Invitation to TiddlyPip: an Apple App Store experiment

[Jeremy Ruston]

Do you have an idea for TiddlyWiki content that you think people might pay for?

Perhaps a technical manual? Or a guide for your city? Training materials for your company's field engineer force? Or maybe a manualisation of mental health intervention techniques?

Would you be interested in working together to create your multimedia TiddlyWiki content and wrap it up as an app that can be distributed and sold on the iPhone/iPad app store?

Here's the background for this invitation: I've recently finished my work with CTRLio. I'm very grateful to them for the support they've shown to my work on TiddlyWiki over the last 18 months. But now I need to find new sources of income to replace my salary. There's a few weeks in which I can consider some radical options, and this is one of them.

I want to explore the idea of building a commercial TiddlyWiki ecosystem on top of the Apple platform of iOS, the Mac and iCloud. I'm not making any moral or philosophical judgement about Apple's place in the world. I'm considering this plan just because the App Store is one of the places that someone like me may be able to make money.

This first step is simple: we create a framework for building iOS apps that provide a terrific, read-only user experience for interacting with TiddlyWiki documents. I'd want to support free or paid apps, with the possibility of using in-app purchases for premium content. It would be a way to deliver a highly custom, interactive user experience around multimedia content. We would be able to deliver free updates to the app and content via the app store update process.

Such a simple application would be the quickest way to get into the app store - I believe in just a few weeks. The aim would be for the app to be invisible without much of a discernible user interface, just providing the mechanisms for the content to take centre stage. It certainly shouldn't resemble the familiar default TiddlyWiki editing interface.

I'm open to suggestions about how to structure this from a business perspective. I'd need some upfront payment to fund the development, but hopfully we'd find a big enough handful of people that individual shares of the startup costs would be relatively small.

If enough people can provide the necessary commercial backing we can use TiddlyPip to publish Eric's "Inside TiddlyWiki: The Missing Manual".

Beyond simple read-only publishing, there would be a number of incremental improvements we could make once we see regular revenue:

# Support read/write functionality like annotations, with iCloud syncing between iOS devices.

# Support publishing custom, TiddlyWiki-based applications, such as tw5.scholars. It wouldn't appear to be a TiddlyWiki file: it would behave like a custom app for scholarly notetaking (including multi-device sync)

# Support quizzes and questionnaires, with content unlocked by successfully completing exercises

# Support reporting of progress to the TinCan API

# Support one-on-one student/educator interactions through the app. Students might buy an academic textbook along with tokens to ask the author 5 questions via messaging within the app.

# Create a full end-user application that enables the user to create and work with TiddlyWiki documents on iOS devices. This is really the ultimate goal from a development perspective. But it's a lot of work to create such an app with enough polish to stand out in the app store, and I'm not convinced there are enough people prepared to pay for apps like TiddlyWiki. But if we can bootstrap things via the content publishing route then we ought to be able to gain the time to make the app sufficiently polished and useful

It's fun thinking about the possibilities. But we need to take this journey as a series of small steps, and I need to quickly find out if there's any hope of completing the first step.

I need to know if there's anyone out there who might be prepared to put some money on the table based on their belief that they have content that could viably support this business model. So please let me know if you fit that description. Ideally, we'd find a handful of people which would make it easier to fund the initial development, until the app store revenues kick in.

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions,

Best wishes

Jeremy

--

Jeremy Ruston
mailto:jeremy...@gmail.com

[Danielo Rodríguez]

# Support publishing custom, TiddlyWiki-based applications, such as tw5.scholars. It wouldn't appear to be a TiddlyWiki file: it would behave like a custom app for scholarly notetaking (including multi-device sync)

Im particually interested on this scenario. Specially the multy-device sync. I wrote one manual for my company L1 and I used TW for allow readers to make notes using the Alberto's plugins.

# Create a full end-user application that enables the user to create and work with TiddlyWiki documents on iOS devices.

This is, of course, the most interesting  thing from my  point of view. But will this have multi-device sync also? And we should also support  multiple OS, like evernote does. This way we will have the ULTIMATE note taking app. With all the power of TW but with sync.

Having TW5 files that behaves like a standalone application (with its own icon on the apps box) it's something that I though several times about, and I'm definitively very interested on it.

Do you have plans to provide some kind of SDK or TW API? For example, if I want to build an application based on TW and shell it by myself on the store. With a % of the beneficts going to you or with some license.

Regards.

[Alex Hough]

>Do you have an idea for TiddlyWiki content that you think people might pay for?

I'll focus on the word "might"....

Soon I hope to start work on a tool for place managers. It will be based on the OMM I (with great help from Eric and Tobias and many others) developed a few years ago [1]

OMM has a questionnaire section which then diagnoses archetypal problems with organisations. The user then can read the diagnoses then rate how relevant they are to their organisation. I planned building the capacity for note taking: notes would be connected to questions and archetypes - but it never came to pass.

I have an abstract for the place management conference, and that abstract includes a design for a personal tool for place managers to help them with their job and the development of the organisation in which they are working.

Of course, my contribution to the place management and development literature will take the world by storm: I am anticipating a huge income from the selling of tools. :)

Generally speaking, I think the public has a good understanding of what an app is and understand that they pay for them. An app would work well alongside the TiddlyDesktop and vanilla TW.

Making it possible for the questionnaire to be delivered to a whole organisation, the questions tailored for each employee, results collected..... I think people would be interested. At the moment, if there is move to upgrade OMM, the main player is a .net outfit. Compatibility with other business intelligence software may also help persuade possible investors.

If Ambit were ported to iOS, it might be enough to silence doubters.

best wishes

Alex

[1] https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1316865/AlexHough/SCiO/OMM.Sept2010/ommHome.html

[2] http://www.placemanagement.org/

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[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Danielo

> Im particually interested on this scenario. Specially the multy-device sync. I wrote one manual for my company L1 and I used TW for allow readers to make notes using the Alberto's plugins.

Do you think L1 might be interesting in backing the development? :)

# Create a full end-user application that enables the user to create and work with TiddlyWiki documents on iOS devices.

This is, of course, the most interesting  thing from my  point of view.

Likewise.

 

But will this have multi-device sync also?

Yes, it would be an incremental development of the earlier apps. Starting minimal, adding features methodically to work towards the goal.

 

And we should also support  multiple OS, like evernote does. This way we will have the ULTIMATE note taking app. With all the power of TW but with sync.

TiddlyWiki would remain as cross-platform as it is now. Building these iOS tools would be about improving the user experience on Apple devices and taking advantage of the ecosystem infrastructure such as distribution and payments.

 

Having TW5 files that behaves like a standalone application (with its own icon on the apps box) it's something that I though several times about, and I'm definitively very interested on it.

Great. I think there's an opportunity to experiment here, and we can move quite quickly to get a TiddlyWiki-based app into the app store. The only challenge is funding the development...

Do you have plans to provide some kind of SDK or TW API? For example, if I want to build an application based on TW and shell it by myself on the store. With a % of the beneficts going to you or with some license.

To begin with, I'm thinking TiddlyPip would be a proprietary Federatial thing. We would indeed need some sort of arrangement allowing customers to put the apps on the app store themselves, under their own name.

TiddlyPip might in the end be a bunch of open source components with Federatial being one of the companies involved in developing them and using them in commercial operations like publishing. 

Best wishes

Jeremy

 

Regards.

[Richard Smith]

Hi Jeremy,

This is very interesting.

Did you see the maths textbook that I posted a link to recently? https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/Tiddlywiki/math/tiddlywiki/ZwPkUCfDzqI/xWOCz0LrZ9QJ

I am interested in the possibility of deploying content like this in the app store, but it's open-source content and so the apps would be free - at least the basic content would be free, although I'm open to exploring the possibility of developing augmented versions of these books and/or discussing with the original authors the possibility of raising a small amount of revenue to cover development costs.

Nevertheless, you project is very interesting in general - I can think of several potential commercial applications, depending on where it leads.

individual shares of the startup costs would be relatively small.

How small is small? That's the million(?) dollar question :)

Regards,

Richard

[Jed Carty]

I would be very interested in helping out. Unfortunately I am not sure if I have anything significant to offer for a project like this. I am hoping to work with Richard on the textbook, and was looking into other similar texts that could be converted once the problems are worked out making this first one, so a generic interface for textbooks using tiddlywikis features could be a useful project to develop.

[Ed Dixon]

I think this is a fantastic idea that once running could be extended to other platforms such as android, and windows store ecosystems easily once established! We have a group of people on our xAPI cohort team from an educational company called IDS who might be very interested in leveraging your help integrating TiddlyWIki into their products on a commercial level. Not sure if you made the registration meeting today or not for the xAPI cohort event but they extending the registration time to allow us to organize. I would be happy to introduce you to them and allow those wheels to start spinning! They seem to be an awesome team. One of the products they offer is a tablet for Correctional Education which is how I got to know them through my work with the Foundation for Learning Equality but, because an NDA/NCA was needed we are still sorting out are options in how to best provide Khan Academy to them and I do not have details regarding the platform. Knowing how easily these can be converted into android apps and how flexible TW5 is, I don't see the platform being an issue?  

I am with Richard though, my main thing in all of this is supporting teachers and student by better leveraging the huge libraries of free open educational content out there and available now.

Excellent idea! 

[Mat]

Interesting and unexpected.

If you don't mind, can I ask how this would play with the open source dev of TW? I mean, what if you or some skilled developers here 'code TW-stuff but that really also deals with or solves needs we have in TW (say, macros, widgets, interface issues or even applications... "photo gallery", "atom feeder", ...) - would these solutions then be proprietary outside of TW? Might such an endeavour actually hamper regular TW development?

Do you have an idea for TiddlyWiki content that you think people might pay for? [...] This first step is simple: we create a framework for building iOS apps that provide a terrific, read-only user experience for interacting with TiddlyWiki documents.

The specified restrictions make it sound like you already have something specific in mind for this stage - or are you asking if someone has an idea *and* that it fulfills this? (To which my answer is 'yes, of course I do', btw).
 
 

[...] hopfully we'd find a big enough handful of people that individual shares of the startup costs would be relatively small. [...]  I need to know if there's anyone out there who might be prepared to put some money on the table based on their belief that they have content that could viably support this business model.

An alternative route might be to combine these two, i.e someone might have a great idea that others would be willing to help fund. Or is that what you mean (as opposed to many individuals funding their own ideas)?  ...in a way a crowdfunding scheme...

<:-)

[RichShumaker]

Side note / disclaimer I already own TWEdit and I would pay for a version by you that is TW5 based.

I also own (it is free) As Noted which has roots in TW.

Most of my efforts are 'not for profit' endeavors as that is the charter on Khan, TED, VI Hart, and I am thinking about making my content on Contact Juggling open source as well.

So those options would be silly as you couldn't monetize them, or I don't think you can.

I think that having a 'free' version of TW5 by you(Jeremy the creator of TW) and then 'upgrades(in app purchases)' to do different things like a GTD version could definitely work.

As I stated I would buy your App as just TW5 so if you make it I will buy it, unless you go crazy on price, originally the linked app was $999.

I think this is a very viable business model and if I can come up with more 'ideas' that could be monetized I will let you know.

Also have you thought about using this idea as a crowd sourced funded project?

Rich Shumaker

[Ed Dixon]

Another interesting approach might be something like this http://classroom-aid.com/mobile-learning-authoring/claro-pricing-vs-features/ where extended capabilities needed for comercial purposes are added as a premium feature and are not a part of the opensource effort if you wanted to go that route? I met the author through my affiliation with FLE and invited him to join our cohort team and he accepted a while back. Not sure he made the kickoff but I will try to reconnect. I just discovered how well versed he is with the xAPI spec he could be a huge help to us! 

On Friday, January 30, 2015 at 4:59:01 AM UTC-7, Jeremy Ruston wrote:

[Jeremy Ruston]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Detailed responses below.

> Mat: would these solutions then be proprietary outside of TW? Might such an endeavour actually hamper regular TW development?

TiddlyPip would be a set of tools that work with TiddlyWiki to create these custom iOS applications. They would initially be proprietary to Federatial (which isn't just me; the idea of Federatial is to allow the community to congregate as a semi-formal team to do commercial things).

The existence of TiddlyPip wouldn't threaten TiddlyWiki in any way: it augments TiddlyWiki, and relies on it for the core functionality. Eventually, when TiddlyPip gets to the point of being a general purpose TiddlyWiki environment similar to TiddlyDesktop, it will benefit everyone in the community.

So, yes, TiddlyPip is a commercial proposal. It needs to be to solve the immediate problem of being able to support myself with TiddlyWiki development (as opposed to getting a job with another organisation). But it rests on top of TiddlyWiki, with a symbiotic relationship: TiddlyPip enables Jeremy and others in the community to support themselves, which enables TiddlyWiki to keep improving and becoming more useful, which helps TiddlyPip to become better.

> Mat: I mean, what if you or some skilled developers here 'code TW-stuff but that really also deals with or solves needs we have in TW (say, macros, widgets, interface issues or even applications... "photo gallery", "atom feeder", ...) - would these solutions then be proprietary outside of TW? Might such an endeavour actually hamper regular TW development?

I think you're asking if TiddlyPip might create TiddlyWiki components that were proprietary to TiddlyPip. I wouldn't expect that to happen because the thing that makes TiddlyPip viable is TiddlyWiki, and it's cross platform nature. Think of TiddlyPip as being like a custom browser, just like TiddlyDesktop. People preparing content for TiddlyPip would use the same plugins as regular TiddlyWiki.

> From Mat: The specified restrictions make it sound like you already have something specific in mind for this stage - or are you asking if someone has an idea *and* that it fulfills this? (To which my answer is 'yes, of course I do', btw).

I don't have any specific ideas for content to publish using TiddlyPip. I'm asking for people who think they have content that is sufficiently valuable that it can be packaged as a paid app (or in app purchase). This is about working together to raise revenue from getting content on the app store.

If writing the worlds best hypertext guide to the songs of Taylor Swift was a guaranteed success then I'd be happy to do that. For me, this is about finding short term revenue generation opportunities that will fund the gradual development of the killer iOS app for TiddlyWiki.

> An alternative route might be to combine these two, i.e someone might have a great idea that others would be willing to help fund. Or is that what you mean (as opposed to many individuals funding their own ideas)?  ...in a way a crowdfunding scheme...

I'm not against crowdfunding, but I know from working with Eric's campaign that it's relatively slow to run a formal campaign. Maybe it's what we'd do in three months when we've got a couple of apps in the app store that people can try out?

> From Alex: Of course, my contribution to the place management and development literature will take the world by storm: I am anticipating a huge income from the selling of tools. :)

Alex may be in a similar position to others in the group, having created content that represents an enormous creative effort but may not have a large enough audience to generate enough cash through the app store to pay for its publication. Perhaps Alex would like to see the material on the app store so that it can reach the largest audience in the most compelling way, and might be prepared to pay the necessary costs to allow it to be distributed as a free app. If TiddlyPip were up and running, I'd have thought that it should be viable to publish free apps for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. There's always the possibility that some particularly valuable segment of the content be packaged to require an "in app purchase" to unlock, providing a revenue stream.

> From Alex: Making it possible for the questionnaire to be delivered to a whole organisation, the questions tailored for each employee, results collected..... I think people would be interested. At the moment, if there is move to upgrade OMM, the main player is a .net outfit. Compatibility with other business intelligence software may also help persuade possible investors.

This sounds like a business opportunity where the capabilities of TiddlyPip would be a component. If TiddlyPip were up and running then we could put the sort of material that you'd need for a joint bid on federatial.com.

> From Richard: Did you see the maths textbook that I posted a link to recently? 

Yes it's a beautiful piece of work and I thoroughly enjoyed digging around in it.

> I am interested in the possibility of deploying content like this in the app store, but it's open-source content and so the apps would be free - at least the basic content would be free, although I'm open to exploring the possibility of developing augmented versions of these books and/or discussing with the original authors the possibility of raising a small amount of revenue to cover development costs.

Excellent. Again, similarly to Alex, the problem is just getting the cash together for the initial development costs.

>> individual shares of the startup costs would be relatively small.

> From Richard: How small is small? That's the million(?) dollar question :)

Let's imagine that 20 people who were prepared to pay $1,000 to get their content onto the app store as a free app; that would certainly fund getting the 20 apps onto the store (remember, these are just plain full screen TiddlyWiki experiences; the app wouldn't be adding any cool functionality).

The difficulty is that I'm trying to replace a decent London salary for a senior technology job; this is only worth doing if I can make it into an ongoing revenue stream for me (and hopefully others).

That's why I was initially seeing the idea in terms of a publishing partnership with a revenue stream, and it depends on people in the community having ideas for content that people will pay cash for. But other models are certainly possible.

> From Ed: We have a group of people on our xAPI cohort team from an educational company called IDS who might be very interested in leveraging your help integrating TiddlyWIki into their products on a commercial level. Not sure if you made the registration meeting today or not for the xAPI cohort event but they extending the registration time to allow us to organize. I would be happy to introduce you to them and allow those wheels to start spinning!

Terrific, please do.

> From Rich: I think that having a 'free' version of TW5 by you(Jeremy the creator of TW) and then 'upgrades(in app purchases)' to do different things like a GTD version could definitely work.

Yes, I agree, but we wouldn't be able to do that until we get to the point where TiddlyPip is a full scale TiddlyWiki working environment like TiddlyDesktop. The idea of content publishing is to raise revenue to be able to bootstrap that development.

Best wishes

Jeremy.

[Peter Miller]

I'm not Apple-based and don't have anything substantive to offer other than goodwill. I am guessing you will need to differentiate from other platforms and I would suggest your USP should be to support some kind of recommendation engine that allows students and/or staff to build a text incrementally and perhaps collaboratively rather than solely deliver monolithic texts. Some solution for delivering paper-based versions would also be good -- students still like them!

Best wishes

Peter

[HansWobbe]

I have many of the resources needed to support the development of a set of Real Estate applications, particularly in Canada as an initial focus.  Small incremental steps would be quite acceptable, especially if a working Pilot/Prototype could be available in time for the 2015-Spring market (which starts mate 2015-03).

If this line of business is of interest, a possible "next step" might be able to chat via a hangout

Cheers,
Hans

[ParisWiki]

Jeremy,

Excellent ! That is a great step forward ! There is a definite need to address the mobile tools, smarphones and tablets.

As you know, and upon your advice, I within the last three months worked with Eric in order to run a mockup for Android by using the Phonegap/ Cordova service by Adobe (which provides also "translation" to IOS). 
His first demo for me worked very well. So well that I have been thinking of much more interactions with the functionnalities of the smarphones that I had envisionned at first : reading GSM data, writing a log in the background, taking photos, using mailing function, etc.
So far I have not given priority to this project, since I am still demonstrating mockups to potential buyers (tour operators in my case).

But even if I understand that you may give priority to IOS and the AppStore, I hope that your "intermediary platform" may be used with other operating systems.

Regarding your payment scheme, I am not totally convinced  since, if I understand correctly, you will not address specific and individual needs of potential clients like a consultant, but follow your own pace and your priorities (or those of the patrons of Federatial).  Which you did very brilliantly with TiddlyWiki. But when people like me were speaking of development they were interested in, very often you answered that it was a good idea but not in your immediate calendar of development. But I may not be correct on that !

Sincerely,

Jean-Claude

[Daniel Baird]

I like the idea that a buyer might actually pay for content delivered in a App-ified TW based on the promise of future updates to the content.

Your TWApp can contain reference documentation or whatever the user gets to refer to when they're offline, but it gets updated every few months (or weeks or years) with the latest info.  That seems like a high value proposition for something like API references, or legal handbooks, or price history references for real estate etc.

;Daniel

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objoke: I had a problem and decided to solve it with threading. Now, have problems. two I

[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Paris

Excellent ! That is a great step forward ! There is a definite need to address the mobile tools, smarphones and tablets.

Yes, this is something I've been itching to do ever since TiddlyWiki5 got out of beta.

 

As you know, and upon your advice, I within the last three months worked with Eric in order to run a mockup for Android by using the Phonegap/ Cordova service by Adobe (which provides also "translation" to IOS). 
His first demo for me worked very well. So well that I have been thinking of much more interactions with the functionnalities of the smarphones that I had envisionned at first : reading GSM data, writing a log in the background, taking photos, using mailing function, etc.
So far I have not given priority to this project, since I am still demonstrating mockups to potential buyers (tour operators in my case).

Creating apps that take advantage of native platform capabilities would be phase 2, after shipping basic read-only TiddlyWiki publications. It's an exciting area.

 

But even if I understand that you may give priority to IOS and the AppStore, I hope that your "intermediary platform" may be used with other operating systems.

Yes, the interest in iOS as the initial platform is because it seems to be where the money is. But I'd certainly want to cover Android too in due course.

Regarding your payment scheme, I am not totally convinced  since, if I understand correctly, you will not address specific and individual needs of potential clients like a consultant, but follow your own pace and your priorities (or those of the patrons of Federatial).  Which you did very brilliantly with TiddlyWiki. But when people like me were speaking of development they were interested in, very often you answered that it was a good idea but not in your immediate calendar of development. But I may not be correct on that !

The idea here is to tightly focus on very basic functionality: the presentation of a read-only TiddlyWiki (including media content) as an app, hopefully including the ability to tag certain content as an in-app purchase . Then the model is to expose that functionality as a service from Federatial. People who want to customise the service would be able to pay for the privilege.

In the past few years, the main thrust of my work on TiddlyWiki has been to get to the point of the basic functionality that was eventually released last September. I had to work on things like TiddlyFox and TiddlyDesktop in order to keep the ecosystem working, but my focus was implementing the basic functionality of standalone TiddlyWiki. 

Best wishes

Jeremy.

 

Sincerely,

Jean-Claude

Le vendredi 30 janvier 2015 12:59:01 UTC+1, Jeremy Ruston a écrit :

Do you have an idea for TiddlyWiki content that you think people might pay for?

[Atul Grover]

Dear all,

Can we have a way of monetizing the content delivered via plugins?

The plugin management system can be used for delivering customized content for individuals/corporate.

Can we monetize for educational/counseling services (via xAPI/LRD integration) for creating 'learning dashboards' etc?

Regards

Atul

['aint John]

Hi

I would love to be able to sell content on iOS using TiddlyWiki ecosystem.

Not too long ago posted a suggestion to Eric. Then removed it cos I don't know how the implementation of the "Business Model" should be.

Anyways, IMHO

You can't expect everyone in the world to donate money to you for your projects using Credit cards.

Besides, There are more good people in the world than there are people with credit cards. 

I would donate money in cash to a project if I can buy a 'tangible asset' like an 'iTunes card' from Bookstore or Shop.

I might also be able to sell such cards to well wishers in my 'social-network' who might not know much about these amazing projects or who might not want to use credit cards online.

It will work to spread word about tiddlywiki and get people to donate money without the need for a credit card.

--

Rainbow

I would if I could, but I can't so I won't.

മതം ഏതായാലും ഗുണം ഉണ്ടായാൽ മതി 

മദാമ്മയുടെ ഗുണം ഒളിച്ചിരിക്കില്ല 

[PMario]

On Tuesday, August 25, 2015 at 7:52:09 AM UTC+2, Atul Grover wrote:

Dear all,

Can we have a way of monetizing the content delivered via plugins?

IMO. Not really. You can hide your plugins behind a pay wall. So users can only download them if they have access.

The problem is:
 - As soon as someone has your plugin and they make this TW accessible from the web, your plugin can be freely accessed by everyone. 
 - You can forbid this usecase by applying a restrictive license. Which gives you some possibilities. But you'll need to put a lot of effort into watching the whole web and taking down sites, that illegally host your content.
   - so imo that's not doable for individuals.
   - This effort is super boring and may destroy all your revenue.
 

The plugin management system can be used for delivering customized content for individuals/corporate.

Yes ... but you have the same problem as above.
Delivering customized and supported content can be service, that you can offer, if you are able to build and manage server side portals.
 

Can we monetize for educational/counseling services (via xAPI/LRD integration) for creating 'learning dashboards' etc?

Yes. imo that's the only way, to get paid. If you offer different levels of service contracts. Training. Access to the latest and greatest content ...

 - So your plugins / content can have an open source or even a restrictive license but is publicly visible and usable without support.
 - Depending on the quality of the content, there may be a community of interested users, that provide "community support".
   - That's the way TW and many Open Source projects work.
   - The advantage for you is, that your content gets promoted and may be used by more people

 - Since the xAPI/LRD already needs a server side backend, to create any value, you could parnter with companies, who sell xAPI as a service. So they may be willing to share there revenue, if you bring new users and drive enough volume.
   - IMO this would be the easiest way, since you could use there infrastructure, user management and payment systems ...


just my 2 cents
mario

['aint John]

Hoping to see the "Tiddly Wiki Missing Manual on iOS" to prove the point that content can be protected from pirates and delivered on iOS as apps. It will work as a tool for demonstrating and learning Tiddlywiki on iOS.

But then, What better can Tiddlywiki ecosystem do than an indexed database like Filemaker on iOS cannot currently do ?

---

സായിപ്പിനിഷ്ടം മടത്തിലെ തൈര് 

On Friday, January 30, 2015 at 3:59:01 PM UTC+4, Jeremy Ruston wrote:

[RichardWilliamSmith]

I think the idea is for the Tiddlywiki manual to be given away for free. Jeremy seems to think that it will be fairly straightforward to put content in the app store using TW. It should be just as secure from 'pirates' as any other web-stack app ported to the native app format - which is to say that it should be pretty pirate-proof, unless someone really wants a copy, in which case they'll find a way to make one.

I'm not sure if your last question is intended to be rhetorical, but it seems that Filemaker and TiddlyWiki do some of the same kinds of things but TiddlyWiki is much more versatile. We can use it to make anything from personal notebooks to mind-mapping tools to websites as well as database UIs. The price of all the control we have over TW is it's relative complexity and the possibility of breaking things horribly by typing the wrong thing, which probably isn't the case with Filemaker, given that it seems to cost hundreds of dollars.

Is it currently possible to build your own apps with Filemaker and deploy them to the app store? I found this http://www.fmtouch.com/enterprisepr.pdf which seems to offer deployment as a 3rd party service (which is weird if Apple own Filemaker) on a subscription basis. If you want to encrypt user data, you need to apply for a US 'export licence'. lol.

Regards,

Richard

[Atul Grover]

Hi,

@Mario, reiterating your comments...

We loose control over TW5 one the user downloads a copy. He is then free to use the same, anonymously, in any manner he wishes.
The user will reestablish contact with the server when (and if) he wished to download a plugin. But since the plugin library too is an open link there is no way to monetize say in terms of 'premium-plugins'.

Thus the only way we can monetize TW5 is

1.  By offering some additional service to the user for which he would agree to give back the control to the service provider via  xAPI/LRS integration for creating 'learning dashboards'.

2. By creating a digital market for 'individually-customized-plugins' which a user can pay for, download and drag into his wiki.

Am I correct so far? Is there any other way?

Atul

[D John]

The question was not a rhetoric. 

It was intended to make Tiddlywiki better than Filemaker and vice versa.

Ecosystems improve only when there is competition. Otherwise they just keep advertising and believing they are 'awesomer' than other 'awesomes' in other.. Well. Ecosystems.. 

Filemaker Webviewer can do anything HTML5/CSS and Javascript (Plain old Javascript) can do. That is good for most new developers lured into Apple's Ecosystem with promises of shiny interfaces and user experiences. Any content created on Filemaker can be used on Filemaker Go for iOS.

All database related processes - indexing, login, validating serial numbers, demo expiry, protecting content by encrypting the database are either automagic or easily scriptable in Filemaker. ( May be all this is much easier in TiddlyWiki.  ) For users requiring to add another level of protection or separate UI from data or serve media to solutions, content can be hosted on FMP servers and served to FMP Go on iOS. But everything comes at a price for a product made for a "niche" market or so they say. Still it is a pain working on Filemaker because its a closed system. Features make it or break at the whim of the company and with versions.

Which pushes the content creator to choose opensource web stacks like MEAN or LAMP. Thanks to Cloud, Single page applications are much more easier and wallet friendly than Filemaker. 

But tiddly on iOS is a greater idea. It is a lot of fun for programmers to RTFM and learn a new scripting language subset. 

I am not sure about this.. but 

From a content creator's perspective, it is a handicap Tiddlywiki cannot run Plain old javascript content. May be the Missing manual will demonstrate the Tiddly-way of integrating interactive HTML content (d3.js, createjs.js...)  into Tiddlywiki wikis ? 

Would TiddlyWiki on iOS be able to embed multimedia content within apps without the need for an external server?

Another trouble with Opensource is the "use as is case". If something breaks, the community helps, if they don't, we have to learn it ourselves by studying source code?

Also this idea of taking tiddlywiki to iOS to monetize its contents will work without additional hidden charges for servers hosting the content?  Like what XOJO already (http://www.xojo.com) offers?

---

Rainbow

I am a Pathologist, Working on the Dead brains of Rocket Engineers, who tried to learn Filemaker and Flash 15 years ago. 

Thanks to Malcom Gladwell, it only took 10 years to figure out that I better learn HTML/CSS/Javascript/UNIX/Photoshop/Illustrator/ to do better things at work.

[RichardWilliamSmith]

Your app would be deployed under iOS in the same way as any other app. I've never submitted one myself but apple say "There are no hosting fees and Apple handles all payment processing. You receive 70% of sales revenue." (https://developer.apple.com/programs/). The process would be similar to apps built with Phonegap/Cordova.

You can include your own javascript in tiddlywiki - you just need to do it by writing macros and plugins - there is already a basic d3.js plugin, for example, referenced by Jed in this thread - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/tiddlywiki/d3.js/tiddlywiki/T7ZDfxOMLmw/kcobbp0KHe8J

The reason TW can't run arbitrary javascript is twofold - a security issue and a complexity issue. Tiddlywiki seems quite straightforward on the surface, but it's actually very complicated (i don't claim to understand it in detail) and any additional code has to play nicely with it's mechanisms, which are unique.

As for support, yes - you'll have to rely on the community and your own initiative in understanding how TW works - that's because nobody gets paid to support it or makes any money out of it, although I for one am firmly of the opinion that Jeremy deserves to get paid for it if there is ever a way for us to help make that happen. Tiddlypip was initially an idea to achieve just that by providing a low-cost (but not free) way for people to get apps built with TW into the app store. If you have a great idea for an app that you think will make money then you should go for it.

Regards,

Richard

[D John]

Like mentioned earlier, selling the "Missing manual for tiddlywiki" on iOS will help to

1. Show what can be done with Tiddlywiki.

2. show how to make interactive multimedia apps with Tiddlypip

3. It will help the developers earn money. I will gladly buy it using an iTunes card.

4. It will help us educate others and spread word about this project. 

So 100% support for Tiddlywiki project / Tiddlypip.

---

Rainbow

പൂട്ടാത്ത കാറ്  

[Danielo Rodríguez]

El miércoles, 26 de agosto de 2015, 8:26:08 (UTC+2), D John escribió:

But tiddly on iOS is a greater idea. It is a lot of fun for programmers to RTFM and learn a new scripting language subset.

[...]

From a content creator's perspective, it is a handicap Tiddlywiki cannot run Plain old javascript content. May be the Missing manual will demonstrate the Tiddly-way of integrating interactive HTML content (d3.js, createjs.js...)  into Tiddlywiki wikis ? 

Can you see the non-sense situation those two sentences create? First you say that would be fun to learn a new language subset. And just two lines after you say that not being able to run plain JavaScript is a handicap. Really? Tw is one of the most permissive frameworks I saw. You can run as arbitrary JavaScript as you want as long as you wrap it on a plugin or on a macro. What do you mean with plain javascript? Objects? functions ? closures ? all that is available on tw. Or maybe you mean the JS from the ninety's where you do all those horrible document.innerHtml or onClick=alert() ? Have you tried to compare TW with any other framework? React native for example ? 

I started TW more than a year ago, and it was hard to start programming, but once you get the basics, is as easy as any "good old plain" JavaScript. 

[D John]

Dude,

Calm down. I was not bashing Tiddlywiki.

And I still don't see the non-sense situation you saw. Not being able to run plain JS is a handicap. Having to learn a new language subset is good only for programmers who want brag about learning it in no time. Not for me. See the difference ?

You learnt it in one year and found it is easy? Awesome. 

Good for You. Now move along with it please..

Telling others that "Danielo Rodriguez" learnt it in less than 1 year wouldn't help to spread word about "Tiddlywiki" either.

Do you mind if I clarify my concerns ?

--

Rainbow

ചുരുക്കി പറഞ്ഞാൽ നിന്റെ കഴപ്പ് മാറിയോ

[Jeremy Ruston]

Just to clarify some of the background to TiddlyWiki's approach to JavaScript, the DOM etc.

The way that TiddlyWiki works is very simple: it is a pipeline for processing wikitext into the DOM, and from there into static HTML. That's the single process at the heat of all the complexity one sees with TiddlyWiki. The entire user interface is written in wikitext.

The advantage of this approach flow from it's consistency: there's one thing to learn about TiddlyWiki's core, and it applies to everything that TiddlyWiki does. The reason is that the same processing pipeline is used in multiple situations to solve the problems that TiddlyWiki is tackling:

* generating the interactive user interface in the browser in an efficient manner

* generating static HTML representations of tiddlers, and other representations such as JSON

* generating standalone TiddlyWiki HTML files, both on the server and when saving in the browser

* processing CSS stylesheets as wikitext so that macros can be used for SASS-like handling of repetitive features like browser prefixes

The price we pay is that a certain old-fashioned style of writing HTML and JavaScript apps isn't directly compatible. The reason is that in old-style apps the application state is maintained in the DOM. It's a convenient way of writing code, but over the years developers have found that it isn't sufficient for the kind of apps they want to write. The newer wave of frameworks like Angular use the same technique as TiddlyWiki: they maintain all the application state in JavaScript memory (which is much faster to access than the DOM), and generate and update a DOM representation as required. When a portion of the DOM is regenerated, any state stored in that part of the DOM is lost.

A controversial point is that TiddlyWiki goes further than acknowledging that old-style JavaScript-in-HTML features don't work properly: it actually attempts to strip out executable JavaScript from wikitext content, and prevent its execution.

We do this because part of the vision of TiddlyWiki is for people exchanging and sharing content. Because TiddlyWiki is frequently used for personal data that one doesn't necessarily want to publish, we need to ensure that people can trust that the act of viewing, say, a comment from another user won't inadvertently exfiltrate their personal data.

Having said all of that, there are a couple of ways in which old-style JS can be mixed with JavaScript:

* create a tiddler with the type text/html containing an ordinary HTML file with JavaScript. The HTML content will display in an iframe, and can be interacted with normally. Getting information out of the HTML content and back into the TiddlyWiki isn't particularly convenient beyond cutting and pasting it. Also, some navigation actions can trigger a refresh of the tiddler containing the iframe, causing the content to be reset (as if the browser reload button had been clicked)

* a JS module can add a private DIV to the DOM above TiddlyWiki's main container DIV, and then the JS module can manage that DIV however it needs to: for example, it might make the DIV position: fixed to overlay the page, and then use CSS to hide and show it. This approach hasn't been explored much, but I suspect that a fairly simple core update would make it cleanly implementable in a plugin

Best wishes

Jeremy

On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 9:29 AM, D John <doctor...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dude,

Calm down. I was not bashing Tiddlywiki.

And I still don't see the non-sense situation you saw. Not being able to run plain JS is a handicap. Having to learn a new language subset is good only for programmers who want brag about learning it in no time. Not for me. See the difference ?

You learnt it in one year and found it is easy? Awesome. 

Good for You. Now move along with it please..

Do you mind if I clarify my concerns ?

--

Rainbow

ചുരുക്കി പറഞ്ഞാൽ നിന്റെ കഴപ്പ് മാറിയോ

On Thursday, August 27, 2015 at 11:49:22 AM UTC+4, Danielo Rodríguez wrote:

El miércoles, 26 de agosto de 2015, 8:26:08 (UTC+2), D John escribió:

But tiddly on iOS is a greater idea. It is a lot of fun for programmers to RTFM and learn a new scripting language subset.

[...]

From a content creator's perspective, it is a handicap Tiddlywiki cannot run Plain old javascript content. May be the Missing manual will demonstrate the Tiddly-way of integrating interactive HTML content (d3.js, createjs.js...)  into Tiddlywiki wikis ? 

Can you see the non-sense situation those two sentences create? First you say that would be fun to learn a new language subset. And just two lines after you say that not being able to run plain JavaScript is a handicap. Really? Tw is one of the most permissive frameworks I saw. You can run as arbitrary JavaScript as you want as long as you wrap it on a plugin or on a macro. What do you mean with plain javascript? Objects? functions ? closures ? all that is available on tw. Or maybe you mean the JS from the ninety's where you do all those horrible document.innerHtml or onClick=alert() ? Have you tried to compare TW with any other framework? React native for example ? 

I started TW more than a year ago, and it was hard to start programming, but once you get the basics, is as easy as any "good old plain" JavaScript. 

[Danielo Rodríguez]

El jueves, 27 de agosto de 2015, 10:29:00 (UTC+2), D John escribió:

Do you mind if I clarify my concerns ?

In order to clarify your concerns fully. Could you explain me what kind of "arbitrary code" do you want to run? An a small example would definitively help to understand.

[D John]

  You learnt it in one year and found it is easy? Awesome. 
      Good for You. Now move along with it please..

 

This is plain Old English !!

Yet you don't seem to be intelligent enough to understand that.

All you need to understand is that your "help" is unsolicited. 

--

Rainbow

പട്ടി തിന്നുകേമില്ല...

[Danielo Rodríguez]

Are you talking with me? If so I think you are the kind of person than can only do damage to any kind of project. We don't need your help neither. And as long as you are not smart enough to understand tiddlywiky I think I can use a similar sentence that the one you have "thrown" to me: no one have asked your opinion.

Regards

[Eric Shulman]

On Friday, August 28, 2015 at 9:14:50 AM UTC-7, D John wrote:

  You learnt it in one year and found it is easy? Awesome. 
      Good for You. Now move along with it please..

 

This is plain Old English !!

Yet you don't seem to be intelligent enough to understand that.

All you need to understand is that your "help" is unsolicited. 

If you ask a question in this group, you are soliciting help from EVERYONE in the TiddlyWiki community.

If someone asks for clarification or is otherwise confused by your question, you can either respond with more information, or ignore the message.

However, your confrontational "snarky" tone is NOT appropriate here, and it is not OK to insult the people who are trying to help (e.g., "you don't seem to be intelligent enough to understand").

I have set your account to "moderated" so that future posts will be subject to review before being allowed to appear.  If you can remain calm and respectful, I will remove the moderation 

Please continue to discuss TiddlyWiki-related topics, but without the personal attacks.

-e

Eric Shulman

TiddlyWiki GoogleGroup Admin

[Jan]

Hi Jeremy,
Great, I got a project where I have been waiting for something like this.
I think the layout could be quite close to the normal TW, some elements would have to be a little more mobile-friendly...for example because I like formats you can carry in the pocket, enabling true fullscreen in TWEdit would be a help.
I made a Menu that could be useful for navigating multilevel menus  on smartphones on slidesnstories.tiddlyspot.com and also the presenterplugin i made there could provide a learing Cards / cue card mechanism.

Some ideas regarding the buisiness modell.
...To use it in courses, it would be nice to have the perspective of an Android-Branch
...for my courses it would be nice if there was the possiblity to print out a qr-code to download for free.
...regarding the buisiness-model this could be useful a technique to make possible certain number of downloads after the institution paid a license.

It would be usesfull to have a qr-code scanner in the app to access certain topics directly.

Best wishes Jan

Am 30.01.2015 um 12:58 schrieb Jeremy Ruston:

Do you have an idea for TiddlyWiki content that you think people might pay for?

Perhaps a technical manual? Or a guide for your city? Training materials for your company's field engineer force? Or maybe a manualisation of mental health intervention techniques?

Would you be interested in working together to create your multimedia TiddlyWiki content and wrap it up as an app that can be distributed and sold on the iPhone/iPad app store?

Here's the background for this invitation: I've recently finished my work with CTRLio. I'm very grateful to them for the support they've shown to my work on TiddlyWiki over the last 18 months. But now I need to find new sources of income to replace my salary. There's a few weeks in which I can consider some radical options, and this is one of them.

I want to explore the idea of building a commercial TiddlyWiki ecosystem on top of the Apple platform of iOS, the Mac and iCloud. I'm not making any moral or philosophical judgement about Apple's place in the world. I'm considering this plan just because the App Store is one of the places that someone like me may be able to make money.

This first step is simple: we create a framework for building iOS apps that provide a terrific, read-only user experience for interacting with TiddlyWiki documents. I'd want to support free or paid apps, with the possibility of using in-app purchases for premium content. It would be a way to deliver a highly custom, interactive user experience around multimedia content. We would be able to deliver free updates to the app and content via the app store update process.

Such a simple application would be the quickest way to get into the app store - I believe in just a few weeks. The aim would be for the app to be invisible without much of a discernible user interface, just providing the mechanisms for the content to take centre stage. It certainly shouldn't resemble the familiar default TiddlyWiki editing interface.

I'm open to suggestions about how to structure this from a business perspective. I'd need some upfront payment to fund the development, but hopfully we'd find a big enough handful of people that individual shares of the startup costs would be relatively small.

If enough people can provide the necessary commercial backing we can use TiddlyPip to publish Eric's "Inside TiddlyWiki: The Missing Manual".

Beyond simple read-only publishing, there would be a number of incremental improvements we could make once we see regular revenue:

# Support read/write functionality like annotations, with iCloud syncing between iOS devices.

# Support publishing custom, TiddlyWiki-based applications, such as tw5.scholars. It wouldn't appear to be a TiddlyWiki file: it would behave like a custom app for scholarly notetaking (including multi-device sync)

# Support quizzes and questionnaires, with content unlocked by successfully completing exercises

# Support reporting of progress to the TinCan API

# Support one-on-one student/educator interactions through the app. Students might buy an academic textbook along with tokens to ask the author 5 questions via messaging within the app.

# Create a full end-user application that enables the user to create and work with TiddlyWiki documents on iOS devices. This is really the ultimate goal from a development perspective. But it's a lot of work to create such an app with enough polish to stand out in the app store, and I'm not convinced there are enough people prepared to pay for apps like TiddlyWiki. But if we can bootstrap things via the content publishing route then we ought to be able to gain the time to make the app sufficiently polished and useful

It's fun thinking about the possibilities. But we need to take this journey as a series of small steps, and I need to quickly find out if there's any hope of completing the first step.

I need to know if there's anyone out there who might be prepared to put some money on the table based on their belief that they have content that could viably support this business model. So please let me know if you fit that description. Ideally, we'd find a handful of people which would make it easier to fund the initial development, until the app store revenues kick in.

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions,

Best wishes

Jeremy

--

Jeremy Ruston
mailto:jeremy...@gmail.com

[Jan]

Hi Jeremy, Hi all...
I just realized that i got fascinated about a very old thread...
Has something like an easy way to publish a TW in an app come up in the meantime...
I really would solve some problems for me.

Yours Jan

[Jan]

Hi Jeremy, Hi all...
I just realized that I got fascinated about a very old thread...
Has something like an easy way to publish a TW in an app with the features specified in Jeremy's Mail come up in the meantime...
Also a way to publish TW with the normal features and interface would be very welcome...
This really would solve some open questions for me at the moment.

Yours Jan


Am 13.04.2017 um 01:57 schrieb Jan: