How do I export/concatenate en masse Tidddlers to MS Word?

[David Lewis]

I'm evaluating TW as a medium for taking research notes -- text, links -- and then using them in the writing process. How would I accomplish the following task:

• Choose a set of tiddlers based on a tag or logical combination  of tags, plus manual deletions
  
• Export them all en masse into a MS Word document, concatenated, with some kind of separator between them

I'm still working through learning how to use TW, and I can't see an obvious way to do this without copy/pasting each target tiddler individually, which would be a big nuisance. It would be OK to export to concatenated text and then manually transfer to Word.

Thanks!

[TonyM]

A Shorthand answer,

Just ask for more details. 

If you create a single tiddler, that displays what you want to appear in your document, perhaps using a list of tiddlers with a given tag, sorted by an appropriate field or using drag and drop to set the order, you can then print the tiddler to PDF and open that in Word will be a quick answer.

 

Some export as HTML and do other tricks see a recent discussion on this here

Regards

Tony

[David Lewis]

Thanks. Sounds like the secret I was missing was to create a single tiddler, not a bunch of tiddlers.

If you don't mind -- as a small tutorial, could you explain or show how to create that single tiddler, say for the tag "science", or better yet, the tag query, "science" OR "time", with a separator of "::::::::::::::" between concatenated retrieved tiddlers. I'll worry about export later.

Thanks. --David

[Mark S.]

Try perhaps (with your tag) :

<$list filter="[tag[HelloThere]]">
<<currentTiddler>><br/>

<$transclude mode="block"/>

<p/>
--------------------------------------------
<p/>

</$list>

Keep in mind that any additional objects, like images, will have to be exported manually. External links (especially absolute ones) may not work when the platform is changed.

Good luck!
-- Mark

[David Lewis]

Thanks!  Looking up that stuff makes a nice mini-tutorial. I take it that adding the separators makes it trickier. Otherwise I could just use this for unadorned transclusion...

{{{ [tag[mechanism]] }}}

[Mark S.]

Oh, I always forget about the three curly bracket approach -- "<$list>" is my go-to tool. But if you really want to do it that way then you could make a tiddler like:

{{{ [tag[HelloThere]]||SeparatorTemplate}}}

with another tidder "SeparatorTemplate" with contents:

<$transclude/>
<p/>
-----------------------------------------------------
<p/>

-- Mark

[ste...@gmail.com]

Hi, 

On Tuesday, May 29, 2018 at 6:46:21 AM UTC+2, Mark S. wrote:

<$transclude/>


As in your earlier example, this should probably be replaced by

<$transclude mode="block"/>

~Stef

[Michael Wiktowy]

To answer your "small tutorial" question:

To OR (Union) lists. Just add a separate closed square bracket filters separated by a space ... e.g. 

{{{[tag[science]] [tag[time]]||separator_template}}}

To AND (Intersection) lists. Just concatenate the filter terms within the closed square brackets ... e.g. 

{{{[tag[science]tag[time]]||separator_template}}}

Examples of OR and AND lists are buried in the TiddlyWiki help files for Filters somewhere but I always have a hard time searching for them until I find them and it seems obvious where they are : ]

/Mike

[David Lewis]

Neat -- thanks!

I now see that TW is not an application so much as a programming system, and a pretty interesting and useful one. That appeals to the software engineer in me. But I have to decide if that's where I wanna go now, with that career in the past -- or use a dedicated note-taking and tagging app like Evernote or CintaNotes.

--David

[@TiddlyTweeter]

David Lewis wrote:

I now see that TW is not an application so much as a programming system, and a pretty interesting and useful one. That appeals to the software engineer in me. But I have to decide if that's where I wanna go now, with that career in the past -- or use a dedicated note-taking and tagging app like Evernote or CintaNotes.

Very interesting comment! Highly relevant on choice.

Of some interest to look at is "Bob". Its a TW system that enables direct interface with the OS for automation. Basic info here: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/tiddlywiki/cQRhkfhvbVk/yBgBOnrHBAAJ

[Mark S.]

I've used, and even paid for CintaNotes (if memory serves). Unless things have changed, CintaNotes is windows-only, text-only. Can't use it on your mobile devices, and you'll have to pay up to get the latest premium versions. I was using it for awhile when I thought I had made a final commitment to Windows. But I have to admit, from time to time I see other operating systems.

So ... I would rank TiddlyWiki better than CN in most every category that matters. CN does have a nice clean interface, but so does TW.

Evernote is great for capturing information. Much better than TW, especially in terms of images or documents with images. The price isn't too bad for what you get. But, it's proprietary and opaque. You need a connection to their servers in order to instantiate a new installation -- which means that if they go out of business your current desktop install will be your last install. Will EN be in business in two years? They did have a lot of layoffs, and they don't seem to be addressing certain user issues. Will they suddenly change their rate structure the way InfoSelect did? Will they be hacked again? Why don't they offer client-side encryption so you don't have to worry about personal data?

So, I use EN for grabbing non-personal documents, which is something that is difficult to do well in TW.

I've concluded over time that the personal information system I want should be open source, preferably written in a language where I could do my own tweaks, multi-platform, with an active and knowledgeable user community.

I haven't found any system outside of TW that checks off as many boxes.

-- Mark

[Michael Wiktowy]

TW is a platform as well as just note-taking but you can extend it or not depending on your desires to dig into the internals or not.

To elaborate on TonyM's suggestion, another built-in option to solve your export problem is in the Advanced Search tiddler, in the Filters tab, you can just put in the filter for what you want and export to a static HTML. That will import in Word normally but Word does get rid of the divisions between the tiddlers but will apply header styles to the imported tiddler title. If you link to external images, they seem to import fine too. The images embedded as Tiddlers and linked in will display fine in the static HTML file in a browser but Word doesn't seem to like them.

I have had mixed success with exporting to a PDF and then importing a PDF into Word. Images get mulched sometimes. If you have the full Adobe PDF software, the export to Word option in there will give you more joy ... but even it does some odd things with images sometimes.

/Mike

[Mark S.]

All the print-to-pdf options I've ever used will mulch images and paragraphs.

Another, cleaner, technique is to copy and paste into Word. Tweak the look. Then use it's export-to-pdf functionality.

-- Mark

[David Lewis]

Foxit PhantomPDF has a pretty decent PDF-to-Word conversion, other targets too. I have done some image work though not a lot, and it does well. Plus it has a good PDF OCR function. Plus lots more editing and markup features -- a bread-and-butter app for me.

https://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf-editor/

They used to run promotional pricing regularly.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/tiddlywiki/-iDtK-MC0vY/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to tiddlywiki+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to tiddl...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/0fcb8a17-5dbe-4964-bf39-a0eb601180f2%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[David Lewis]

Foxit PhantomPDF has a pretty decent PDF-to-Word conversion, other targets too. I have done some image work though not a lot, and it does well. Plus it has a good PDF OCR function. Plus lots more editing and markup features -- a bread-and-butter app for me.

https://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf-editor/

They used to run promotional pricing regularly.