A HOWTO: Filtered transclusion example (with transclusion template and simple markdown table) for my Template Documentation

[Charlie Veniot]

Related TiddyWiki Documentation:  Transclusion in WikiText

Three screenshots at the bottom of this post from my Product Reviews TiddlyWiki.

Hello,

Just in case there's some stuff of interest here for anyone.

Snipit of filtered transclusion code:

  

{{{ [tag[$:/C/Templates]prefix[c]sort[title]] ||tTi }}}

Cheers !

[Felicia Crow]

Hi Charlie,

looks interesting, and makes me wonder if I could change my field and filter approach for my podcast player to multiple tiddlers and a transclusion template similar to your youtube video template. Thanks for sharing as always.

Kind Regards,

Felicia

[Atronoush Parsi]

This is absolutely great! What do you think if one uses a macro instead of template?

So instead of several templates you can have one tiddler with several macros?

I am really interested to know the pros and cons of template / macro and when I should use a template instead of macro?

--Atro

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[PMario]

Hi

It would be really nice, if you could define your images as "Medium" or "Large", so they fit onto the screen.

This can be done if you select the image and define, how google should show them.

"Original Size" is too big, most of the time.

-mario

[Charlie Veniot]

Hello Atro,

Those are excellent questions.  Without having pondered deeply about it, here is my immediate blathering of thoughts:

I generally much prefer transclusion wherever I can use that instead of a macro.  For the way this old sponge of mine works, transclusion often makes more sense to me than a macro (maybe because I always think in a transclusion way (with everything, TiddlyWiki or not.)  I also get annoyed with macro syntax for whatever reason (in the same way somebody would prefer the colour green while somebody else the colour blue.)

There are certain things that, to me, macro is hands down the way to go.  What these things are, I'm not sure.  Maybe it is enough to say that what can't be nicely done via transclusion, go with a macro.

For example, all of the macros in my "Product Reviews" TiddlyWiki:  https://intertwingularityslicendice.neocities.org/CJ_ProductReviews.html#Macros

Well, the "ListCategoryProducts" and "ShowProductThumbnail", I can see me replacing those with transclusion template tiddlers.

I am currently only half-way into my morning's first cup o' coffee, still a bit in a sleepy fog.  Re-reading the above: huh, not so shabby despite not so bright-eyed and not so bushy-tailed ...

Cheers !

[Charlie Veniot]

I wondered about that.

My conclusion: a display can be scrolled around to soak in everything, or folk can "CTRL -/+" (i.e. zoom and zoom out) the original big image, while able to read the text in the original image because of the image quality.

If I reduce the size of the image, zooming in on a lower-quality image results in blurry and possibly unreadable text.

So between the two devils, I figure best to pick the one in which text in an image is very readable ?

[Felicia Crow]

Hi Charlie,

somewhat off-topic, but your answer to Atro led me to a question regarding another kind of template. Seeing how streamlined your wiki is, but having not seen anything in this direction: Have you thought about using templates to create certain tiddlers, either by cloning the template or using a button?

Kind Regards,

Felicia

[Charlie Veniot]

G'day Felicia,

In all of the various TiddlyWiki instances I've created, I've only done something akin to cloning with "Medication Journey" journals in my ADHD Slice'n Dice TiddlyWiki.

I am a tweaker by nature, always incrementally iterating/adjusting/tweaking/refining/etc. etc. as a slowly get things just right (matching whatever intertwingled mess of a puzzle picture in my head.)

The problem I have with creating a  bunch of tiddlers as clones of a tiddler template:  when I want to make an adjustment (and I will undoubtedly make umpteen adjustments to anything as everything becomes less muddied), I have to then go to every tiddler created from whatever template and adjust each one accordingly.  That's a huge pain in the caboose.

Eventually, I may create some buttons for tiddler creation as copies of template tiddlers in my Product Reviews TiddlyWiki, but there has to be some significant benefit.  At the moment, I'm not seeing any.

My approach to writing and organizing content is to get something down as quick as possible that is good enough (a process of progressive elicitation?), and then slowly/incrementally/iteratively adjust as needs/requirements ( information-bits / structures, the pictures) dictate (become clear.)  The plan/direction unfolds as I see the bits written down and structured.  Never "big requirements/plans up front".  That's the beauty of any Wiki: it allows agility and even massive change to anything can be done quickly.  (Unlike dealing with a bunch of separate files/documents in some hierarchy of folders.)

Very organic to fit my granola personality.

Oops.  I got wordy.  Hard thing to fix ...

Cheers !

[Atronoush Parsi]

Thanks Charlie. 

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[Felicia Crow]

Hi Charlie,

wordy is great if it is this informative.

Honestly I thought about your product tiddlers when asking about templates because I wondered if it would be faster to have a template tiddler containing a certain set of fields already and just creating new product tiddlers from there with the fields only having to be filled out instead of creating everything anew each time you add a new product, but I can see how this would not have that much benefit in your case depending on how many standard fields you have in your product tiddler.

I think where I get far more benefits from template tiddlers and the main reason I use them is that I have many fields in my wiki that my various macros need, but that can be either already filled out in the template itself or when creating a tiddler from the template.

But then my wiki is intended to eventually become a template in itself to be able to copy it and collect my various world building/writing ideas into wikis depending on world instead of scattered throughout the dozens of physical notebooks, files and formats they are currently in so I think already the use case dictates a different approach in this case.

As for the changing all the tiddlers when the template changes I wonder if something could be done to update the tiddlers created from the template when the template changes, but then it is the question what changes and how things can be combined. So at most probably a add/delete field for every tiddler created with this template and then either only if the change is universal or showing a list of which tiddlers to update.

And another idea for the pile...

Hope you have a good day!

Felicia

[Charlie Veniot]

G'day Felicia, 

Happy Monday !  (May seem like an oxymoron, but who knows?  Could be the best Monday ever ...)

I have a whole whack of metrics involved in my approach-taking decisions, usually a snap choice to avoid getting stuck in the mud and overthinking (me shoving sticks in my own wheels), and tweak as I go along when I reach some pain-in-the-caboose tipping point (or have some bright or plain old goofy idea I want to try).

More often than not, I tend to get very irritated with "bloat" and duplication/redundancy, and I find myself doing whatever to shave away even just a few characters .

A bit of a "take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves" ?

Then again, if "the fun in it" way surpasses any kind of irritation, then I stick with the fun until no longer fun.  Well, the fun quickly takes a nose-dive whenever I see an approach that is going to create an ugly mess down the road.

Being a software developer and always considering the design of everything, I'm always thinking:  make everything easy/quick to adapt / evolve / change (as per any new discovery or as per any mood strikes me).  That's the beauty of any wiki product: when things are done a certain way: a wiki makes it really easy to completely reshuffle everything.

Good luck me explaining "a certain way".  Insta-thoughts:

• Every tiddler is a first-class citizen
• No tiddler exists in (or is bound to, or dependent on) any hierarchical (or other kind of) structure; any tiddler can, though, participate in an infinite number of relationships, and each relationship provides informative structure for some contextual meaning
• Avoid, almost dogmatically, writing a "thing" more than once (write once, transclude everywhere else)

All of that only half-way into my first morning cup of coffee.  No matter time of day or levels of caffeine, always wordy ...

[Felicia Crow]

Well so far it was a good Monday since my brain was willing to work again after a weekend of absolute no productivity and an absolute inability to concentrate on anything longer than five minutes.

And as for the "a certain way" I think one can take a look at your wikis and get a good idea.

Personally I don't have much of a plan beyond a more or less defined end goal so everything evolves very organically as I need it or think of it since I love to tinker with those things, but after the first thought of the idea itself the second is: Great now how many options can I cram into before it becomes bloated but it still can be used in more than one specific situation so that I have to only rewrite things in on place, and the third: What parts of this idea can I automate so I don't have to even touch them in the future once I am happy with how it works. Yet especially this automation but also the modular approach come with certain expectations and systems attached for it to work. Mostly in the form of fields and macros that select, sort, edit or create tiddlers based on the value of those fields.

For instance to use one of my more over-engineered examples: I have a button and a text field to create a new category for my world building since those can differ from case to case. Each category created this way has two components: The category tiddler itself that lists all entries belonging to it and allowing sorting them in different ways and a tiddler that is used as a template when creating a new item for the category. When I use one of the three ways to create a new item of this category - over the new tiddler button, from my missing tiddlers list or from the category tiddler itself - the same macro is called. This macro looks with which value it was called and then based on that looks for the right template to use and creates the new tiddler including adding the title when called from the missing tiddlers list. This only works because there are specific fields linking the template to the category that can't be changed or it won't work.

And while there is the very high chance that I eventually will look at having to change dozens of tiddlers because I changed my mind about now wanting an age field for all the characters instead of their birthday like in the template, it has to me the benefit that I can quickly create those entries and categories and having them already linked together without having to remember to fill out the specific fields/add the right tags to make it work.

I think this is also where once again the differing use case comes in. My whole main project - when I don't wander off to do something that seems more fun at the moment for instance tinker with question/problems posted here - is more in the vain of for instance noteself as to provide an overlay over the tiddlywiki core for a more or less specific use case. If I would have something more like your product reviews - maybe reviews of books that I have half finished - I probably would tend to a more open structure that I can more easily reorder when I want in the way I feel like, although probably still with more macros since great is still followed by how can I use it in more than one place with slightly different options while having one place to rewrite things.

So and talking about wordy, I would not call this answer short either, hope it is not too much of a wall of text and at least somewhat understandable.

A good Monday to you since here by now Tuesday is already on the imaginary horizon.

Felicia