Prototyping an edit-by-sections plugin

234 views
Skip to first unread message

Evan Balster

unread,
Nov 3, 2019, 7:46:29 PM11/3/19
to TiddlyWiki
Hello, all —

I'm making a plugin to enable authoring tiddlers by sections in my wiki, and knowing that many other users have been interested in this functionality I'm sharing my prototype.  My goal was to make a long-form journaling workflow that adheres to the Philosophy of Tiddlers.

Sections appear below the tiddler body in both the edit and view interfaces, beginning with a small "add section" button in the edit interface.  Sections are tiddlers, named after the containing tiddler with a customizable suffix such as #1 or #13.4 (see plugin settings).  A single level of sub-sectons is supported.  New sections or subsections can be added when editing the parent tiddler, and edited at any time.

Screen Shot 2019-11-03 at 4.29.09 PM.png


Completed sections are designed to be clean and unobtrusive:


Screen Shot 2019-11-03 at 4.38.20 PM.png


This is just a prototype, so it's feature-sparse and is not necessarily bug-free.  But I've been using it happily for a few weeks.  My most recent change was to imitate TiddlyWiki's draft mechanism in order to properly support cancelable edits.  I invite feedback as I continue tinkering with this.


sections_plugin.tid

PMario

unread,
Nov 4, 2019, 10:05:53 AM11/4/19
to TiddlyWiki
On Monday, November 4, 2019 at 1:46:29 AM UTC+1, Evan Balster wrote:
Hello, all —

Hi Evan,

Long time no see! .. Nice that you are back!

Thx for sharing!

have fun!
mario

Diego Mesa

unread,
Nov 4, 2019, 11:36:08 AM11/4/19
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Evan!

Welcome back! This looks great! It reminds me of the following issues that have been in my mind for some time


I would love to get your thoughts on them, as well as how youre thinking is similar/differs from them!

Best,
Diego

---------------------------------------------------
EDIT
---------------------------------------------------

Ah I see now that these sections are indeed separate tiddlers. My idea/goal was to bring the philosophy of tiddlers down from the tiddler is the basic unit of information to a field as the basic unit.

TonyM

unread,
Nov 4, 2019, 6:30:11 PM11/4/19
to TiddlyWiki
Evan

Great to see you here. Your edit by sections work is I think at the edge of current user requirements. Its not rocket science but it needs to be easy to use, as you seem to be achieving. Good work.

In a similar vein I have being developing mechanisiums for what I have being calling "compound tiddlers". To cut a long story short key observations of my research suggest issuing a unique serial number to any compound tiddler then using this in a prefix when creating subtiddler or section tiddlers in your example. This allows a new namespace for each tiddler under which to store subtiddlers and permits the renaming of the parent or compound tiddler.

Later I plan to allow sections to be included from other compound tiddlers that act as instructions to the development of the current compound tiddler.

Regards
Tony

@TiddlyTweeter

unread,
Nov 6, 2019, 3:34:44 AM11/6/19
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Ciao Evan

Very interesting approach. I strongly believe that more "in context" creation and editing in TW would better support the "Philosophy of Tiddlers". At the moment the dominant work process in TW is ...

Fragments  -> Whole

... but with your approach one also gets closer to integrated ...

Whole -> Fragments

Semantically humans do both and switch cognitively easily between them.

Having methods of Tiddler auto-creation in context, without segway, is a great step to a better relationship to fragments.

There have been some other recent initiatives along same lines. 
When I get time I'll write a post about them.

Best wishes
TT

Joshua Fontany

unread,
Nov 7, 2019, 11:52:29 PM11/7/19
to TiddlyWiki
Welcome back!

This looks well designed, clean, and very useful. Mahalo (thanks!).

Best,
Josh F

Ste Wilson

unread,
Nov 8, 2019, 1:01:44 PM11/8/19
to TiddlyWiki
EVAN! just used your formula plug in! It's awesome. :)

Evan Balster

unread,
Nov 10, 2019, 7:26:18 PM11/10/19
to TiddlyWiki

Hello, all —


Here's a little update.  I've been continuing work on the plugin with some attention to feel and good implementation.  Version 0.0.2 styles the buttons in a way more consistent with the wiki, introduces a smaller floating add-subsection button and hides some things away in a "view info" popout.  It's fully compatible with the previous version of the plugin.


Feedback is invited.


Screen Shot 2019-11-10 at 3.47.14 PM.png

sections_plugin_0_0_2.tid

@TiddlyTweeter

unread,
Nov 11, 2019, 2:37:35 AM11/11/19
to TiddlyWiki
Ciao Evan

Very good tool! Great for writing. 

My initial feedback concerns cosmetics.

Whilst "$:/plugins/ebalster/sections -> Settings" has a setting ("Enable Filter") that lets you switch-off the sectioning in view mode, but then you loose all the connections ...

... maybe an option for View Mode that hides (1) the buttons (2) indentation (3) boxes etc... 
In other words, that the result in View Mode would look the the same as it would be with normal manually entered transclusions. 
The advantage would be sectioned editing, yet normal viewing.

Hope that is clear.

Best wishes & Tx!
Josiah

 
Evan Balster wrote:

... Version 0.0.2


... Feedback is invited.

@TiddlyTweeter

unread,
Nov 11, 2019, 5:11:37 AM11/11/19
to TiddlyWiki
Ciao Evan

Further to last. 

Since this tool supports complex nested sectioning I was wondering two things ...

1 --  wondering if auto-numbering might have an option to add number at start, not end ... 
        e.g. something like ... 

 1  -- Title
            1.1 -- Title
             2 -- Title
 
2 -- I noticed that more complex nested sectioning (i.e. below 1.1 to 1.1.1 ) seems not directly supported 
      I'm wondering whether that could be possible?

Best wishes
Josiah

zemoxian

unread,
Nov 11, 2019, 1:23:19 PM11/11/19
to TiddlyWiki
Nested numbering could probably be done easiest using CSS.

I suppose you could set a variable that each child inherits along with computing it’s position in its parent’s list. A little more complex, I think than the CSS version. However, it might facilitate some interlinking that might go on. Like if you referred to a numbered section, you might want that number included in the link text, rather than just the tiddler’s title. Not sure that’s doable with CSS.

After that, I think you’re into JavaScript territory. I try to avoid that, but I do most of my stuff on my phone these days.

@TiddlyTweeter

unread,
Nov 11, 2019, 2:11:07 PM11/11/19
to TiddlyWiki
zemoxian wrote:
Nested numbering could probably be done easiest using CSS.

I suppose you could set a variable that each child inherits along with computing it’s position in its parent’s list. A little more complex, I think than the CSS version. However, it might facilitate some interlinking that might go on. Like if you referred to a numbered section, you might want that number included in the link text, rather than just the tiddler’s title. Not sure that’s doable with CSS.

Footnote on CSS numbering. I know from some experiments on other things that CSS numbering, though it looks beautiful, I don't think ever arrives in the DOM thing? I discovered this by doing some visually nice numbering I'd hoped to just cut-n-paste from screen--and quickly discovered that the cut kept everything EXCEPT the CSS generated numbers. 

Just a comment
TT 
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages