Is it possible to change WikiText reserved characters? #question

[prog...@assays.tv]

Ciao

Small issue.

Over the years I have got used to using "#" (hashtag/pound sign/octothorp) in notes to myself and in Twitter posts. Its a great thing to use consistently as I can search for strings like "#surveillance" IN tiddler content TEXT without me having to create yet another tag for me to precisely locate what is perhaps just one or two items.

I like using WikiText, buts its a problem using "#" in it. For Twitter posts I set the type to plain. Other tiddlers I have I want in WikiText "#" are a pain in the arse.

Is there a way to change WikiText's "#" for a LESS USED character?

Josiah

[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Josiah

Is there a way to change WikiText's "#" for a LESS USED character?

TiddlyWiki’s wiki text reserves # for numbered lists, but only at the start of a new line. So, you could adopt a convention of preceding your hashtags with, say, a dot:

—

This is a note.

.#mytag #anothertag #and-another-tag

—

Another alternative is to disable the numbered list parse rule within your tiddlers:

—
\rules except list

This is a note.
#mytag #anothertag #and-another-tag
—

You can also use the Info/Advanced/Parsing tab of Control Panel to globally disable the list rule, but you may run into compatibility problems.

Generally, TiddlyWiki takes great care with backwards compatibility to increase the chances that people can freely upgrade from earlier versions. So, we couldn’t outright change the wiki text syntax, we can only extend it.

Best wishes

Jeremy

Josiah

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[prog...@assays.tv]

Jeremy

Thanks for taking time to give  a detailed reply. I get it.

I completely agree that legacy issues matter.

But, at the same time, the way that the "#hashtag" has evolved into a broad cultural referencing system (tradition #2) creates a tension with WikiText (tradition #1). The OED now lists it. An indication of its wide use in referencing systems. And I have to say it really works well. It's different than other WikiText symbols out in the wild.

Prefixing with "." is okay. But I would rather not have to do that. Its not elegant.

On ...

\rules except list
This is a note.
#mytag #anothertag #and-another-tag

Is it inhibits all lists.

Perhaps I am in search of the impossible dream? :-)

Josiah

[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Josiah

Prefixing with "." is okay. But I would rather not have to do that. Its not elegant.

The other way of thinking about it might be to use `#` as a keyboard shortcut that brings up a text field for a new tag to be typed. That way you can use your muscle memory for typing tags, and they become “real” tags which allows TiddlyWiki to do more useful things with them (and of course they could be displayed with a preceding `#` to make them look right).

On ...

\rules except list
This is a note.
#mytag #anothertag #and-another-tag

Is it inhibits all lists.

I’m afraid so; the `rules` pragma is a bit of a blunt instrument.

Perhaps I am in search of the impossible dream? :-)

There’s always a solution - generally discovered by Eric :)

Best wishes

Jeremy

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/c094cf83-d894-4862-b7d7-2447982d2c13%40googlegroups.com.

[PMario]

On Tuesday, May 3, 2016 at 4:19:05 PM UTC+2, prog...@assays.tv wrote:

Is there a way to change WikiText's "#" for a LESS USED character?

 
As Jeremy points out, there is the possibility to globally disable numbered lists in the wikitext syntax, with the ControlPanel settings.

If you really use hash-tags a lot, even in texts, that don't make use of it, I think it would be save for you to switch it of.

Reasoning:

As I started to use TW (several years ago), I used numbered lists quite a lot. But at the moment I don't use them at all. ...

I use numbered lists basically for one reason. I want to mention (link back to) them later in the text. eg: "As you can see in 1.1 bla bla"

The problem now is, that after some refactoring most of the time my "static" lists are turned into dynamic lists using tiddlers and the <<list>> macro or widgets. So all the "hash tagged" list references are outdated. Or the items in the list are moved up and down. ... Some may argue now, that TW should implement a mechanism similar to word, where the program automagically changes the references. ... but that doesn't work ...

I don't use one TW file - I use many and they are all linked in one way or the other.

Also the numbering may change, depending on the context some information is used. It turns out for me 1.1 in one context would need to be 2.1 in a different context, because tiddlers contain highly reusable content. So not using numbers at all, is the easiest way to avoid the problem.

just my 2 cents

have fun!
mario