fastest way to include frequent screen shots

[aaron....@gmail.com]

I'm a recent discoverer of TW5, and everything about it is magical. But this one hang up is approaching a deal breaker in my application.

I require taking screen shots of various things to include along the notes very frequently. Being used to OneNote, I grew to take the rapid fire ability to call up the snippet tool and pasting screenshots for granted.

In TW5, this what I have tried so far

• The long route: taking a screen shot to clipboard --> using a clipboard auto-save utility to automatically save it to a set location --> importing the screenshots to TW5 --> the including the image with the syntax. This may not be so bad if I had just a few images here or there I wanted to document as part the notes, but it is not uncommon for me to take 10-30 screenshot in a given hour. You can imagine it quickly grinds the whole process to a halt
• The alternative route: installed CKEditor with VisualEditor plugin. It enables direct image pasting. The downside is that I can't use Wiki syntax anymore.

Either compromise is very undesirable.

Any suggestions on what else I may try to get around the issue?

[Tobias Beer]

Hi aaron,

Fwiw, with loads of images, I would not recommend to paste images directly into TW, but to always use an external folder to save them to. Otherwise your wiki file-size may grow to becoming close to unusable at some point.

So, the focus should be on streamlining the process of...

1. saving screenshots to a well defined location
• this you can only optimize yourself
2. referencing those bits in your wiki
• this is possibly where there could be improvements (in the core) as to how to "just reference" an external file / image without doing all the tiddler creation
• to that end, see if ximg @ tb5 is of help

Best wishes,

— tb

[Mark S.]

Another approach to step #2 in Tobias' suggestion is to use TiddlyClip with local snips. This allows you to fairly quickly add images on your file system (which you browse in your browser, not your file explorer) in a universal manner that uses the existing _canonical_uri mechanism. If you work at it, you can set up to have tiddlyclip tag your files at the same time.

The problem with the _canonical_uri mechanism, IMHO, is that you can't add notes to the text field where any notes would naturally go. So if you want to associate notes to the image you will need to add additional fields.It seems to me that there is no real reason that the text field couldn't be made available and visible, appearing below where the image goes.

Yet another approach I use in a TW dedicated to managing receipts, is to use an entry form for creating entries. In the entry form, I set the year of the receipt and copy just the file name into an image field. The tiddler that is created has a special viewing template set up (similar to canononical uri) but the user can type into the text field.

I can see doing something like this, creating a custom "New" button and form that deals just with images similar to canonical uri, but you can add annotations and search text to the text field. A drop-down menu would let you select which of several path sources you want to use.

I've thought of another approach, but haven't actually set it up. What you would do is capture your images with paste into a single-function TW running on node.js. Then run the externalizing processes outlined at TiddlyWiki.com and convert the captured images to external images. Use drag and drop to move the resulting image tiddlers into your working TW.

Overall, It would be nice if there were better mechanisms for wrangling images in TW. In particular, it would be great if you drag and drop images from the file system and have an external tiddler created, or if copying and pasting were to make a local image. Or, like with Eric's TWC plugins, TW would know to check several different paths for images.

Mark

[Tobias Beer]

Hi Mark,

 

Another approach to step #2 in Tobias' suggestion is to use TiddlyClip with local snips. This allows you to fairly quickly add images on your file system (which you browse in your browser, not your file explorer) in a universal manner that uses the existing _canonical_uri mechanism. If you work at it, you can set up to have tiddlyclip tag your files at the same time.

Shame on me, I haven't been all too extensively playing with TiddlyClip... and it sounds like a very efficient workflow.

The problem with the _canonical_uri mechanism, IMHO, is that you can't add notes to the text field where any notes would naturally go. So if you want to associate notes to the image you will need to add additional fields.It seems to me that there is no real reason that the text field couldn't be made available and visible, appearing below where the image goes.

Perhaps open an issue on Github? I don't quite see (yet) why this restriction is actually necessary / implemented. I think it should not be there and that the image should be rendered first and then the text, perhaps with some option-field so as to show it the other way around. If you don't want a byline or actual text, fine... don't use the text field.

I've thought of another approach, but haven't actually set it up. What you would do is capture your images with paste into a single-function TW running on node.js. Then run the externalizing processes outlined at TiddlyWiki.com and convert the captured images to external images. Use drag and drop to move the resulting image tiddlers into your working TW.

Atm, sounds a bit demanding, complicated.

Best wishes,

— tb