Why is TiddlyWiki Beaten by Obsidian?

[oeyoews]

In fact, I don’t really care much about which language I use, whether it’s JavaScript or Wikitext. For me, the development experience is more important, followed by functionality and other aspects. Wikitext doesn’t offer the same quality development experience as other programming languages, like code highlighting, intelligent suggestions, or code maintainability. I believe some people have already recognized this. Initially, I did spend a lot of time learning Wikitext, and it was indeed impressive—there’s nothing difficult about it. However, there are certain details within it that I can’t easily debug.

Becoming an expert in such a niche language doesn’t seem cost-effective to me. Most of the JavaScript plugins I write now are mainly to meet my temporary needs, or they’re just spur-of-the-moment projects that I might not even use myself. To be honest, I don’t think anyone else would use these plugins either. Of course, if my plugins can help you, I’m happy to hear that.

[oeyoews]

It seems that from here onwards, the discussion has deviated from the original topic

[redhossu]

@TW_Tones

I do think many of these issues you have experienced come from a personal viewpoint that some others (but not all) share.

I’m sorry I didn’t specify in advance. Yes, these questions are very personal. I also rarely interact with others on the forum. Probably because there are so many questions that are simple and easy to search for answers. It could also be that if I re-watch the grok tutorial again, it will solve the problem. Maybe one day I’ll reorganize some of the knowledge I tend to forget and confuse and feed it back to the forum. But yes, my feeling is very personal.

@Scott_Sauyet

The only thing I didn’t understand was your reference to “Trpg’s Module”. I have no idea what that is. Everything else was clear.

It means the adventures in DND or COC. I think TW’s single file format is very conducive to publishing these adventures and allows for the integration of numerous utilities. It can provide an out-of-the-box experience for newbies.

@Scott_Sauyet

creating a set pf community maintained plugins rather than individual author ones.

The concept is really good. What I can associate it with is a similar activity going on in the godot community, but choosing and evaluating plugins seems to be a challenge as well.
Of course, developer scarcity is always a challenge. (This seems like it would also involve TW’s profit model. But I’m only keeping up with TW via Twitter and don’t have a complete picture.)

@Scott_Sauyet

One of TW’s best and longest-term selling points is that your wiki is independent; you can put it where you like, and count on it working decades hence.

I really like the single-file wiki, which is why I choose TW. Now I’m starting to expect a better browser-based file saving mechanism.

I’m more of a product manager who knows a little bit of technology than a professional programmer. For personal software development I have familiar language and some simple products, such as a simple board game tool on a mobile phone.
I think my slow learning of wikitext may be due to the fact that I can’t adapt my existing experience well, and there are some limitations.
For example, I want to make a table. The table has a corresponding button that, when pressed, will refresh the random number based on the number of rows in the table. The corresponding row will be highlighted.
I found that there seems to be some technical limitations to the row in the highlighted table. (But I’ve seen similar functionality in some table tools again.) Recording random numbers to avoid meaningless refreshes also needs to be handled. I gave up for time reasons.
I still have a lot of time to spend on Text Substitution, which is a bit complicated for me to use and I don’t have a good understanding of the concept. This is my problem in this area. But that’s one of the core features of TW, and I really want to make good use of it. But I didn’t.

I’m not trying to complain about anything. Just wanted to make some observations that I made as a new user.
Thank you for your help and answers. TW does have an excellent community.

[Bearking]

@redhossu

Obsidian has a huge writing interface that takes up 80% of the entire screen. On the contrary, I’ve always felt that TW writes in a small window within a window. This is of course in line with tiddler’s philosophy that TW discourages long-windedness. But I don’t think it’s enough in terms of writing comfort

Welcome @redhossu. I agree with you that the tiddler width is too small. Modern screens are wide but the standard tiddler width is only about 25%. I use the flexwidth plugin, that I think is no longer updated, to set the width of the tiddlers to be the majority of my monitor. I’m sure that there’s another way to do this but I don’t know what it is.

[buggyj]

Adjust the width of tiddlers In the theme tweaks

[linonetwo]

Use more layouts Do you want your wiki to have 3-10 different layouts?

I’m creating a Evernote/Obsidian style layout, and people can use the proper layout for different types iof works.

In this way, TidGi will be an edition that have all feature of Obsidian, and still being more powerful and keeps simplicity.
There could have been more editions, but seems I’m the only one that is trying in this direction.

[Offray]

Thanks for this plugin, as recently we were having a conversation in the Grafoscopio civic tech community (which have a good amount of active TW users/explorers) about how permalinks are not so permanent, as they use the title, that can be refactored to point to its permalink.

My argument was that, because as the title and text fields are given as the two big starting ones in the edit mode GUI and the extra fields are shown, while the extra ones are at the end and small, that creates the understandable habit of changing text and title field contents when you are doing wiki refactoring (the relink plugin has been a big advantage on this), while other fields values tend to be changed less often.

I brought to the conversation @pmario anylink plugin (I think that’s its name) to use any other field instead of the title as the tiddler’s link. And this seems like another good alternative too. I played with it a little bit, but was unable to figure out some things:

1. when installed, you can setup the + icon in the main bar to create new tiddlers with the caption located in the place that in the classic GUI we have for the title and the title as a smaller field after the text?

2. Could the link GUI (the one that is launched when selecting a text inside the text field and pressing Ctrl + l) be setup to look for the caption but link to the title ID? In that case, could the permalink be something like: [[this is the shown text|titleID#caption]], so there is an explicit relation in the link that allows the user to know what is permanent and what changes when wiki refactoring happens? Or do you think that, in that case, @pmario’s anylink plugin could be better, as it introduces new syntax for linking?

3. This is a little bit nerdy, but do you think that should be possible to use NanoID for the random ID generator? We have used it for our TiddlyWikiPharo, and we have found that a short length of around 11 characters is more than enough to have a low collision probability of over a century, if the user generates 1000 IDs per hour, which seems pretty safe for (inter)personal wikis. Using NadoID gives us a relatively short unique ID, that we use as part of the tiddlers name, when we stored them as STON, like here, for our TTRPG wiki.

Cheers,

[pmario]

@Offray

Or do you think that, in that case, @pmario’s anylink plugin could be better, as it introduces new syntax for linking?

My plugin that uses the aliases-field is called – uni-link — extended link functions

The connection between the TW-link syntax and the tiddler is defined using the aliases field and the definitions there.

[[alias-title|?c]] … shows the content of the caption field instead of the title. It is possible to use any other field-name if you want.

So it is already very similar to your proposed syntax – but using aliases will avoid the problem of renaming tiddler titles. “aliases” will not need to be changed.

---

alieases are human readable NanoIDs if you want to name them like that. – I did experiment in that direction (UUIDs), but I think human readable connections are better.

[AlfieA]

Hi All,
I’ve tried Obsidian but I couldn’t get the hang of it. But I found it completely different from TiddlyWiki. I don’t think TW has anything to worry about. Different purpose; different flavour.
What I can say for certain is that I’ve learned a lot about computers through TW’s filters, advanced, lists, widgets, fields, etc…
Could I liken the comparison of Obsidian to Tiddlywiki as Google Maps to OpenStreetMap.

A

[TiddlyTweeter]

@pmario

@Offray

Or do you think that, in that case, @pmario’s anylink plugin could be better, as it introduces new syntax for linking?

My plugin that uses the aliases-field is called – uni-link — extended link functions

The connection between the TW-link syntax and the tiddler is defined using the aliases field and the definitions there.

[[alias-title|?c]] … shows the content of the caption field instead of the title. It is possible to use any other field-name if you want.

So it is already very similar to your proposed syntax – but using aliases will avoid the problem of renaming tiddler titles. “aliases” will not need to be changed.

alieases are human readable NanoIDs if you want to name them like that. – I did experiment in that direction (UUIDs), but I think human readable connections are better.

I am re-posting this because I think it (@pmario) solves the issue.

TT

[TiddlyTweeter]

@AlfieA

Obsidian … couldn’t get the hang of it … different from TiddlyWiki. I don’t think TW has anything to worry about. Different purpose; different flavour.

Right!

Long live the TW. The Agnostic Boss!!

[well-noted]

This is probably a little silly, and I haven’t scanned this topic thoroughly enough to know if this has already been mentioned, but “Tiddlywiki” is just heard, at least in American English, as sort of a silly name compared to “Obsidian.”

I have literally never had a conversation with a non user about Tiddlywiki where I have not had to have a massive sidebar about why it’s called Tiddlywiki – and oftentimes, even after I’ve explained it, the name still gets giggles from them every time.

This doesn’t bother me, since I don’t really feel much pressure for TW to become “popular” and zeitgeisty the way obsidian has striven for – and honestly would have reservations if this was being seriously discussed – but if I were going to make a marketing level suggestion, it would be to pick a name that sounds like “rock eagle freedom Knife” or something like that.

Despite being a proud tiddlywiki user, who is not especially self conscious about things like this, I do find myself sidestepping the name at times in discussion, simply for practical reasons – and that’s a massive problem for widespread adoption.

[vuk]

Git has a silly name too. This didn’t stop it from becoming almost a monopoly.

[well-noted]

@vuk

Git has a silly name too

I disagree with this assessment (being something of a student of linguistics).

Git is a short word, one syllable, and uses primarily “hard” sounds (G and T) – in English, these are characteristics of “Strong” sounding names. It also doesn’t really have any connotative connections to other words – ‘get’ might be the closest, but that is not a word with strong imagery associated with it.

Tiddlywiki, on the other hand, starts strong, but softens in the middle, giving it a more playful sounds. Lots of words in english, undercut hard sounds by doubling them up and adding ‘ly’, making them sound more playful or childish (diddly, giggly, fiddly, wiggly, squiggly). Also, it sounds quite a reminiscent of “Tiddlywinks” which is a child’s game (and a bit of an archaic one at that).

On the other hand, we have “Obsidian,” which is literally a stone, one which has significant importance to the species and was essential to toolmaking. It does not round in the middle, rounds on the ends and the d represents a hard stop in the middle.

[EricShulman]

@well-noted

Git … doesn’t really have any connotative connections to other words

see Git (slang) - Wikipedia

Also consider another previously silly word: “Google” (a misspelling of the mathematical term “Googol”), which is similar to a baby’s “gurgle” (nonsense babbling), or perhaps “googly eyes”.

And, before Google, we had “Yahoo!” Yahoo (Gulliver's Travels) - Wikipedia which Swift described as “filthy with unpleasant habits… a brute in human form”.

For my take on the meaning of “TiddlyWiki” see: https://tiddlytools.com/InsideTW/#WhatsInAName.

-e

[well-noted]

@EricShulman

Git (slang) - Wikipedia

A “hard sounding” insult which is also not common in american-english – I’ve only heard it used in the context of british TV or movies. In American media, closest use is in the context of Cowboy Flicks ("'git along")

@EricShulman

“Google” (a misspelling of the mathematical term “Googol”), which is similar to a baby’s “gurgle” (nonsense babbling), or perhaps “googly eyes”.

also has a hard sounds in the middle – and, as you point out, is undercut if you add an ‘ly’ as in “googly”

@EricShulman

“Yahoo!” Yahoo (Gulliver’s Travels) - Wikipedia which Swift described as “filthy with unpleasant habits… a brute in human form”.

I don’t think gullivers travels is most people’s reference for yahoo, lol, it’s evocative of “Yahoo” as in celebration or excitement. And also, yahoo is not a widely popular platform anymore for a reason

Very good read, though, and I agree the assessments you make there.

---

I really have no motivation in arguing that it’s an especially silly word – like I said, I like the name fine and don’t really care about user-growth. I can just say confidently, from personal experience, that it’s a very silly sounding name to most Americans. While, as you point out, there are other words that have some of the silly characteristics I’ve described, none of them have all of the silly characteristics about ‘Tiddlywiki’ particularly.

I do have a hunch that if (read ‘when’ or ‘as is happening’) American English declines on the world stage, TiddlyWiki will gain popularity

[linonetwo]

I’m not sure if TidGi app is a good name, while I checked it with GPT3.5 before (It was only 3.5 at that time). TidGi is my solution to match Obsidian, it contains WYSIWYG editor and Calendar etc. that Obsidian has out-of-box, so comptetion is fair.

I’ve translated TW to 太微 in Chinese, which is a good name.

[Jason_Cunliffe]

TidGi
TaiJi

太微 <<< if possible help me to understand this
Thanks

Are great names

I love TiddlyWiki and lots of respect to you all
But it’s a pain in the neck to type to communicate verbally or as filenames etc
It’s too cute

I end up naming my folder filed TW5… etc

I remember tiddlywinks age 7 in England

It’s was fun and full of surprises
and we learned skills to go with quasi random physics.
Part skill ~ Part luck
Playing guitars with a pick (plectrum) for 50+ years now likely uses tiddlywinks early muscle happy fun memory!
.
Which =~ kind of the beauty and pain of TiddlyWiki
especially when trying to serve it up for non-programmers or people who have real projects they are seeking a platform to use.
To publish edit select re-format & grow

I complement TidGi for terrific recent effort to make it more widely accessible = more useful software.
But also for a cool short name

Kudos everyone

[well-noted]

@Jason_Cunliffe

太微 <<< if possible help me to understand this

I would also be interested in learning more about your translation, @linonetwo

TidGi doesn’t really ring correctly to my ear, the best I can do is if I pronounce it such as “Tidgy,” which at least had the benefit of rolling off the tongue, but I don’t really understand where the Gi comes from (Gittly I always assumed).

And I personally would want to find something that communicates something about the core philosophy. Obsidian sounds “cool and hard” but I think it also lacks this core philosophy ideal. Notion is a fantastic example of a name which has both – it is a catchy, sticky word that’s easy to say and also very clearly evokes imagery that’s reflective of its purpose and philosophy.

As I’ve said here and elsewhere, “Tiddlywiki” is a good stab at what a name should be – but that’s wildly undercut by the fact that “Tiddler” is not a very common word anymore, and so it needs explanation. I’m fairly well-read, and the only place I’ve ever seen the word Tiddler is in a John Steinback book.