TW used for university assignment

[Saq Imtiaz]

Hey guys,

I wanted to share with you a TW that I helped put together for a friend, for an "Anthropology:Media Analysis" assignment at the University of Adelaide. It's a good example of how TW can be used for presentations, as perhaps an alternative to say PowerPoint.....
http://lewcid.googlepages.com/tots.html

The final grade was 94%, based on both content and presentation.

For those interested, the main plugins being used are:
1) PresentationPlugin: a heavily modified version of selectTheme plugin, that lets you use different PageTemplate,StyleSheet,View and EditTemplate when editing. By default all editing features are hidden. To have the editing features accessible, just open the file with #author:true at the end of the url.
Eg: http://lewcid.googlepages.com/tots.html#author:true

Also, it provides a <<author>> macro that is invisible when the file is normally opened, but when opened with authoring enabled, it provides a button for quickly switching to presentation mode and back to preview changes. Go to http://lewcid.googlepages.com/tots.html#author:true and look for the "Presentation Mode" button in the MainMenu.

2) SinglePageModePlugin from TiddlyTools.
3) BoldLinksPlugin: for use with SinglePageMode, to highlight/bold links in the MainMenu for currently the currently open Tiddler.
4) An improved version of the navigation plugin.
All of this code (except SinglePageModePlugin) was custom written for this project and I cant guarantee that it will work in every situation, and there is no documentation as of yet. But if anyone is interested in using it, just let me know and I'll answer any questions that may arise

Also, if there is any interest, I can setup an empty TW file with the bare basics for using it for presentations (with editing features hidden by default etc.), and put it online.
Cheers,
Saq

[psvincent]

Very slick. I'd be interested in an empty TW version. I'm a college
prof, and my primary interest in TW at the moment is that it allows
people to get content into a navigable page quickly, with little or no
programming required. Of course, for something this well done, the
programming certainly IS required. Thanks for sharing it.

[Dave Gifford]

Nice use of TiddlyWiki. If you are going to keep it at this page I'd
like to make a link to it, with your permission, from my tutorial, so
people can see what others are doing with TW.

Dave Gifford

[Andrew Lister]

Yes please, for the empty version. Nice presentation! 94% indeed.

What would happen if you had a link to a tiddler that was not part of
your presentation? I'm thinking of a whole website, with various
groups of tiddlers defined, and each group could be a presentation, but
they might be interlinked, allowing the presenter to deviate from the
main script, so to speak.

If I recall correctly, the SelectThemePlugin didn't used to change
templates. Is that something you changed, for your presentation? I've
been using the SelectStylesheetPlugin specifically because it allowed
changing templates (one for webview, one for authorview, one for
slideview - up until I switched to using P. Soares' plugin - but then,
it is based on a single-tiddler-presentation setup, which doesn't allow
deviation from script based upon audience demand / feedback).

Also, some of your slide tiddlers are quite long, with multiple images.
I guess you were scrolling down... did that work ok? What about the
font? I tried upping the font via my browser, but that made the left
hand sidebar (the menu) very big. How did you handle that?

Very interested,

Andrew

[Saq Imtiaz]

Thanks for the kind words everyone. However, I would like to make it clear that this was NOT my presentation, my university days are long since over. I helped a friend put this together, my contribution being the relevant coding.

I'll put together an empty version for you guys, along with some documentation. Do you guys prefer it with the standard blue TW styles, or with the ones used in this presentation? Changing the style later will be as simple as copying over your favorite StyleSheet.

Part of the reason I posted this is because I've been reading a lot of questions about how to disable editing features before distributing a TW, and something like this should fit the bill.

What would happen if you had a link to a tiddler that was not part of
your presentation?  I'm thinking  of a whole website, with various
groups of tiddlers defined, and each group could be a presentation, but
they might be interlinked, allowing the presenter to deviate from the
main script, so to speak.

Currently, if you clicked a link to a tiddler that wasnt part of the presentation, it would replace whatever tiddler was open, and you could go back to the presentation by using  the links in the MainMenu

If I recall correctly, the SelectThemePlugin didn't used to change
templates.  Is that something you changed, for your presentation?

Yes,  I used the base code of SelectTheme for this, but after that its quite different. It does switch templates, but right now it isnt a general purpose theme switcher any more. It just switches between two 'modes'. One where editing is disabled, and another where it is not. (Of course you can customize the two modes so they have nothing to do with editing, and one is just pink and the other blue)

I've been meaning to add template switching to SelectTheme for a long time, but I keep putting it off as I want to rewrite the whole plugin when I find the time.

  I've
been using the SelectStylesheetPlugin specifically because it allowed
changing templates (one for webview, one for authorview, one for
slideview - up until I switched to using P. Soares' plugin - but then,
it is based on a single-tiddler-presentation setup, which doesn't allow
deviation from script based upon audience demand / feedback).

I was actually working on another alternative to SinglePageMode a while back but didnt manage to get around to finishing it. The idea is to have a "tiddler viewer" in a single fixed unclosable tiddler, that allows you to use previous and next buttons to view all the tiddlers in your presentation. Then, you can diverge from the presentation, open other tiddlers, and at the end just go back to your presentation tiddler by using a "close all tiddlers" command.t
(Here is the work in progress version: http://lewcid.googlepages.com/NavGroupsDemo5.html#NavigatorTest}

Also, some of your slide tiddlers are quite long, with multiple images.
I guess you were scrolling down... did that work ok?  What about the
font?  I tried upping the font via my browser, but that made the left
hand sidebar (the menu) very big.  How did you handle that?

As I mentioned I wasnt the one making the presentation so I dont know much more than that it went well. As I recall, the presentation was a short one meant only to showcase the design and concept, and the content was meant to be read later by the relevant course instructor... so text readability was not an issue.

If the text were meant to be read during the presentation I would:
a) remove the MainMenu altogether, or provide a button to toggle it.
b) increase the default font size by using a css rule in the StyleSheet
c) Use the FontSizePlugin to provide controls for further finetuning of the font size if needed during the presentation. http://lewcid.googlepages.com/lewcid.html#FontSizePlugin

Cheers,
Saq

[Saq Imtiaz]

Sure thing, go for it!

Dave Gifford

[Saq Imtiaz]

Ok, here's a fully configured 'empty' copy of the presentation TW.
http://lewcid.googlepages.com/presentation_empty_full.html

Using it is as simple as:
1) add your content
2) edit the PresentationIndex tiddler to list the contents and order of your presentation.

If I've missed anything, let me know. Oh, and if you do end up using this, I'd love to see/hear about it!

Other 'advanced' notes: The navigationPlugin is very versatile in this version, which is not yet on LewcidTW. (no time to write documentation!). The main attraction is that it can accept either a list of tiddlers written as a bracketed list as a parameter to determine the content and order, OR it can accept a dynamic array of tiddlers or tiddler titles using evaluated parameters. This means you can do things like list the tiddlers for your presentation in a tiddler and use an evaluated parameter to get the order from there, or you can even use custom fields.

[Simon Baird]

I like this so much I made it available as a tiddlyspot flavour. I think it's the first "web mode" that really makes sense. Well done Saq.

http://tiddlyspot.com/

Simon.

--
Simon Baird <simon...@gmail.com>

[Saq Imtiaz]

On 12/18/06, Simon Baird <simon...@gmail.com> wrote:

I like this so much I made it available as a tiddlyspot flavour. I think it's the first "web mode" that really makes sense. Well done Saq.

http://tiddlyspot.com/

Simon.

Thanks for the kind words Simon!
Anyone suggestions for further improvement or refinement are more than welcome everyone.
Cheers,
Saq

[christianhauck]

I'm starting to undertstand it ... and then it improves even more, hard
to catch up (this is another way of saying "thanks", it's not a
complaint ;-)

>From my point of view, what would be nice, and we're quite close
already:
- ability to add the functionality to just ANY tiddlywiki (by importing
the respectiv tiddlers). Which means that there would need to be 3
modes and possibly associated styles: the one of the "host, "native"
TiddlyWiki (which should not be changed), plus the one for
presentation, plus the one for the author mode.
- multiple lists of tiddlers for the presenation. Already done with
PresentationIndex Tiddler, and even more by allowing for the dynamic
array options (your claim, I have not checked it). And since the
contenet of the presentationindex tiddler can easily be redirected to
another tiddler (entering there <<tiddler PresentationOne>> and having
a tiddler PresentationOne, another one called PresentationTwo, and so
on.. it would be easy to manage several presentations in one
TiddlyWiki.
- and, nice to have: if one could browse the presentation using the
left and right arrow keys of the computer in addition to finding the
botton at the bottom of the screen.

[Saq Imtiaz]

On 12/19/06, christianhauck <christian...@googlemail.com> wrote:

I'm starting to undertstand it ... and then it improves even more, hard
to catch up (this is another way of saying "thanks", it's not a
complaint ;-)

>From my point of view, what would be nice, and we're quite close
already:
- ability to add the functionality to just ANY tiddlywiki (by importing
the respectiv tiddlers). Which means that there would need to be 3
modes and possibly associated styles: the one of the "host, "native"
TiddlyWiki (which should not be changed), plus the one for
presentation, plus the one for the author mode.

You can already add the functionality to any TW just by importing the relevant tiddlers. I've provided the empty file for convenience since not everyone is comfortable with setting stuff like this up themselves. What I might do in the future, is tag the relevant tiddlers with "Presentation" or something similar, to make them easier to import. As for three modes..... I initially created this only for that particular presentation so to be honest I really havent given much though to more widespread uses. I can see that a dedicated 'presentation mode' might be handy for some, but I'm not convinced its really needed (any of the current theme/style switchers for TW would do the job). As for the native TW mode not being changed, one of the points was to make sure editing was disabled by default... since that has more applications than just for presentations. However, you could always switch the templates etc for both modes and reverse it.

- multiple lists of tiddlers for the presenation. Already done with
PresentationIndex Tiddler, and even more by allowing for the dynamic
array options (your claim, I have not checked it). And since the
contenet of the presentationindex tiddler can easily be redirected to
another tiddler (entering there <<tiddler PresentationOne>> and having
a tiddler PresentationOne, another one called PresentationTwo, and so
on.. it would be easy to manage several presentations in one
TiddlyWiki.

You can have as many presentations as you want already. No need to change anything in terms of code. Though it works a little differently than what you have described. The NavigationPlugin is what creates the previous and next buttons, in essence creating the presentation. You have to add an instance of the macro to the ViewTemplate for each presentation, and tell it what tiddlers to use.
This can be done inline like:

<div class='viewer' macro='navigation tiddlers:[[Tiddler1 Tiddler2 Tiddler3]]'></div>

or, using an evaluated parameter, you can feed it an array of tiddlers. In the case of the PresentationIndex tiddler, the tiddler list is fetched from it so:

<div class='viewer' macro='navigation tiddlers:{{store.getTiddlerText("PresentationIndex").readBracketedList()}}}'></div>

So you to add another presentation using an index tiddler called PresentationIndex2, just add the above macro call and change the "PresentationIndex" to PresentationIndex2.
Similarly, you could even just pick the tiddlers to include by tags etc.....

- and, nice to have: if one could browse the presentation using the
left and right arrow keys of the computer in addition to finding the
botton at the bottom of the screen.

That is something that I did consider but didnt get around to due to lack of time, but its on my tentative To Do list.
If you really want to use and be comfortable with this stuff.... I recommend you try to see it as a collection of plugins that each form a particular function, and complement each other. Because thats all it is! Then you can adapt and finetune to suit your needs.

To help with that, here's a breakdown of the most important plugins being used:
1) SinglePageModePlugin: makes sure that no more than one tiddler is open at a time. When a new tiddler is opened, the previous one is closed.
2) PresentationPlugin: disables editing by disable, and allows editing with #author:true at the end of the file name
3) NavigationPlugin: provides previous and next buttons between user defined groups of tiddlers.

Also, you might want to read up on evaluated parameters to better understand how they work.

Saq