data and code too much in classic and built a new wiki that separated them.
The point of this story is as soon as I knew enought I dropped classic and left it behind very quickly, when I look at an archived wiki code I see pain and complexity. So it is now difficult for me to support it, even think about it. I suspect many others share this.
I know you’ve got a “yes” there, but… I can’t help but think you might mean 2005, since it would be odd to have chosen classic in 2025, and to be already deeply invested in it by the middle of 2026…
As it turns out, 2005 was also the year I started with TW Classic! (But then I ported over to TW5 a few years ago. It was indeed painful to abandon some of the features that felt like second-nature there, but gradually coming to love the new possibilities even more.)
Indeed! It was 2005! It started as an effort to have a “digital notebook on a USB stick that I could carry with me between home and work” so that I could work seamlessly on my projects from both places! That USB drive was full 16 GB that I charged to my then employers some 120/- or so dollars!
PS: I am running low free space on my 512 GB Samsung Fit Plus USB drive that exclusively houses my Tiddly and remains attached to my tablet!
Hi shankar,
I am sorry, but this is no mixed forum. We have had big problems with GoogleGroups as we started TiddlyWiki5 and mixed the content there. … It was a big mess.
On the other hand. TWc is very mature and seems to be still used by some users. I still use one, which contains the overview about the early dev videos about the Youtube hangouts, because I was too lazy to port it over
Conclusion
You are very welcome to discuss TiddlyWiki here. Even “remembering” TWclassic, but please do not post TiddlyWikiClassic related questions or code here.
We will need to mute and hide those threads.
Have fun
Mario
PS: in 2016 I did create a TWc wiki that shows the differences between TWc and TW5 syntax. So if you ever want to convert content this info may help. compare-tw2-tw5 - a TiddlySpace
As you’ve noted, there isn’t much current activity on the TWClassic Google Group. In addition, the Discourse interface is MUCH better than the Google Groups interface.
I suggest that instead of forcing TWClassic discussions to use Google Groups, perhaps we can just establish a “TWClassic” category here on talk.TiddlyWiki.org If someone posts a TWClassic topic to the general Discussion category, it’s easy enough to move it to the TWClassic category.
The main problem I see, is that categories are not really isolated. The default setting in our Discourse instance is, that everyone can see all categories on the landing page by default.
So even if we move threads to its own category, it will be visible to everyone. Including crawlers, that get extremely confused by mixed content.
@kjharcombe may know, if it is possible to create a new forum, that is completely isolated @jeremyruston, will have to decide if we want that.
I personally do not want to see TWclassic questions and or code here. I know how to configure my settings to block notifications for specific categories, but most users do not want to jump those hoops.
I understand why Mario wants to keep this focused.
This also means, since I am behind on switching to new TW, I am on my own now!
TW is probably the most frequent application I use - on a daily basis. For past 20+ years. It is good to see people like Eric Shulman and others continuing their good work.
Before TW, I had written my own note taking software using XML, XSLT … all of which sound alien to most of you - but kept searching on the Internet for something better and hit on TW.
I have so much infrastructure built on top of it that even if all those port to new TW, I do not have the time now to port them or learn the new TW.
My TW Classic now needs a minor tweak here or there once in 12 to 20 months and I hope to continue do it if I can or live with the new shortcomings I discover.
TW community from the very early days has been very welcoming and wonderful people. As someone who used to be very active on Linux Kernel discussion group on the Internet, I can highly appreciate this community for that!
Mr Ruston modeled it that way from the early days. So I will keep visiting here once in a while and will likely try out the new version for curiosity; though not likely to adapt it or you never know!
And it’s good to see testament to this important aspect of @jeremyruston’s vision: that you actually CAN keep using that chunk of open-source code that hasn’t been updated in years, because it’s not forced into obsolescence.
Of course, it’s disappointing that the online community for TW Classic has dwindled away through gradual attrition and conversion to TW5.
But since it ain’t broke, you can ride your custom TWC setup as long as you like!
I would chime in that I’ve brought up this topic before in the past but much of the discussion happens in the TiddlyWikiClassic Google Group or on Github. That being said of course it would be nice to have a separate category on Talk.TiddlyWiki but the volume of discussion is rather low. I think the only reason why one might retain their use of TWC is if you have used some feature specific to TWC that is difficult to migrate to TW5, such as transclusion.