Presenting: G-Comments - a comments feature based on Google Forms

[Mat]

@Zaphod Beeblebrox and @Måns

Long overdue, I'm happy to officially present G-Comments. It has been used on TWaddle for a long time and I've promised a proper writeup for it... so here it is:

G-Comments

It lets any visitor (without registration) add short comments on tiddlers.

It is based on Google's most excellent tool that everyone with a google account has by default; Google Drive Forms. This enables you to easily create online questionnaires but G-Comments takes a form, trims it down and squeezes it into a toolbar popup. All comments are collected automatically into a spreadsheet.

Do please report any errors but I don't intend to develop it further. TWederation and TW NetWorks is infinitely more important and will partially cover what G-Comments provides anyway. 

<:-)

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Thank You so much, Mat, for this great addon! :)

Really good tutorial, also - It only took me about 10 minutes to get it all set up and functioning.

This is something that was missing from TW, that will enable one (well, me, at least) to run a totally self-contained 'Blog' that can be hosted/stored/archived somewhere and distributed to select users, and now receive comments from the users.

Later on I'll tinker with Google Sheets and see about making a "Public" spreadsheet to show comments.  I wouldn't want to open up the one that I use to receive them in, as rude language or spam might creep in it, so I'd have to create another one for the public.

Thanks again :)

--Zaphod

[Mat]

Thank You so much, Mat, for this great addon! :)

Really good tutorial, also - It only took me about 10 minutes to get it all set up and functioning.

That is very uplifting to hear!!

If it is a public blog, please post a link here so we can see how things work in practice!

<:-)

[Josiah]

Ciao Mat

VERY USEFUL. And as far as I know its the first of its type transparently documented, and works.

I think its a really good step.

FYI, my interest is in social networking. And this solves part of the puzzle. The other part is POSTING to social networks, which, in theory is easy (using URI methods), but so far TW hasn't really taken that forward. And I, myself, am incapable of doing the coding needed.

I'm hopeful what you have released will open that "SOCIAL NETWORKING" door more.

Best wishes
Josiah

[Mat]

On Monday, September 5, 2016 at 12:08:52 PM UTC+2, Josiah wrote:

Ciao Mat

VERY USEFUL. And as far as I know its the first of its type transparently documented, and works.

Thanks Josiah. Yeah, it's one of those things that requires detailed documentation or your just can't set it up.

 

I think its a really good step.

FYI, my interest is in social networking. And this solves part of the puzzle. The other part is POSTING to social networks, which, in theory is easy (using URI methods), but so far TW hasn't really taken that forward. And I, myself, am incapable of doing the coding needed.

I'm hopeful what you have released will open that "SOCIAL NETWORKING" door more.

Who knows. It should be possible to use a Google Drive Spreadsheet as backend storage for tiddlers but it's an ambitious project and you'd depend on the Google API all the time. Maestro Danielo created "TiddlyDrive" a few years back but, if I understand, got frustrated with the constant API changes.

<:-)

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Well, there are some issues with my Blog and copyright infringement, so it'd be best not to publish a 'public' copy of it ;)

But, once it's all finished, I do intend to do a 'generic' version, explaining most of the steps I've taken to get it to work, so others might get ideas or instruction from it.

I find it strange that there haven't been more comments and accolades about this, as I find it to be most incredible and useful, but then again, I'm finding more and more that TiddlyWiki is truly a non-linear personal web notebook.

I think that's why it's so hard to find answers to some questions that I've had - It's not necessarily that NO ONE has done what I want to do, it's just that those that have, have done it within their personal TW's and either don't come here and respond, or simply don't share their knowledge and experience.

Once again, I'm most thankful and grateful to those like yourself who do share freely of their knowledge and experience, so those of us like me can gain a better understanding of the inner workings of Jeremy's fantastic creation :)

--Zaphod

[Sergey Shishkin]

!!! :)

воскресенье, 4 сентября 2016 г., 16:33:20 UTC+2 пользователь Mat написал:

[Mat]

@Zaphod

I find it strange that there haven't been more comments and accolades about this, as I find it to be most incredible and useful, but then again, I'm finding more and more that TiddlyWiki is truly a non-linear personal web notebook.

I think that's why it's so hard to find answers to some questions that I've had - It's not necessarily that NO ONE has done what I want to do, it's just that those that have, have done it within their personal TW's and either don't come here and respond, or simply don't share their knowledge and experience.

People keeping stuff for themselves is one problem. Another is that announcements here drown in the discussions, often within 1-2 days, and are not necessarily found again.

These are serious infrastructure problems that the TW project surely suffers VERY MUCH from. We lack infrastructure that encourages people to build and share stuff. I would be happy to elaborate if anyone asks me.

<:-)

[Josiah]

Mat

SPOT ON.

This group is very, very good and supportive for ongoing problem solving.

IMO its dire for suitably marking, collecting and advancing the BEST stuff when its finished & launched.

It may be something about the purpose of here. You can't bully people. On the other hand I'm convinced TW would be more widely used if there were some kind of way to get more attention to good finished outputs. Not all things are equal. And more attention to finalised stuff with good functionality is, IMO, important. (1) to properly acknowledge the work someone has done; (2) to get it used by others.

Best wishes
Josiah

[Mat]

Josiah,

 

This group is very, very good and supportive for ongoing problem solving.

In deed. Still, even posting mere replies to stuff - as opposed to announcing creations - suffers the same problem; it all drowns quickly, possibly never to be resurrected or even found again. That is probably also a discouraging factor for potential repliers here.

 

IMO its dire for suitably marking, collecting and advancing the BEST stuff when its finished & launched.

...which in itself should leverage the quality of the TW project.

 

It may be something about the purpose of here. You can't bully people.

Naw, I'd say it is simply because we have not built a better solution. Google groups is superior to no forum/knowledge base at all and better than many other options. But it's not really good, for our purposes.

These problems are the absolute main reason why I keep talking about TWederation / TW Networks. That would be a key infrastructure that opens up for "everything" else. TW variations of "App store", "Wikipedia" etc. Unfortunately, TWederation dev is currently passive as the key developer is busy with other stuff and the assistant (that's me) is not versed enough in the key components in it.

<:-)

[Jan]

Hi Mat,
thanks for your Comments-plugin, I modified it a little to implement it to MetaTabs. You can see it at http://slidesnstories.tiddlyspot.com/ .
There it shows not in a popup at the top but in a tab at the bottom of the tiddlers.
So far the demo-version there is also sending the comments to your sheet. I could change this if it disturbs you.

There is two questions I have concerning the plugin.
- The "send"-button moves out of reach if you type to much, I wonder if it is possible to get the Iframe scroll in the field.
- The other thing is even more important to me: How do you get the Tiddlertitle in the sheet. I would like to have the possibility to export the results of a survey and the content of the rate-field. Do you think this would be possible?

Yours Jan

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[Eneko Gotzon]

​Just beginner and nescient but I dare to say something. ​Sorry if it is a simplicity.​

On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 6:29 PM, Josiah <prog...@assays.tv> wrote:

dire for suitably marking, collecting and advancing the BEST stuff…

​To 

successfully 

f

ulfill

​that kind of

 tasks makes projects excellent.

--

Eneko Gotzon Ares
eneko...@gmail.com

[Eneko Gotzon]

On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 8:48 PM, Mat <matia...@gmail.com> wrote:

the key developer is busy…

The

​TW ​

project, does

​

 have enough funding?

​All w

e can contribute,

​ s

ome with knowledge and time, others with money.

[Mat]

Jan,

Hi Mat,
thanks for your Comments-plugin, I modified it a little to implement it to MetaTabs. You can see it at http://slidesnstories.tiddlyspot.com/ .
There it shows not in a popup at the top but in a tab at the bottom of the tiddlers.

Cool!

 

So far the demo-version there is also sending the comments to your sheet. I could change this if it disturbs you.

Well, better if you make your own demo sheet. I can't make any guarantees for my document. A week from now I might mistake it for crap and delete it.

 

There is two questions I have concerning the plugin.
- The "send"-button moves out of reach if you type to much, I wonder if it is possible to get the Iframe scroll in the field.

Yup. That is because it really is another webpage showing, i.e the google form, that is designed that way by google. I've searched for solutions to "transclude divs" from arbitrary websites but this is not possilbe, or at least not something I am capable of. Another idea would be to somehow have tthe popup expand vertically but I don't know how the tw-popup can sense the internal content in the iframe. Maybe there could be a way to write soemthing in tw and send this into the iframed fields rather than typing directly into those fields, but that is also way beyond my skills.The only (and ugly) solution I can come up with is to make your popup taller to begin with. 

 

- The other thing is even more important to me: How do you get the Tiddlertitle in the sheet.

Interpreting your question to be: How do you getthe tiddler title INTO the sheet (as opposed to "from")

The main tiddler $:/_TWaddle/plugins/GComment is a viewtemplate, i.e something that is present in every tiddler. It thus has the current tiddler title accessible. Inside this tiddler is the iframe src parameter that wants an url. A variable tid is set to be the tiddler title and this is used in the googletid macro to create thr url for iframe src parameter.

 I would like to have the possibility to export the results of a survey and the content of the rate-field. Do you think this would be possible?

Export using the TW export functionality or some google feature? In TW the exporting feature creates static html documents. I guess this can show iframes but they are then still "live" linking to the external google form then. You'll have to experiment.  

<:-)

[Mat]

Eneko

The

​TW ​

project, does

​

 have enough funding?

​All w

e can contribute,

​ s

ome with knowledge and time, others with money.

We lack infrastructure for "money" too. Not saying there should be one, just saying it is not explored territory in a TW context and that the current TW community culture rarely touches this matter. Surely the free and open source nature of the project influences this. The one occasion when I actually paid for TW help unfortunately ended disappointingly (or, rather, didn't even start).

<:-)

[Jan]

Hi Mat

I already tried that solution:

The only (and ugly) solution I can come up with is to make your popup taller to begin with.

My real problem are not the borders of the Iframe but a thin line within the Iframe that swallows the button. The problem is worse with my own google form. I do not know what factors determine that line...It is does not seem to be those rect variables.

 I would like to have the possibility to export the results of a survey and the content of the rate-field. Do you think this would be possible?

Export using the TW export functionality or some google feature? In TW the exporting feature creates static html documents. I guess this can show iframes but they are then still "live" linking to the external google form then. You'll have to experiment.  

I would like the form to paste in some information automatically into a google Spreadsheet , like the title which is automatically fillde in your plugin but with much more text. I would like to collect a sort of User-Survey in the spreadshield for a scientific research project.

Yours Jan

[Mat]

Jan,

 

My real problem are not the borders of the Iframe but a thin line within the Iframe that swallows the button. The problem is worse with my own google form. I do not know what factors determine that line...It is does not seem to be those rect variables.

Go to the actual form, i.e separately from TW, to see if you can do some settings there. In my demo, the form is this one. I think there may be a size setting for when embedding the form as an iframe. The G-Comments solution doesn't use the premade ifraem that google offers for embedding because G-Comments also needs to fill the url with the tiddler title etc.

I would like the form to paste in some information automatically into a google Spreadsheet , like the title which is automatically fillde in your plugin but with much more text. I would like to collect a sort of User-Survey in the spreadshield for a scientific research project.

Do a google search for "pre-populate google form".  I think this is what you're after.

<:-)

[Jan]

Hi Mat,
thanks a lot, with your tip I managed to expand the length of a possible anwer by 500%.

The other information made me understand how you prepopulate the title.

You got me a big step ahead...

Thanks a lot.
Jan

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[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Hoping that Jan and others might post the results of any experimentation they've done with this, as, try as I may, I cannot get the iframe to look like it does on TWaddle, and seemingly the slightest changes I make to it end in some freakish monstrosity that looks nothing like the original...

On TWaddle, Mat's implementation of it looks great, with a perfectly-sized iframe that includes a clearly defined textarea with a scrollbar that appears whenever the entered text overflows the box, but when I try to recreate it on my TW, the textarea enlarges itself and flows down beneath the iframe, eventually taking the Submit button with it, so that you can no longer click it to send the comment :(

It's probably something super-simple that I'm missing, but I haven't discovered what, yet.

--Zaphod

[Mat]

Zaphod, I suspect - but not 100% sure - that it behaves differently on TWaddle because that uses googles old version/layout of forms. When I go into edit mode for that form, google offers med to change to "new forms". 

Hopefully Jan will reply to your post and clarify how to control things.

<:-)

[Jan]

Hi Zaphod,
the clipping is tricky. Mat posted a link to his form (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfMQSIUToeR5HOVEuQXdsQNqz2ZBu2xWH--9_t6KDVBSqMkww/viewform) which helped me a lot to understand how the form should look.
I changed the settings in the stylesheet and the $:/MetaTabs/Comment Form on slidesnstories.tiddlyspot.com. (Described in the tiddler "About this Mod of TWaddle's GComment")
This makes the Iframe scrollable and thus gives you a little more room. But this is for Tabs, for popups Mats plugin rules...

Hope this helps
Jan

About this Mod of TWaddle's GComment

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[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Hi, Mat & Jan :)

On Saturday, September 17, 2016 at 3:41:17 AM UTC-4, Mat wrote:

Zaphod, I suspect - but not 100% sure - that it behaves differently on TWaddle because that uses googles old version/layout of forms. When I go into edit mode for that form, google offers med to change to "new forms". 

Hopefully Jan will reply to your post and clarify how to control things.

I'm sure that the change in Google's form is mostly the problem, but it still seems impossible to get an iframe that looks like yours on TWaddle.
Have there possibly been changes to the iframe specifications between TW 5.1.9 and 5.1.13?  That might explain it.

Jan said:

Hi Zaphod,
the clipping is tricky. Mat posted a link to his form (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfMQSIUToeR5HOVEuQXdsQNqz2ZBu2xWH--9_t6KDVBSqMkww/viewform) which helped me a lot to understand how the form should look.
I changed the settings in the stylesheet and the $:/MetaTabs/Comment Form on slidesnstories.tiddlyspot.com. (Described in the tiddler "About this Mod of TWaddle's GComment")
This makes the Iframe scrollable and thus gives you a little more room. But this is for Tabs, for popups Mats plugin rules...

 Thanks so much for this, Jan :)

I had a look at your re-interpretation of the plugin, and it gave me a couple of ideas

1) to maybe take the G-Comment button completely out of the (info menu?) and have it within each tiddler's body --probably also using your MetaTabs-- so that the widths wouldn't be so much of a problem, and;

2) Using either your MetaTabs or just plain tabs to display the comments folks leave about the post (tiddler)
(this, at least for the time being, would have to be manually administered, until I figure out a safe system for filtering and displaying the actual comments that get sent to the Google Form).

--Zaphod

[Jan]

Hi Mat,

(this, at least for the time being, would have to be manually administered, until I figure out a safe system for filtering and displaying the actual comments that get sent to the Google Form).

I think for this task again Mat had a better solution. Look at the community comments on  http://tiddlersidebar.tiddlyspot.com/

Cheers Jan

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[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Very interesting... - Thank You for the link, Jan :) (and of course, Thank You, Mat, for the creation ;-) )

I am toying with several different schemes for displaying both the G-Comments input box and the eventual received comments, but haven't got anything concrete yet.

--Zaphod