[TWX] tiddler = filter

[Mat]

I shouldn't engage in yet another topic without having cleared up other discussions I'm involved in...

...but this little bit of serendipity is just too darn interesting to resist sharing:

Could a tiddler ID really be a filter? ...and the tiddler body display the text from all those filtered tiddlers!

This means a tiddler is either an encapsulated list-filter-transclusion of other tiddlers or it is a "leaf" tiddler.

The idea addresses both encapsulation and presentation. It expands the concept of tiddlers but is still true to tiddler philosophy. The resulting unit is exactly the smallest meaningful unit of information - for the current situation! 

This filter string is unique, i.e can serve as an ID.

The simplest filter string would, just like now, constitute a tiddler title. 

Complex tiddlers can be included in yet other complex tiddlers by means of the tiddler title which merely serves as a label for the filter (more on "labels" further down).

Currently, presenting narrative text in TW is a rather manual process involving either explicit authoring of transclusion commands or listwidgets with such inside. Or to make some special viewtemplate do the listing. - Or, view the story river to constitute the narrative, in which case you deal with a rather ephemeral ephemeral narrative that the reader (not you) controls (i.e closing of tiddlers). A the story river is of course visually chunked up in tiddlers.

The OP here would still allow for all of this. It would be a superset to it.

If you want the minimal chunk of info, as we currently view a tiddler, you've got it. But when 'the minimal' for your situation requires a complex information, then it would be superior if TW "natively" can present this 'situational minimal'.

Links

In current TW, the general syntax for a link is of course

[[label|tiddler title]] with special cases [[tiddler title]] or TiddlerTitle

For the OP, imaginable general syntax forms might instead be:

[[label|filter]] ...example [[students|tag[student]]]

[label[filter]] ...example [students[tag[student]]]

[label|filter] ...example [students|tag[student]]

...and I think the special cases without labels would be easy to fit into these.

So clicking such a link, opens one tiddler showing the content from all the filter output tiddlers. If the filter yields no output then you get the "missing tiddler" template. But if there is any output tiddler, then this content is seen.

This display can be temporary, just like common generated lists. It makes no difference for the viewer if the tiddler is stored or temporarily or stored. This means links to not-yet-generated tiddlers should probably appear like normal tiddlers unless, perhaps, the filter output is empty. 

Tiddlers

What is the title of a tiddler, once it is opened? - The label.

And the filter string could be stored in the tiddler itself or maybe (for faster systemic access?) in some global directory.

When the tiddler is to be used inside some other filter, the label is used and parsed(?) into the filter string it represents.

This, still, means that labels - i.e tiddler titles - must be unique, and they can be overwritten , just like today.

The simplest filter is an empty filer, i.e only a label. Just like today. BTW, this would mean the tiddler is a "leaf tiddler" as it doesn't display any other tiddlers content.

What is the content of a non-leaf tiddler, in edit mode? Well, the equivalent transclusion of the filtered tiddlers presented in edit mode. (I've actually dabbled with this in our current system using edittext widgets and it is really cool, but the idea here is to have it be native functionality.)

This would 

• make TW more suitable for narrative applications like creating documents or "multi page things". Currently, TW is a kind of "digital post-it note manager". The OP would widen TW to also be a kind of document manager. 
  
• lower the threshold to use TW: An absolute noob can create a "document" by using the filter "part1 part2 part3" and three days later "[tag[doc]sort[]]", whereas <$list filter=... {{!!title}}..." is probably not noob stuff at all.
  
• ...and, related, TW would be more usable as a static site generator
  
• ...also related; extremely simple bundling and drag'n dropping of multiple tiddlers, i.e you just drag the tiddler... bundling won't even be a concept as it's automatic. And it doesn't even have to be an existing tiddler but improvised by just creating a link (i.e a filter) as described above.
  

Thoughts?

<:-)

[Joshua Fontany]

The filter would go in the text field, as you get a warning if you use square or curly braces or the pipe-character in a title field.

"Warning: avoid using any of the characters | [ ] { } in tiddler titles."

[Mat]

Joshua - yeah, sorry, the whole post is about a concept for an imaginary future version of TW, therefore referred to as "TWX" in headline.

I'm hoping to hear if it at all makes sense, why it would be a bad idea or a good idea, possible implications, etc.

<:-)

[PMario]

Hi Mat,

Very interesting thoughts. ... This is the first response!

-------------

If someone would ask me: "What is this post about?" and I'm only allowed to answer it with one sentence. I'd say:

"As I understand it, it's a proposal for: How can we simplify TiddlyWiki, that new users can create

 - structured stories,
 - export content eg: into 'stand alone' web sites and
 - compose or re-compose 'stories' with a simple drag and drop mechanism."

or a little bit more techy:  "A proposal for: How can we abstract complexity away from end users, to improve TiddlyWiki onboarding."

.... That's what I see, if I ignore the "solution oriented" content (for the moment.)

.... more to follow ;)

have fun!
mario

[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Mat

This is interesting stuff. I think here you’re not so much redefining a tiddler as redefining what we see in the story river. Instead of the story river being defined as a list of tiddler titles, you’ve got a list of filters, and each “block” in the story column is the concatenation of tiddlers.

I think you could actually go quite far with investigating this approach using the existing TW5 codebase. The hard part would be navigation/editing etc.: the things handled by the navigator widget.

TWX isn’t so much about figuring out how to get TW5 to do more, it’s driven by a desire to make it simpler and more internally consistent, without the redundancy that characterises it today.

Some of the problems I’m thinking about are how to unify the similar-but-different mechanisms of transcluding macros vs. transcluding tiddlers, and ways to avoid having to use text substitution within macros.

Could a tiddler ID really be a filter? ...and the tiddler body display the text from all those filtered tiddlers!

This means a tiddler is either an encapsulated list-filter-transclusion of other tiddlers or it is a "leaf" tiddler.

This duality feels complex and lumpy. An abstraction that explicitly takes multiple contradictory forms is often best thought of as multiple separate abstractions.

The idea addresses both encapsulation and presentation. It expands the concept of tiddlers but is still true to tiddler philosophy. The resulting unit is exactly the smallest meaningful unit of information - for the current situation! 

This filter string is unique, i.e can serve as an ID.

The simplest filter string would, just like now, constitute a tiddler title. 

Complex tiddlers can be included in yet other complex tiddlers by means of the tiddler title which merely serves as a label for the filter (more on "labels" further down).

Currently, presenting narrative text in TW is a rather manual process involving either explicit authoring of transclusion commands or listwidgets with such inside. Or to make some special viewtemplate do the listing. - Or, view the story river to constitute the narrative, in which case you deal with a rather ephemeral ephemeral narrative that the reader (not you) controls (i.e closing of tiddlers). A the story river is of course visually chunked up in tiddlers.

The OP here would still allow for all of this. It would be a superset to it.

If you want the minimal chunk of info, as we currently view a tiddler, you've got it. But when 'the minimal' for your situation requires a complex information, then it would be superior if TW "natively" can present this 'situational minimal’.

I’m still not clear. How would I turn an ordinary tiddler into a filtered tiddler? Just make sure that it’s title is a valid filter?

Links

In current TW, the general syntax for a link is of course

[[label|tiddler title]] with special cases [[tiddler title]] or TiddlerTitle

For the OP, imaginable general syntax forms might instead be:

[[label|filter]] ...example [[students|tag[student]]]

[label[filter]] ...example [students[tag[student]]]

[label|filter] ...example [students|tag[student]]

That format isn’t compatible with the present syntax; how would we distinguish the single tiddler vs. list form?

I’ve always expected that filtered links would use triple square brackets [[[ [tag[MyTag]] ]]]. But I don’t think that filtered links are particularly useful for navigating.

...and I think the special cases without labels would be easy to fit into these.

So clicking such a link, opens one tiddler showing the content from all the filter output tiddlers. If the filter yields no output then you get the "missing tiddler" template. But if there is any output tiddler, then this content is seen.

This display can be temporary, just like common generated lists. It makes no difference for the viewer if the tiddler is stored or temporarily or stored. This means links to not-yet-generated tiddlers should probably appear like normal tiddlers unless, perhaps, the filter output is empty. 

I’m not sure I follow all of this. A storyboard might help?

Tiddlers

What is the title of a tiddler, once it is opened? - The label.

What does it mean “once it is opened” Does the title change when it is opened? What is the difference between a label and an ID?

And the filter string could be stored in the tiddler itself or maybe (for faster systemic access?) in some global directory.

Hmmm if it’s just a field then it doesn’t seem very fundamental. If it’s stored somewhere else aren’t we breaking the basic encapsulation property of tiddlers?

When the tiddler is to be used inside some other filter, the label is used and parsed(?) into the filter string it represents.

I’m not sure exactly what that means. When is a tiddler used inside a filter?

This, still, means that labels - i.e tiddler titles - must be unique, and they can be overwritten , just like today.

The simplest filter is an empty filer, i.e only a label. Just like today. BTW, this would mean the tiddler is a "leaf tiddler" as it doesn't display any other tiddlers content.

Erm, an empty filter is an empty string isn’t it? Do you mean something like a degenerate filter that only identifies a single tiddler?

What is the content of a non-leaf tiddler, in edit mode? Well, the equivalent transclusion of the filtered tiddlers presented in edit mode. (I've actually dabbled with this in our current system using edittext widgets and it is really cool, but the idea here is to have it be native functionality.)

That makes sense.

This would 

• make TW more suitable for narrative applications like creating documents or "multi page things". Currently, TW is a kind of "digital post-it note manager". The OP would widen TW to also be a kind of document manager. 
  
• lower the threshold to use TW: An absolute noob can create a "document" by using the filter "part1 part2 part3" and three days later "[tag[doc]sort[]]", whereas <$list filter=... {{!!title}}..." is probably not noob stuff at all.
  
• ...and, related, TW would be more usable as a static site generator
  
• ...also related; extremely simple bundling and drag'n dropping of multiple tiddlers, i.e you just drag the tiddler... bundling won't even be a concept as it's automatic. And it doesn't even have to be an existing tiddler but improvised by just creating a link (i.e a filter) as described above.
  

You might need to expand the logic for all four of those. Fundamentally, this proposal hugely complicates the operation of the story river and of tiddlers. I struggle to think that it would be easier for beginners to learn.

Best wishes

Jeremy

Thoughts?

<:-)

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[Mat]

@PMario

I agree with your points even if your point about re-composing stories via DnD was not in my - but that would be a great addition!!!

or a little bit more techy:  "A proposal for: How can we abstract complexity away from end users, to improve TiddlyWiki onboarding."

True. Many have pointed out the steep learning curve for TW. I think complexity can be hidden or at least postponed for newbies. (A main area for this, which is not in this OP, is more graphic oriented UI.)

 

.... That's what I see, if I ignore the "solution oriented" content (for the moment.)

Yes, the "solutions" are mostly an attempt to clarify the concept.  

.... more to follow ;)

Looking forward to it!

<:-)

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Mat, PMario & Jeremy

I don't have skill to comment on the technical changes you suggest.

I DO have, I think, competence enough to say a couple of things about functional outcomes, whether now or in a "TWX".

I strongly believe that the "FRAGMENT MODEL" of TW--building wholes from small bits--whilst good--ALSO needs complementing with a clearer "WHOLES MODEL". Most ordinary uses think in terms of final objectives and, at the moment, it can be hard to get a clear sense of HOW you get bits to mesh into wholes. Anything that eases that would be a good outcome IMO. One that might also help increase the userbase.

Mat put it like this:

make TW more suitable for narrative applications like creating documents or "multi page things". Currently, TW is a kind of "digital post-it note manager". The OP would widen TW to also be a kind of document manager.

PMario like this:

 - structured stories,
 - export content eg: into 'stand alone' web sites and
 - compose or re-compose 'stories' with a simple drag and drop mechanism."

One quite large part of that same functional issue--making WHOLES--I found, slowly through experience, is how ID's function in TW.  They work differently than in normal web pages being reserved for Tiddler Titles. It makes it much HARDER to generate longer web pages with built in navigation. Its also counter what most everything else is doing so newbies more used to the normal approach can struggle with it. Though to solve that I see that would needs be more a "TWX" innovation than a TW5 one?

Best wishes
Josiah

[Mat]

On Friday, October 6, 2017 at 7:45:56 PM UTC+2, Jeremy Ruston wrote:

I think you could actually go quite far with investigating this approach using the existing TW5 codebase. The hard part would be navigation/editing etc.: the things handled by the navigator widget.

I think the proplems you see with navigation/editing may just be from a misunderstanding about what my proposal is, as I will clarify below here. In my mind there should be no such difficulties.

 

[..]Some of the problems I’m thinking about are how to unify the similar-but-different mechanisms of transcluding macros vs. transcluding tiddlers,

Simple! One macro per tiddler - as outlined in the "tiddler = encapsulation paradigm" thread. At least I can't see why that would not be a good approach to this problem.

 

Could a tiddler ID really be a filter? ...and the tiddler body display the text from all those filtered tiddlers!

This means a tiddler is either an encapsulated list-filter-transclusion of other tiddlers or it is a "leaf" tiddler.

This duality feels complex and lumpy. An abstraction that explicitly takes multiple contradictory forms is often best thought of as multiple separate abstractions.

Actually, it is only one form: the ID is a filter. The "leaf tiddler" is also a filter, but the special case of a filter containing a single title. I merely refer to it as "leaf tiddler" due to our current frame of reference where I need to make a distinction. 

 

I’m still not clear. How would I turn an ordinary tiddler into a filtered tiddler? Just make sure that it’s title is a valid filter?

An "ordinary tiddler" wouldn't turn into a "filtered tiddler". All tiddlers would be "filtered tiddlers". A filtered tiddler IS an ordinary tiddler, just like if a current tiddler has an extra field.  Currently, a tiddler is(?) a listing of some fields. This list is based on a filter. The OP idea is the same, but the filter simply lists (+transcludes) multiple "text" fields. 

For the sake of clarity, we should separate the term "title" into "name" and "ID"... or more technically terms, "label" and "filter string". The special case is when no label is given; then the filter string serves both as the filter argument and as the label.

Using one of the imagined syntaxes here is an example:

FooBar = [[FooBar]] ...these are the special cases where there is no label so the name of the tiddler is literally the filter string, which is also its ID.

[[FooBar|FooBar]] ...this would give the same result because the label is the same as the filter string, i.e same as the tiddlers ID.

Here come more interesting cases:

[[Foo bar|tag[xx] Gronk]]  ...this tiddler, named (labeled) "Foo bar" will show the content from all tiddlers tagged "xx" and the content from some other tiddler named (labeled) Gronk.

The latter tiddler, i.e Gronk, may in turn have been defined - i.e have its ID - as, say, the string "tag[yy]".

Thus, for rendering of "Foo bar", its unique ID string "tag[xx] Gronk" translates into the string "tag[xx] tag[yy]" (or, more correctly, "[tag[xx]] [tag[yy]]").

And the text of "Foo bar" is the same as the output from {{{ [tag[xx]] [tag[yy]] +[get[text]] }}}

Links

[...various examples of imaginable syntax...]

That format isn’t compatible with the present syntax; how would we distinguish the single tiddler vs. list form?

I expressed myself poorly; those are intended to be three different imaginable syntaxes. For the sake of continued discussion we can assume, say, the first syntax, i.e:

[[<label>|<filter>]]

 

I hope my previous comments clarified that there there is no distinction between "single tiddler" and "list form".

I’ve always expected that filtered links would use triple square brackets [[[ [tag[MyTag]] ]]]. But I don’t think that filtered links are particularly useful for navigating.

You would not navigate "inside" a tiddler any more than what you do today (i.e you don't). Or at least, that is a separate issue. 

The displayed content in a tiddler is the content of that tiddler, just as much as any other fields in that tiddler contitutes that tiddler. 

You would (presumably) not see the the titles (ie. labels) of the constituting tiddlers in a tiddler, which is one different from this type of tiddler and the story river. The tiddlers body lists only the texts from its constituting tiddlers.

So clicking such a link, opens one tiddler showing the content from all the filter output tiddlers. If the filter yields no output then you get the "missing tiddler" template. But if there is any output tiddler, then this content is seen.

This display can be temporary, just like common generated lists. It makes no difference for the viewer if the tiddler is stored or temporarily or stored. This means links to not-yet-generated tiddlers should probably appear like normal tiddlers unless, perhaps, the filter output is empty. 

I’m not sure I follow all of this. A storyboard might help?

Still needed?

Tiddlers

What is the title of a tiddler, once it is opened? - The label.

What does it mean “once it is opened” Does the title change when it is opened? What is the difference between a label and an ID?

Just the same as today; a tiddler is opened by clicking a link to it. The seen title does not change, it is the label. If no label was provided then it is the literal filter string.

 

The label is somewhat equivalent to todays prettylinks.

And the filter string could be stored in the tiddler itself or maybe (for faster systemic access?) in some global directory.

Hmmm if it’s just a field then it doesn’t seem very fundamental. If it’s stored somewhere else aren’t we breaking the basic encapsulation property of tiddlers?

It is a field in the same sense that todays titles are fields. But, the possible idea with a global directory would be to use the label as the name and, when it is used as a filter argument, have it looked up / translated via a directory. This may be a bad idea - and would in deed make tiddlers less independent. Every tiddler would need access to such a directory or it would not know what to filter out for its body.

 

When the tiddler is to be used inside some other filter, the label is used and parsed(?) into the filter string it represents.

I’m not sure exactly what that means. When is a tiddler used inside a filter?

Hope the previous example with "Foo bar" clarified this.

 

The simplest filter is an empty filer, i.e only a label. Just like today. BTW, this would mean the tiddler is a "leaf tiddler" as it doesn't display any other tiddlers content.

Erm, an empty filter is an empty string isn’t it? Do you mean something like a degenerate filter that only identifies a single tiddler?

Sorry, I expressed it poorly; I could just as well have said a filter without a label. A label without a filter is equivalent and is interpreted as a filter. I.e  [[Foo bar]] is interpreted as a filter, if it is called in a filter and as a label when it comes to putting a name on the tiddler.

...

As requested, here is "expanded logic" for the last bullet points:

This would 

• make TW more suitable for narrative applications like creating documents or "multi page things". Currently, TW is a kind of "digital post-it note manager". The OP would widen TW to also be a kind of document manager. 
  

It would make narratives/stories (i.e complex tiddlers) be a first class citizens because they would be treated as regular tiddlers... because they would BE regular tiddlers. Currently, to present the content of several tiddlers is a "manual" process. The OP would make it automatic as long as the user is able to define a tiddlers constituting filter.

• lower the threshold to use TW: An absolute noob can create a "document" by using the filter "part1 part2 part3" and three days later "[tag[doc]sort[]]", whereas <$list filter=... {{!!title}}..." is probably not noob stuff at all.
  

A tiddler would still be as simple to create as it is today. Everything that can be done today can also be done in this OP. But if the noob wants to "list the content of all tiddlers tagged doc" it would be simpler with the OP than currently. With the OP, he would only need to know the filter rather than using the listwidget + transclusions.

 

• ...and, related, TW would be more usable as a static site generator
  

Currently, to create a static site one exports the full river. This contains a lot of "special TW stuff" like the content being presented chunked up in tiddlers etc. If the user wants this he can still have it. But the OP makes it easier to export a more traditional one-page site because it would be enough to export one tiddler that shows the text from multiple other tiddlers. The output from exporting one tiddler looks much more normal than the output from several small tiddlers (unless you styled those small tiddlers).

 

• ...also related; extremely simple bundling and drag'n dropping of multiple tiddlers, i.e you just drag the tiddler... bundling won't even be a concept as it's automatic. And it doesn't even have to be an existing tiddler but improvised by just creating a link (i.e a filter) as described above.
  

The concept of bundling arose from a need to export multiple tiddlers in one go without having them be plugins, i.e without the use of (un-eraseable) shadow tiddlers. Currently, you can drag a single tiddler via its title link. And you can drag multiple tiddlers by tagging them and then dragging the common tag pill. The OP would  be the same as the former, i.e drag a tiddler via its title link BUT the tiddler would drag along all constituting tiddlers as if it was the drag-by-tag case. But no tagging is needed.

Hope this clarifies things more.

<:-)

[Pit.W.]

Re: http://graphs.tiddlyspot.com/

Hello Mat von TWaddle,

I am looking at the Scatter graph, and I wonder:
is it possible to have a graph, where beside the x and y values for the
2 axis, a third value is displyed by the size of the dot / bubble?

The idea isto have something like the Boston-Consulting matrix.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Consulting_Group#/media/File:Folio_Plot_BCG_Matrix_Example.png


Kind regards

Pit

[Mat]

(Pit, I'm trying to use the board feature to "reply privately" but it specifically doesn't work for your profile here. Maybe it's some setting you've done?)

Anyway, please start a separate thread for your question and delete this post of yours here, and I'll reply there. This thread is only about what the title says.

Thanx

<:-)

[codacoder...@outlook.com]

On Thursday, October 5, 2017 at 1:34:02 PM UTC-5, Mat wrote:

I shouldn't engage in yet another topic without having cleared up other discussions I'm involved in...

...but this little bit of serendipity is just too darn interesting to resist sharing:

Could a tiddler ID really be a filter? ...and the tiddler body display the text from all those filtered tiddlers!

This means a tiddler is either an encapsulated list-filter-transclusion of other tiddlers or it is a "leaf" tiddler.

Wow.  I mean WOW!  When I read that, paused, read it again (he didn't REALLY say that, did he?) I was truly gobsmacked.

OF.  COURSE.

That's... that's... well, meta-dogfooding?  It makes so much sense!

 

The idea addresses both encapsulation and presentation. It expands the concept of tiddlers but is still true to tiddler philosophy.

Actually, (apart from the obvious syntactic differences) it's more like LISP philosophy in many ways...

 

The resulting unit is exactly the smallest meaningful unit of information - for the current situation! 

You're using a loaded term there "situation" -- by which, I think you mean, "at the point at which a rendering needs to be made".  Or did I misunderstand?

 

This filter string is unique, i.e can serve as an ID.

yep.

 

The simplest filter string would, just like now, constitute a tiddler title. 

ok.

 

Complex tiddlers can be included in yet other complex tiddlers by means of the tiddler title which merely serves as a label for the filter (more on "labels" further down).

Currently, presenting narrative text in TW is a rather manual process involving either explicit authoring of transclusion commands or listwidgets with such inside. Or to make some special viewtemplate do the listing. - Or, view the story river to constitute the narrative, in which case you deal with a rather ephemeral ephemeral narrative that the reader (not you) controls (i.e closing of tiddlers). A the story river is of course visually chunked up in tiddlers.

The OP here would still allow for all of this. It would be a superset to it.

Yes.  Got it.  But in addition, you're moving some of the means to construct some of the parts into the title field (instead of always having to do that construction in the text field "somewhere").  Right?

 

If you want the minimal chunk of info, as we currently view a tiddler, you've got it. But when 'the minimal' for your situation requires a complex information, then it would be superior if TW "natively" can present this 'situational minimal'.

The tiddler title is run as a filter, it's run result is "passed on" -- repeat until only leaf node(s) remain.  Right?

 

Links

In current TW, the general syntax for a link is of course

[[label|tiddler title]] with special cases [[tiddler title]] or TiddlerTitle

For the OP, imaginable general syntax forms might instead be:

[[label|filter]] ...example [[students|tag[student]]]

[label[filter]] ...example [students[tag[student]]]

[label|filter] ...example [students|tag[student]]

...and I think the special cases without labels would be easy to fit into these.

So clicking such a link, opens one tiddler showing the content from all the filter output tiddlers. If the filter yields no output then you get the "missing tiddler" template.

I imagine that could get annoying if offered a missing tiddler for a complex, unwieldy filter.  But it would at least follow the "standard" behavior, I guess.

 

But if there is any output tiddler, then this content is seen.

Just like macros and templates work right now -- output does not reflect 1-1 with input.  That's fine.

 

This display can be temporary, just like common generated lists. It makes no difference for the viewer if the tiddler is stored or temporarily or stored. This means links to not-yet-generated tiddlers should probably appear like normal tiddlers unless, perhaps, the filter output is empty. 

Implementation detail.

 

Tiddlers

What is the title of a tiddler, once it is opened? - The label.

And the filter string could be stored in the tiddler itself or maybe (for faster systemic access?) in some global directory.

Not sure about that.  Could become slow(er).  Certainly sounds bad for scaling.

 

When the tiddler is to be used inside some other filter,

i.e. when it is supplied as part of a rendering process...

 

the label is used and parsed(?) into the filter string it represents.

This, still, means that labels - i.e tiddler titles - must be unique, and they can be overwritten , just like today.

 

yep

 

The simplest filter is an empty filer, i.e only a label. Just like today.

Well, actually, I see that as a filter that results in itself - i.e. [[mytitle]]

 

BTW, this would mean the tiddler is a "leaf tiddler" as it doesn't display any other tiddlers content.

yep.

 

What is the content of a non-leaf tiddler, in edit mode? Well, the equivalent transclusion of the filtered tiddlers presented in edit mode. (I've actually dabbled with this in our current system using edittext widgets and it is really cool, but the idea here is to have it be native functionality.)

That scares me.  Are you saying the UX would be the current TW UI would open all the production for editing?  I hope you mean it opens the constituent parts for editing.

This would 

• make TW more suitable for narrative applications like creating documents or "multi page things". Currently, TW is a kind of "digital post-it note manager". The OP would widen TW to also be a kind of document manager. 
  

Agreed 100%. Getting round that is time consuming, atm.

• lower the threshold to use TW: An absolute noob can create a "document" by using the filter "part1 part2 part3" and three days later "[tag[doc]sort[]]", whereas <$list filter=... {{!!title}}..." is probably not noob stuff at all.
  

+1

• ...and, related, TW would be more usable as a static site generator
  
• ...also related; extremely simple bundling and drag'n dropping of multiple tiddlers, i.e you just drag the tiddler... bundling won't even be a concept as it's automatic. And it doesn't even have to be an existing tiddler but improvised by just creating a link (i.e a filter) as described above.
  

+1

 

Thoughts?

<:-)

Pretty awesome Mat.  Really.

Coda

[Jed Carty]

I like this idea and I agree with Jeremy, while this would represent a very different way of interacting with tiddlers in a wiki it doesn't require any changes so something very like this this could be made using tiddlywiki5. The implementation wouldn't be very different than how the calendar I made for the external brain experiment I did (http://ooktech.com/jed/externalbrain/#Calendar%20Archives), when you click on a date it creates a tiddler based on that date.

We could implement almost everything you are talking about my changing the statement from 'a tiddler is a filter' to 'a tiddler has a filter', each tiddler then could have a filter field, if the filter field is empty the value defaults to the filter that just contains that tiddlers title. Then we just need a view template that, instead of displaying the text field of the current tiddler, displays the text fields of all of the tiddlers returned by the current tiddlers filter, and if one of those tiddlers has a filter replace the text field with the text fields of all the tiddlers in that tiddlers filter, and so on.

There would be more to it of course, but the basic idea of 'each tiddler can be treated as a filter' can probably be implemented using current wikitext.

[Thomas Elmiger]

Hmmm

Sounds like new leafs on a fractal tree to me ;–)

Of course I am able to see a point in it. With my listereveal plugin I built something that goes one step in that direction. Just with the difference that the subtiddlers are all closed by default. And of course the filter has to be defined in a hidden place, …

“… the story river is of course visually chunked up in tiddlers.” – this on the other hand is just a matter of CSS as you know. So my first attempt would be to redesign the story and the tiddlers. I have seen solutions (by Jan) where you can save and load stories like documents.

Great discussion anyway!

Cheers,
Thomas

[Tobias Beer]

Hi Mat,

tl;dr, correct me if I'm wrong, but could it be that all it takes is a conditional ViewTemplate and a filter field?

All the rest remains as is. Ok, you may need a special template for your "filtered transclusion". No need for a different types of stories though or alternate link styles ...just "named filters" and you're set.

http://nested.tiddlyspot.com

best -tb