Suggestion for correct usage of tags/fields

[passingby]

Hello friends,

A few years ago I created a TWC for my personal use in which I recorded events of my life, like a journal or a diary, in which each event would be a tiddler which appropriate tags and fields. 

At that time I had built a logical categories like this.

Each event was described in 5 fields: What, When, Where, Why, Who, How

Each event belonged to one or more Circles: family friends job personal relatives

Each event had a Type: birth, crisis, death, dinner, divorce, health, holiday, interview, job offer, journey, legal, loss, marriage, meeting, money, movie, outing, profit, religious visit, shopping visit

What i wanted was a historical record of my life which I could later look at in various sequences and lists. For example I could see how many deaths had occurred in my past 10 years or which all job related events had happened in past. Or where all did we go for outings. I am a kind of person who reflects and looks back on my life a lot in order to understand how I undertook my journey and what wrong or right choices i made, how did i reach where I am now in time.

 I used it for a couple of years but then it somehow it got left behind in the journey. The urge to record events when they are fresh in mind did not go away though. Hence I am now trying to make another TW again but this time in TW5. But now I am confused on how to use tags or fields in event tiddlers.

Should the circles and types be tags or should one or both of them be fields? If so would there be any advantage over the other? What about the five Ws and one H? Should they be fields or should they be some sort of a dictionary table?

The main thing is that I should be able to produce various kinds of lists. Also when I open an event tiddler everything should be easily visible. If I use fields I wish to have them displayed above or below the content in plain sight.

In fact if possible can I use textual markers instead of tags or fields, like a dictionary structure, displayed in the content. Sort of like this:

----------Begin content of event tiddler-------------

Circle: Job

Type: Interview

What: Job interview

When: 15 Sep 2017

Where: ABC University, dept of languages

Who: Prof X, Prof Y

Why: [[Applied to the job advertisement today]]

How: I appeared for interview with the board today. I think it went well and they liked my answers. The one person on the right (bald guy, cannot recall the name) was even helping me out, he wanted me to win. The board shall send me a letter in a week. Keeping fingers crossed.

--------end of content----------------------

What are your suggestions regarding this. What should be a field, what should be a tag and what should be in a tabular form? Another point to consider is : can data-dictionary tiddlers be used for this? Would that be restrictive in any way?

Thank you for your inputs!

[passingby]

I remember when I made my TWC, Tobias Beer had made suggestions which can be read here https://groups.google.com/d/msg/tiddlywiki/T7BSmdkmWD8/lR7KerkLMY0J

If Toby reads this I request him to make some suggestions again, in context of TW5. 

Thanks!

[Mat]

passingby,

IMO it is hard for anyone else to tell what you should do. A lot depends on your detailed workflow and how you'll use this meta data. My suggestion is that you just make a qualified guess - because you can change it later (e.g by means of the Batch Manipulator)

But just a few things to note... most/all that you already know, but you did ask....

Tags are much easier to work with than fields or dictionaries. Tags are designed specifically for easily creating hierarchies and associations, and to assemble lists etc. 

There can only be one instance per field(-name), say, "foo" in a tiddler, and it has a few limitations in how it can be named. But it can contain anything, for example multiple fields can contain the same and repeated value. 

You can make custom fields part of the tiddler template. Both the edit template and the viewtemplate. Actually, you might want to snoop around for how to make forms for filling in your data. At least you should use templates to avoid unnecessary work.

Regarding dictionaries: they are kind of similar to fields in their limitations but gathered in one place. IMO, the term "dictionary" is very suitable and I don't quite get the impression that it is "dictionary functionality" that you're after with your limited set of repeated, um, "headings". 

There are for sure more things to know that may affect your decision, but my main point is that your gut feeling is probably the best start. 

<:-)

[passingby]

Mat,
Thank you for your reply. Sometimes I get confused and overthink over things and in such situation it is always helpful to me to hear what other person has to say. Your thought that I can always change the things later is very on the point. Its not like my data is going to grow huge over night. I can try things one way and if need be, down a few months, I can re arrange it to other way over a long weekend :-)

The thing is that I had become fairly good in TWC for my personal needs. Eric Shulman's exceptional work and his help around the forum was great and I learnt a few techniques from his work which seem to work everywhere I needed. But since TW5 came out I have not been able to become familiar with its clutch and gears. Therein lies the cause of my doubt over what direction I should take.

You are also very correct about the need to create forms. I shall read the docs and forums and learn that.
For now I have decided that the every event tiddler shall be tagged as 'event' and per event tiddler there shall be 2 fields, circle and type. All the rest of the information like what, when, where etc shall go ito content.

Thanks for your input. I appreciate it much.