Plugins landed into NoteSelf-land

[Danielo Rodríguez]

Hello Everyone,

It's been a couple of weeks since the last update, but that does not mean that I haven't been working on NoteSelf, in fact I worked on it very hard these last two weeks. 

I spent an entire week on planification, re-thinking the tool and sketching a big refactoring of several parts of the core. It's been a pleasant experience that enriched me a lot. I discovered that spending enough time on planification you can be far more productive when coding.

So, what is the more noticeable new feature?? PLUGINS!

Everyone loves Tiddlywiki's plugin architecture. It allows us to extend our favourite wiki in ways that goes beyond imagination. It was very sad that you can not enjoy such power on NoteSelf without going through the hassle of downloading the file. It also killed a bit the point of the online version, which you can use anywhere , but without any plugin support it felt like an incomplete experience. 

Not anymore!

You can now install plugins on your online instance and they will be available after a simple page refresh, how awesome is that?

It's been a big challenge because plugins needs to be unpacked by $tw before any plugin can boot, and since NoteSelf stores all the information using tiddlypouch plugin I reached the typical "Chicken or the egg" dilemma.  After trying all the approaches that I could think about the solution became like a mixture of both and easier than I expected.

The recommended way of installing plugins is through the plugin library, which is a subset of Tiddlywiki's official library. I have removed all the plugins that I don't consider safe to use along with NoteSelf, and I tried a couple of the available ones.

I expect some bugs and errors to appear, so It's worth to say that I don't expect anyone going crazy and installing all the possible plugins on their important-stuff wikis. The recommended path is to create a new notebook and test the plugins there. I just tested a couple of plugins, so I can't guarantee that your favourite plugin will work.

I have also included a process to "update" existing databases to the new architecture. This happens when the wiki boots and can cause errors, but usually a page refresh is enough to get a correct boot.

I also updated the main page to reflect this new feature:

https://noteself.github.io

Your feedback and bug reports is always welcome. Hope you enjoy the new release.

[Tobias Beer]

Hi Danielo,

Great stuff there!
Glad you got plugins working in your custom server-side.

Out of curiosity, is the "NoteSelf-core" a kind of self-updating plugin?
In other words, how does one update NoteSelf?
(Consider adding the answer to that to the site / FAQ.)

Anyone wants to play with further plugins,
feel free to include my library:

http://tobibeer.github.io/tw5-plugins/#Library

...and perhaps test for any incompatibilities w/ NoteSelf,
not that I would be expecting any.

Best wishes,

Tobias.

[Eneko Gotzon]

​Hi Byte Masters.​

On Mon, Sep 19, 2016 at 12:32 PM, Danielo Rodríguez <rdan...@gmail.com> wrote:

NoteSelf…

DanieIo I want to say to you:

• Your notebook seems to be very interesting.
• Thank you very much for your efforts & generosity!
  

​* To be able to follow​ this group I must learn some coding…

--

Eneko Gotzon Ares
eneko...@gmail.com

[Danielo Rodríguez]

>Great stuff there!
Thanks!

>Glad you got plugins working in your custom server-side.

It is a client-server architecture, but in fact everything runs on the client side. If I've been unclear about it then I should make a better effort on documentation.

>Out of curiosity, is the "NoteSelf-core" a kind of self-updating plugin?

Not actually. As I said, everything runs on client side, that included the database. Database is persistent, it does not matter how many times you updates your plugin. There are some special structures inside the database that have changed on the latest release, so in order to avoid leaving unused stuff on the client database I have to make some checks to make sure that only the required structures (aka indexes) exists.

>In other words, how does one update NoteSelf?

Just use it. Noteself is not a plugin but an edition.

>Anyone wants to play with further plugins,
feel free to include my library:

May I include your plugin library as one of the plugins listed on the default plugin library?

>...and perhaps test for any incompatibilities w/ NoteSelf,not that I would be expecting any.

Me neither, but who knows...

[Danielo Rodríguez]

> DanieIo I want to say to you:
>Your notebook seems to be very interesting.
>Thank you very much for your efforts & generosity!

Thank you very much for your kind words! Hope you enjoy using it.

>​* To be able to follow​ this group I must learn some coding…

I hope not because Noteself...