Notes on History - How would you do it?

[Scott Kingery]

After watching Hamilton I got to thinking about taking notes in Tiddlywiki on historical events and figures. We have lots of ways like Freelinks and tags of surfacing related information. The more data you throw in there the more interesting it gets. In this case though, what is a good way of handling and presenting historical facts? What I mean is, if you are doing some research on the American Revolution and follow some research and make notes around the building of the army and then follow some research make notes around the politics of the time it would be interesting to see how things overlap at least in terms of what is happening at the same time. Has anyone done something like this?  Maybe dates would get stored in a field? Just starting my thoughts on this but I'd love to read if anyone has done something like this.

Thanks,

Scott

[TW Tones]

Scott,

I have not developed any historical tiddlywiki's but I have spent a lot of time in personal organisers. From this I have a set of key methods I use. I will dump a few here which we can explore further.

• Yes, set dates in custom date fields and have at least start and end dates, 
• Keep created and Modified to mean what they mean, created the tiddler and modified the tiddler - this is useful information don't compromise your future by changing their meaning
• if both dates are the same consider it a mile stone
• If their is not end date then it marks a new era that has note close
• If it has no start date we are not sure when it started
• Add another date field perhaps for recognised dates
• You could use a plugin like http://kixam.github.io/TW5-datePicker/ however more for this century (needs moment.js plugin as well see notes)
• Allow dates to be entered manually as well as selected from the list
• Keep as many dates as possible compatible with tiddlywiki's date serial number, even f you zero fill the rest of the serial number
• This allows you to continue to use operators and sort etc..
• There is at least one visual timeline tool eg http://emkayonline.github.io/tw5visjs/
• A lot of the people pursuing genealogical tiddlywiki's need dates and some very old dates so maps to historical records. 

If you are taking records that become history there are more tricks

Regards

Tony

[Scott Kingery]

Tony, thanks for your thoughts and tips as always. I think I'll just start an empty wiki and see where things lead using these idea.

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[Mark S.]

The built-in date format (<<now>>) and filter operators only work with dates after 1900. So this this might be a good case for making your own date fields with yyyy-mm-dd format which can then be sorted sanely and used with the compare operator.

On Tuesday, July 14, 2020 at 7:42:02 PM UTC-7, Scott Kingery wrote:

Tony, thanks for your thoughts and tips as always. I think I'll just start an empty wiki and see where things lead using these idea.

On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 7:00 PM TW Tones <> wrote:

Scott,

I have not developed any historical tiddlywiki's but I have spent a lot of time in personal organisers. From this I have a set of key methods I use. I will dump a few here which we can explore further.

• Yes, set dates in custom date fields and have at least start and end dates, 
• Keep created and Modified to mean what they mean, created the tiddler and modified the tiddler - this is useful information don't compromise your future by changing their meaning
• if both dates are the same consider it a mile stone
• If their is not end date then it marks a new era that has note close
• If it has no start date we are not sure when it started
• Add another date field perhaps for recognised dates
• You could use a plugin like http://kixam.github.io/TW5-datePicker/ however more for this century (needs moment.js plugin as well see notes)
• Allow dates to be entered manually as well as selected from the list
• Keep as many dates as possible compatible with tiddlywiki's date serial number, even f you zero fill the rest of the serial number
• This allows you to continue to use operators and sort etc..
• There is at least one visual timeline tool eg http://emkayonline.github.io/tw5visjs/
• A lot of the people pursuing genealogical tiddlywiki's need dates and some very old dates so maps to historical records. 

If you are taking records that become history there are more tricks

Regards

Tony

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[History Buff]

Most of the dates I work with are prior to 1900 so I do as Mark suggested with yyyy-mm-dd format. It works great for my needs and sorts super easily. I halos have a macro to format the date as I want when I display it.

[Scott Kingery]

Thanks all. Yeah, yyyy-mm-dd is the only true date format that makes any sense to me.

On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 8:50 PM History Buff <damon.p...@gmail.com> wrote:

Most of the dates I work with are prior to 1900 so I do as Mark suggested with yyyy-mm-dd format. It works great for my needs and sorts super easily. I halos have a macro to format the date as I want when I display it.

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[Pit.W.]

Scott, I run a TW for exactly the same purpose as your's, since some time and it has 4.000+ entries.

I run it now in its own node.js instance, merging several former separated stand-alone wikis into it.

Besides my comments below, I learned the following lessons:

It is good to have a multidimensional data model.

    so I use the tocP macro collection; I have an additional data type to identify the different topics I am researching, like:Family, arts, ... There is also a plugin for alternative tag-fields ($:/plugins/inmysocks/GenericTagFields/) by OOKTECH. Has a nice GUI and opens huge possibilities.

The key is a field named "h-doctype" which distinguishes the various natures of the info stored in the tiddler, like "Historic person", "Historic event", "Historic country" "Historic location". This field then triggers a corresponding conditional view template.

Whenever I change the basic working methodology in the wiki, I also change the name of the editor, helps updating old stuff.

tidgraph is a must - see below

tiddlymap is a must

for some date calculations Evan Balster's "formulas" are my favourite

Keep us updated on your progress

Pit.W

Am 15.07.2020 um 04:00 schrieb TW Tones:

Scott,

I have not developed any historical tiddlywiki's but I have spent a lot of time in personal organisers. From this I have a set of key methods I use. I will dump a few here which we can explore further.

• Yes, set dates in custom date fields and have at least start and end dates, same for me, but I have 4 fields: First in the ISO date format YYY-0MM-0DD; second just the year YYYY (no leading 0s, BC with a "-"(minus)
  
• Keep created and Modified to mean what they mean, created the tiddler and modified the tiddler - this is useful information don't compromise your future by changing their meaning yes
  
• if both dates are the same consider it a mile stone I regard it as a 1-day-event; Milestones I identify by tags
  
• If their is not end date then it marks a new era that has note close Thats a milestone for me, missing date migth just indicate that I dont know it . Ongoing things get an end date "moment().add(0, 'days')" from the moment.js plugin - works nicely in the timelines plugin
  
• If it has no start date we are not sure when it started same here
  
• Add another date field perhaps for recognised dates I dont understand that
  
• You could use a plugin like http://kixam.github.io/TW5-datePicker/ however more for this century (needs moment.js plugin as well see notes) I use that as a standard
  
• Allow dates to be entered manually as well as selected from the list I am still trying to find a convenient list widget for dates
  
• Keep as many dates as possible compatible with tiddlywiki's date serial number, even f you zero fill the rest of the serial number tricky one; I didnt do it because for history I dont need minutes, seconds, milliseconds
  

• This allows you to continue to use operators and sort etc..

• There is at least one visual timeline tool eg http://emkayonline.github.io/tw5visjs/ Thats a must; new version here: http://kixam.github.io/TW5-visjsTimeline/
  
• A lot of the people pursuing genealogical tiddlywiki's need dates and some very old dates so maps to historical records. Damon Prichett has created some cool stuff for displaying family trees; see posts like 2020-06-28 in this group
  

If you are taking records that become history there are more tricks   Tony, please do tell...

Regards

Tony

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[History Buff]

The thread that Pit.W. was referring to (thanks for the nice comments by the way), is here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/TiddlyWiki/ckbmFxV4gRk

I used tidgraph to display the ancestors of my family members and I created a macro to list the descendants. Works well for my purposes at least.

Damon

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[TW Tones]

Pit/Scott,

Pit I Just realised you replied inline to my reply on history. Scott make sure you review Pits comments.

I will extract a few key items from Pits's response to me to answer and question your comments (retained below)

1. I think you are best using the date format that the tools you have to enter and LIST dates in tiddlywiki
   
2. Its easy to write macros that add or remove delimiters, it makes sense to use YYYY0MM0DD or YYYY0MM0DD000.. zero filled to map to tiddlywiki date especially if you have a lot of content since 1900
3. Pit can you explain how you do this ?

1. 
    get an end date "moment().add(0, 'days')" from the moment.js plugin - works nicely in the timelines plugin

2. Add another date field perhaps for recognised dates ; Pit I don't understand that
   With tiddlywiki you are free to do as you wish, for examples if you have different dates from different sources you can record these controversial dates
   One way to store multiple dates is to give each date field a suffix "-date" dateaname-date and you can programaticaly extract all dates with ease.

1. Allow dates to be entered manually as well as selected from the list I am still trying to find a convenient list widget for dates
   

1. One reason you will have difficulty is because you are not  keeping dates compatible with tiddlywiki's date serial number, even if you don't need time
   However all this can be worked around to some degree, Like add the zeros in the code you write.
   Keep in mind when you get to dates outside date handling capabilities eg -10,000BC you can introduce alternate handling even you do use the date serial.
   You could have a separate date field for "pre-history" etc..

For more tricks we need the issue to be identified and they can be answered. 

• One big one is calculated periods such that if a year is called "Annus horribilis" you can given the year compute start and end dates
• When using valid tw5 dates the days field takes a little to understand, I can help here, but it allows powerful range handling with valid date awareness
• Evans formulae plugin was date powerful (my memory it was)

Thanks for the other references Pit.

•  http://kixam.github.io/TW5-visjsTimeline/
• Damon as History Buff https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/TiddlyWiki/ckbmFxV4gRk 

Regards

Tony

Am 15.07.2020 um 04:00 schrieb TW Tones:

Scott,

I have not developed any historical tiddlywiki's but I have spent a lot of time in personal organisers. From this I have a set of key methods I use. I will dump a few here which we can explore further.

• Yes, set dates in custom date fields and have at least start and end dates, same for me, but I have 4 fields: First in the ISO date format YYY-0MM-0DD; second just the year YYYY (no leading 0s, BC with a "-"(minus)
  
• Keep created and Modified to mean what they mean, created the tiddler and modified the tiddler - this is useful information don't compromise your future by changing their meaning yes
  
• if both dates are the same consider it a mile stone I regard it as a 1-day-event; Milestones I identify by tags
  
• If their is not end date then it marks a new era that has note close Thats a milestone for me, missing date migth just indicate that I dont know it . Ongoing things get an end date "moment().add(0, 'days')" from the moment.js plugin - works nicely in the timelines plugin
  
• If it has no start date we are not sure when it started same here
  
• Add another date field perhaps for recognised dates I dont understand that
  
• You could use a plugin like http://kixam.github.io/TW5-datePicker/ however more for this century (needs moment.js plugin as well see notes) I use that as a standard
  
• Allow dates to be entered manually as well as selected from the list I am still trying to find a convenient list widget for dates
  
• Keep as many dates as possible compatible with tiddlywiki's date serial number, even f you zero fill the rest of the serial number tricky one; I didnt do it because for history I dont need minutes, seconds, milliseconds
  
• This allows you to continue to use operators and sort etc..
• There is at least one visual timeline tool eg http://emkayonline.github.io/tw5visjs/ Thats a must; new version here: http://kixam.github.io/TW5-visjsTimeline/
  
• A lot of the people pursuing genealogical tiddlywiki's need dates and some very old dates so maps to historical records. Damon Prichett has created some cool stuff for displaying family trees; see posts like 2020-06-28 in this group
  

If you are taking records that become history there are more tricks   Tony, please do tell...

Regards

Tony

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[Scott Kingery]

Thanks, all for the continued discussion and lengthy replies. I know there has been some talk about how people are using Tiddlywiki for genealogy. I look forward to diving into that topic as well.

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