"Forkeable" TiddlyWiki for Beaker Browser?

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ste...@gmail.com

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Dec 21, 2017, 1:16:38 PM12/21/17
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Hi,

Beaker Browser is an interesting project. One of the more obvious use cases is to upload a TiddlyWiki and share it with other Beaker Browser users via "dat://" URL (read-only).

Since the TiddlyWiki saving mechanism supports Beaker, you can publish and maintain a personal website, blog or even a complex "web app" without using a centralized provider. TiddlyWiki seems to be a particularly good choice here because so far, Beaker only allows for static web pages.

However, in order to do this, you currently need to download an empty TiddlyWiki, save it locally and then upload it to Beaker. This is inconsistent with the typical Beaker Browser "workflow", in which you simply open an existing "dat://" website, fork it, and share the resulting new "dat://" URL with your audience.

Would it be possible to provide a "forkeable", empty TiddlyWiki at a "dat://" URL (maybe on hashbase.io)? This file should probably contain a brief tiddler which explains the purpose of TiddlyWiki as well as the forking process and point to http://www.tiddlywiki.com for further documentation. Maybe this could even be included in the default bookmarks of Beaker?

Cheers,

Stef

Birthe C

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Dec 21, 2017, 1:59:20 PM12/21/17
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Jeremy Ruston

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Dec 21, 2017, 2:09:03 PM12/21/17
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As I understand it, Mario is just pointing out that the development of Beaker Browser is moving fast. The implication is just that we may need to update our saver module accordingly, but there’s no reason to believe that we will be unable to run TiddlyWiki on Beaker in the future. Judging by conversations with Paul Frazee (one of the founders of the project), supporting JS apps that run in the browser like TiddlyWiki is a core goal of Beaker Browser.

Best wishes

Jeremy.

On 21 Dec 2017, at 18:59, Birthe C <strikke...@gmail.com> wrote:

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Birthe C

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Dec 21, 2017, 2:54:09 PM12/21/17
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Thank you Jeremy,

I really hope so. Pmario wrote they would remove the staging area without plans for replacement. That was the part that got me into thinking, it would make it difficult to use for normal end users.


Birthe

@TiddlyTweeter

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Dec 21, 2017, 3:40:38 PM12/21/17
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Ciao Jeremy & Berthe

I find it hard to see how Beaker Browser has scope as anything relevant for a "normal end user".

Maybe we could discuss what "normal" means in TW.Land a bit more :-)

I'm semi-serious. It looks a bit of a stretch IMO.

Best wishes
Josiah


Birthe C wrote:
... That was the part that got me into thinking, it would make it difficult to use for normal end users.

Jeremy Ruston

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Dec 21, 2017, 3:54:05 PM12/21/17
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Hi Josiah

I find it hard to see how Beaker Browser has scope as anything relevant for a "normal end user".

You've said that before, and I don't really understand why. Installing/updating Beaker is no harder than installing/updating Firefox. Setting up TiddlyWiki within it is a matter of pressing the "New Site” button and then dragging and dropping your TiddlyWiki index.html; after that, saving is just like TiddlyFox.

The peer to peer stuff might be hard to get your head around, but as I've pointed out before it is entirely optional.

Much more to the point is the value in working together with other open source communities. Mozilla has never cared about TiddlyWiki, but I'm pretty sure the makers of Beaker do care about TiddlyWiki — they've graciously asked my opinions and accepted my feedback in the past.

Maybe we could discuss what "normal" means in TW.Land a bit more :-)

Why? I've no idea what you're getting at here. Is it just that you'd like TiddlyWiki to be easier to use? We all would, but as we've discussed endlessly there's lots of tradeoffs. If you want to work offline, with total privacy, then that comes at a cost. If you want things to just work, then use an online TiddlyWiki. There's absolutely no mystery about how to achieve the ease of use that you've argued for elsewhere. Why would you judge any other solution, with different tradeoffs, on whether it was as easy to use as an online service?

I'm semi-serious. It looks a bit of a stretch IMO.

I hope you've tried using TiddlyWiki on Beaker Browser. If you're just shooting the breeze and saying that some of the discussion around Beaker has looked complicated, then perhaps there's a possibility that these comments will just have the effect of putting people off trying it for themselves, which would be a great shame.

Best wishes

Jeremy



Best wishes
Josiah


Birthe C wrote:
... That was the part that got me into thinking, it would make it difficult to use for normal end users.

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Birthe C

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Dec 21, 2017, 4:11:28 PM12/21/17
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Hi Joshia,

I would think that it is rather normal to be curious wanting to get the most out of tiddlywiki, and since tiddlywiki is used in a browser, that makes browsers interesting for a tiddlywiki user.

A normal end user will want to try something if it is easy enough to do it, at least I think.
This group and all the help we get here from nice people makes it possible to get to know and try more, than at least I would do on my own.

I guess you will not replace twitter with fritter anytime soon?

Birthe


Jeremy Ruston

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Dec 21, 2017, 4:16:54 PM12/21/17
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Hi Stef

On 21 Dec 2017, at 18:16, ste...@gmail.com wrote:

Would it be possible to provide a "forkeable", empty TiddlyWiki at a "dat://" URL (maybe on hashbase.io)? This file should probably contain a brief tiddler which explains the purpose of TiddlyWiki as well as the forking process and point to http://www.tiddlywiki.com for further documentation. Maybe this could even be included in the default bookmarks of Beaker?


I’ll try to extend the TiddlyWiki deployment process to keep it up to date, and perhaps prepare an edition specially for Beaker.

Best wishes

Jeremy.

ste...@gmail.com

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Dec 21, 2017, 4:30:27 PM12/21/17
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On Thursday, December 21, 2017 at 10:16:54 PM UTC+1, Jeremy Ruston wrote:

Great! Works fine! 

I’ll try to extend the TiddlyWiki deployment process to keep it up to date, and perhaps prepare an edition specially for Beaker.


I think having an "empty" TiddlyWiki (or a "Beaker edition" with only a few default tiddlers) available for forking would be great, especially for Beaker users who aren't familiar with TiddlyWiki yet. 

This was one of the audiences I had in mind when making my suggestion above. I think many people who are currently exploring Beaker like the idea of serverlessness and decentralization, but struggle to find a good "use case" for it. Making TiddlyWiki as accessible as possible in Beaker may win them over and even generate new users for TiddlyWiki. 

Cheers,

Stef

Mark S.

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Dec 21, 2017, 4:33:13 PM12/21/17
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Setting up TiddlyWiki within it is a matter of pressing the "New Site” button and then dragging and dropping your TiddlyWiki index.html; after that, saving is just like TiddlyFox.

How do you get it out for export? I assume it's something simple? Is there a way to wipe the memory clean?

Still doesn't address saving where the options are the worse -- tablets and phones.

Thanks!
Mark

ste...@gmail.com

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Dec 21, 2017, 4:53:16 PM12/21/17
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On Thursday, December 21, 2017 at 10:33:13 PM UTC+1, Mark S. wrote:

How do you get it out for export? I assume it's something simple? Is there a way to wipe the memory clean?


You can either choose "Download as .zip" in the dropdown menu in the URL bar, or you can visit your TiddlyWiki in the Beaker library and click "Open folder" to find it on your local hard disk.

However, I've read somewhere that this feature is going to vanish in a later release of Beaker Browser. Is this true?

~Stef 

ste...@gmail.com

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Dec 21, 2017, 4:58:25 PM12/21/17
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On Thursday, December 21, 2017 at 10:53:16 PM UTC+1, ste...@gmail.com wrote:

You can either choose "Download as .zip" in the dropdown menu in the URL bar

However, this option only seems to work properly if you approve all unpublished changes to your TiddlyWiki first (in the library). Otherwise you'll end up downloading an outdated version of your wiki.

Cheers,

Stef 

PMario

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Dec 21, 2017, 6:49:17 PM12/21/17
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On Thursday, December 21, 2017 at 7:59:20 PM UTC+1, Birthe C wrote:

If you click "save" with the beaker browser 0.7.x you will save 2 clones.

 - 1 tw.html ends up in the dat://<hash>, which is stored as a binary file somewhere on your HD
 - 1 tw.html file, is saved to a so-called "staging-area", which is a directory you choose.

Similar to TiddlyFox or the browser downloads directory, but it can be any directory. ... The staging area will be removed with Version 0.8.x ... That's, what I wanted to make clear, with my post.

So if you want to explore the stuff, you are fine. ... Just _don't_ rely on the staging area. ...

In my opinion, single file TWs, with autosave switched off, are still a good fit, for beaker. ... but the project, that I had in mind, IMO doesn't make much sense without a staging area. I want to brainstorm -> refactor -> iterate locally and when the stuff is good enough to be published, I want to "commit" it.

have fun!
mario

Jeremy Ruston

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Dec 21, 2017, 7:00:06 PM12/21/17
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Hi Mario

In my opinion, single file TWs, with autosave switched off, are still a good fit, for beaker. ... but the project, that I had in mind, IMO doesn't make much sense without a staging area. I want to brainstorm -> refactor -> iterate locally and when the stuff is good enough to be published, I want to "commit" it. 

I'm not a huge fan of the staging area; I remember Beaker beforehand, and I preferred the simplicity.

The scheme I'm hoping we can use instead is to have a separate, private drafts site and a published public site. The "publish" operation would be performed by the author opening the public site and "pulling” the changes from their private site.

Best wishes

Jeremy.


have fun!
mario

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PMario

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Dec 21, 2017, 8:16:19 PM12/21/17
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On Friday, December 22, 2017 at 1:00:06 AM UTC+1, Jeremy Ruston wrote:
I'm not a huge fan of the staging area; I remember Beaker beforehand, and I preferred the simplicity.

For me "staging area" is just a different name for "any directory on your harddisk", which is simple.
 
The scheme I'm hoping we can use instead is to have a separate, private drafts site and a published public site. The "publish" operation would be performed by the author opening the public site and "pulling” the changes from their private site.

For me private site is a different name for "dat store, without the possibility to see your stuff as a real file" ...

If I would want to hide my content somewhere on the harddisk, I could use the browser internal storage mechanisms. Browser storage can be synced across devices. The only problem is, we don't trust it, because the stuff is binary encoded and can't be easily accessed with a file explorer and text editors. ... (and you can't trust it by design, because of automatic data removal mechanisms.)

At the moment I'm more interested in the possibility to use "my browser of choice" with DAT. DAT-Desktop can be compiled on windows since early December. The desktop program and the CLI allow you to transparently share folders. Similar to dropbox.

I may have a closer look at the beaker API again, after 0.8 is out. ...

-m

Mark S.

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Dec 22, 2017, 8:45:28 PM12/22/17
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Without a staging area, can you have relative paths to image files? That seems like a pretty important consideration.

-- Mark

TonyM

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Dec 22, 2017, 11:29:25 PM12/22/17
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Jeremy,

Have or can you host an Empty TiddlyWiki for ease of replication via a simple fork?

I am Experimenting here if anyone want to look (With the Beaker Browser).

dat://b41d3391587c84d5a661b9e4215d03b8d150b3675716caaeaf74aff89408cc0a/


Are there any smartphone implementations?, personally this would help back to base access to self hosted wikis without two desktops/computers.

Comments Welcome,

Tony

Mal

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Dec 23, 2017, 1:13:17 AM12/23/17
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Tony,

There is an Android browser under development at: https://github.com/bunsenbrowser/bunsen

I've loaded it on my phone, but am currently having trouble with saving changes.

Also, I don't think your link is working, or I don't know how to get it to open in Beaker.

Regards,

Mal


TonyM

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Dec 23, 2017, 1:16:36 AM12/23/17
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Mal,

Thanks for the upoate. 

I updated the post, and for you here dat://b41d3391587c84d5a661b9e4215d03b8d150b3675716caaeaf74aff89408cc0a/

I think it is because it is not handled as a link. I presume paste

Please try again.

Tony

TonyM

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Dec 23, 2017, 1:22:46 AM12/23/17
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On Saturday, 23 December 2017 17:16:36 UTC+11, TonyM wrote:
Mal,

Thanks for the upoate. 

I updated the post, and for you here dat://b41d3391587c84d5a661b9e4215d03b8d150b3675716caaeaf74aff89408cc0a/

I think it is because it is not handled as a link. I presume paste

See also with a permalink dat://b41d3391587c84d5a661b9e4215d03b8d150b3675716caaeaf74aff89408cc0a/#Improvements%3F

Birthe C

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Dec 23, 2017, 6:32:37 AM12/23/17
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lab assistant with the muppets, TonyM,

It works well only problem for me is I have to fire up my Windows computer to run Beaker.


Birthe


ste...@gmail.com

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Dec 23, 2017, 6:39:35 AM12/23/17
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On Saturday, December 23, 2017 at 12:32:37 PM UTC+1, Birthe C wrote:

It works well only problem for me is I have to fire up my Windows computer to run Beaker.

Here, it works well on Debian Stretch (64-bit). I was able to run it in a 32-bit Linux VM, too, by building it from source (a bit tricky, but doable). 

Biggest problem is the current lack of mobile options, in my opinion.

~Stef
 

Birthe C

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Dec 23, 2017, 6:54:06 AM12/23/17
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Thanks Stef,

My computer running Linux is only 32 bit. I did try as you did, building from source, but has to many errors I do not know how to handle.

You are right about mobile options, but I think that will come later on. I read something concerning that. If you were able to run Beaker from several platforms  you would still be in trouble editing the same wiki.

Birthe

ste...@gmail.com

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Dec 23, 2017, 7:00:22 AM12/23/17
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On Saturday, December 23, 2017 at 12:54:06 PM UTC+1, Birthe C wrote:
If you were able to run Beaker from several platforms  you would still be in trouble editing the same wiki.

This is true. Theoretically, however, you could always fork your own wiki when you're on a different platform. What seems to be missing, though, is a good mechanism to merge your changes back into the original wiki. Does anybody know whether someone is working on a solution? Or did I miss something, and such a thing already exists?

Best,

Stef

PMario

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Dec 23, 2017, 7:49:01 AM12/23/17
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On Saturday, December 23, 2017 at 2:45:28 AM UTC+1, Mark S. wrote:
Without a staging area, can you have relative paths to image files? That seems like a pretty important consideration.

I didn't test that. ... but if they are part of the dat:// system the should be relative paths, like any other web resource.

-m

PMario

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Dec 23, 2017, 7:52:35 AM12/23/17
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On Saturday, December 23, 2017 at 5:29:25 AM UTC+1, TonyM wrote:
Are there any smartphone implementations?, personally this would help back to base access to self hosted wikis without two desktops/computers.

I don't know any. ... Beaker browser is an electron app, similar to VisualStudio Code, or Atom code editor, but smaller atm. So they are full blown PC apps. ...

IMO Implementing the dat protocoll and filesystem for mobile devices will be a completely different approach. ... But js webassembly will make that stuff possible. So only future can tell :)

PMario

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Dec 23, 2017, 7:53:58 AM12/23/17
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That's interesting. ... thx for sharing

-m

Atul Grover

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Jan 2, 2018, 2:35:42 AM1/2/18
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Hi,

Happy New Year Everyone. I am having issues with saving/viewing 'pdf' files in beaker browser. is anyone else facing this issue?

Regards
Atul
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