Getting from a non-linear notebook to something a little more linear

[Cade Roux]

I've been using TW since August as a documentation target for the metadata and manual for our data mart of cardiovascular information and we are starting to get feedback from internal users and we are soon going to be sending it out to customers to get feedback on both the documentation and the data mart capabilities.

I'm very happy with how it is going.  It's an integral part of our build process that produces the documentation and it's been really good to be able to combine very easily generated tiddlers of lists of content along with narratives that are created by the informatics staff.

Users are very used to a linear document like a PDF or Word, but the TiddlyWiki is winning out the dev team with the powerful abilities to transclude information helping remove the artificial lines between what is template and what is manually written content and generated content.  This flexibility has really saved a lot of cycles in developing the document's "framework" and editing.

One of the feedback items that I did expect from the beginning is the issues surrounding the non-linear nature of TW.  For many users, it's kind of scary, because like all hypertext system you don't know how much material is underneath when you don't have a table of contents and a page number to know where you are.  And a lot of these users are medical informaticists, so high proportion of OCD - and things moving around is disorienting to them.

What we would like to do to give some comfort to the people that are in that mindset is to have a subset of our tiddlers that is identified as the "default content" of N tiddlers in a particular order that would:

1. The default content would open at the start (already a feature of TW - I have this working as expected)

2. If tiddlers are closed and re-opened, that they show up in the same place in the order - this is something I am struggling to figure out how to get a closed tiddler to re-appear back in its place.

3. Have a default content button that restores all the tiddlers - I have a button that will open them - it's based on a macro I found - it opens them in reverse order so that the order at the end looks like the original order, but if the tiddler is already open, it does not get back in the right spot.  I could just close all open tiddlers at the start of the macro, and then it would just be like a reset.

If you have any ideas how to approach a slight linearization to ease beginners into using our TW, particularly with item 2 in trying to keep the ordering, I would be grateful.

Thanks,

Cade

[Mohammad]

Hi Cade,

 I have encountered the same problem before. There is a plugin help you very much in this case and answer part of your questions

The slider plugin creates a trails and a trail is a linear set of tiddlers start from a page 1 and ends to page n

Have a look at https://kookma.github.io/slider/

• It has page number 
• Shows total number in a trail (like a chapter), so you know where you are
• It has a footnote to show what is the chapter name (trail name) and can include logo or more information
• It has next | previous buttons to let navigate to next | previous pages
• It has a popup window appear on mouse hover on footnote ribbon to show the table of content on each page

You can have many trails (chapters) and open one at a time.

I may recommend to hide the Open tab from side bar and use Zoomin story view.

I think this will address many of the issues you mention above!

There is one more improvement you may need which is recently brought by PMario, highlighting the title entry in table of content which is open and under focus in story river.

Best

Mohammad

[Mohammad]

Terminology of trail and slider plugin can be found here

https://kookma.github.io/slider/#Slider%20Plugin%20Terminology

You can set story view to Zoomin right from page control buttons on the side bar.

Good luck

--Mohammad

[Cade Roux]

This looks to have good potential to help with our users.  Thanks for the input!

Cade

[TonyM]

Cade,

My approach would be to hide the default new tiddler button, provide an alternate one that appears in context or use the new here button and install the table of contents in the side bar. In addition to this try and enforce a way to categorise any tiddler with tags or fields (New tiddlers from one or more templates can help). Thus people automatically categorise tiddlers as they create them. Then any tiddlers not created with a tag that would place them in the TableOfContents or below, then use some custom lists to display each type of tiddler or category, perhaps even in sidebar tabs. Make use of the recent tab and perhaps reengineer it to also focus on tiddler created or modified by the current user. 

Setting the username is a good way to automatically categorise at least by user.

I recommend maintain non-linearity but overlay multiple linear models and add a special view/lists to see orphans or show tiddlers not tagged or referenced by anything for an occasional maintenance sweep through, then you will see who is not categorizing by user name and you can encourage them to do so.

Perhaps even have a view template message that says "This item is not yet tagged/Categorised or referenced, please add more information" to drive people in the right direction.

Regards

Tony

[PMario]

Hi Cade,

I think 1 reason, that users get confused could be an "empty story river". Most users are not used to a behaviour like this. 

TiddlyWiki has a configuration option.

Create a new tiddler named: $:/config/EmptyStoryMessage  with the following content.

<div class="tc-tiddler-frame">{{HelloThere}}</div>

So if users close the last tiddler in the story, the "HelloThere" tiddler will be shown. ... You can use any name here!!

Your HelloThere tiddler can now present useful Info and links of all sorts.

have fun!

mario

[PMario]

Hi,

In TW the story river is managed by $:/StoryList "list field". So if you use a button like this:

<$button>
<$action-setfield $tiddler="$:/StoryList" $field="list" $value="a b c [[tiddler with spaces]]"/>
Populate Story!
</$button>

You can do "magic things" in your new HelloThere "landing page" ;)

Docs for action-setfield.

have fun!

mario

[PMario]

On Thursday, December 5, 2019 at 11:08:45 PM UTC+1, Cade Roux wrote:

...

2. If tiddlers are closed and re-opened, that they show up in the same place in the order - this is something I am struggling to figure out how to get a closed tiddler to re-appear back in its place.

I think in the long run, this will limit your users, when they start to be more experienced using the system.

IMO it's OK to provide some "hand holding" at the beginning, but in the long run the system shouldn't block users creativity and freedom.

My second post may be a "workaround" that can be used at the beginning.

----------------

There are some discussions going on at github: Proposal: a sidebar tab where we can save and restore stories #4319

Which at the moment is a "brain storming" thread. It has calmed down a little bit, so it may be time to revisit it and actually implement something, based on the discussion.

I did an experiment, which I think has potential, BUT it's missing a core feature atm. ...

just some thoughts

-Mario

[PMario]

On Thursday, December 5, 2019 at 11:08:45 PM UTC+1, Cade Roux wrote:

One of the feedback items that I did expect from the beginning is the issues surrounding the non-linear nature of TW.  For many users, it's kind of scary, because like all hypertext system you don't know how much material is underneath when you don't have a table of contents

That's strange. You know, that it's easy to create TOCs of all kind. right?

If you visit tiddlywiki.com the right sidebar "Contents" tab contains the core toc-macro.

If you don't want to use tags to create a structure, you could use 1 of my plugins: TOCp it uses a "parent" field based approach.

have fun!

mario