TiddlyBlink - fixed, new location, accompanying example file

[David Gifford]

Hi everyone

Thanks to TonyM and Eric Shulman, I was able to get TiddlyBlink's new-journal-here button working right again. I also moved the checkboxes to a sidebar tab, making the tiddlers less cluttered. And I created a file showing examples of how to use it.

https://giffmex.org/gifts/tiddlyblink.html

https://giffmex.org/gifts/tiddlyblinkexample.html

Thanks to everyone for your help and feedback. There are still issues, the main one being that I thought I knew how to change styles to standard theme colors, but I don't. That is, I thought there was a way to do something like the following in a stylesheet tiddler, so that palette changes would change that style automatically.

.graybox {background-color:<<sidebar-tab-background>>;}

But I am still satisfied with where the project is presently. Now I am going to spend a while playing with it as a notetaking tool for me, before doing up a Spanish version for my students and a tutorial workshop for them.

I am grateful for the inspiration from Roam, and hope this will be a viable alternative for those who don't need the other cool features of Roam (the graph, the outlining, the Roam sidebar, the filtering buttons, etc, but want the accessible bi-directional linking of Roam and would like the many cool features TiddlyWiki has that Roam does not.

Would love your feedback! Blessings

Dave

[Mohammad]

Great addition!

 I noticed both link open the same wiki! Is this correct?

 Minor comment: 

Is there any reason the transclude and content does not show tiddler title as link? I mean the title appears just above the grey boxes?

--Mohammad

[Mohammad]

The new journal title can be customizable! If you add a setting tiddler!

Just some thoughts.

--Mohammad

On Thursday, January 30, 2020 at 7:00:18 AM UTC+3:30, David Gifford wrote:

[David Gifford]

Thanks for the feedback Mohammad.

I fixed the link. Google Groups had kept the first link and applied it to the second.

I really didn't want titles at all in the transclusion section. They are visally distracting, when what you want to see is the content. But several people insisted, so I caved, and made a separate file for myself without titles.

I deliberately kept the titles non-links for two reasons. 1) the gray box is already the link, so a title link is redundant. The idea is to move back and forth between the notes. 2) Blue title links would be doubly distracting when the focus is supposed to be on the note content.

[Jack Baty]

As one of the people preferring to see the titles, I'm happy to see them back. (Although I wouldn't say I "insisted" on them :)). Based on how you seem to be using TiddlyWiki, I can see why you could do without them. For me they almost always add a useful additional bit of context, so thanks!

I'm going to be testing the waters with this on (a copy) of my main wiki, but I feel that bringing context and immediacy to backlinks is one of the most important features of Roam and bringing that to TiddlyWiki is terrific!

[David Gifford]

Hi Jack

Thanks for the feedback. No, you didn't insist, but there were others who recommended it, including Conor from Roam, so collectively the 'suggests' felt like an 'insist'! Thanks for being willing to 'test the waters'!

[Mark S.]

For the transclusion references, maybe it would be helpful if the titles were links?

[Mark S.]

Suggestion -- a template tiddler for the inserted link. For instance I might want mine to always have a horizontal line inserted above and a pipe to the right for ease of navigation

-----

[[MyLink]] |

[Mark S.]

Suggestion -- a reveal/hide button around transclusions, so you're not overwhelmed by larger texts

[David Gifford]

Mark, thanks for the suggestions. You should be able to do this with the 'start' and 'end' parts of

$:/plugins/snowgoon88/edit-comptext/config

[David Gifford]

I would love this, and it would imitate Roam on this point, but I am not sure how it would work. Wouldn't each tiddler need a separate state tiddler? That would affect # of tiddlers and filesize and I am assuming it would hasten the moment when the file would become sluggish.

If someone were to come up with a viable snippet as to how to do It, I am willing to try it.

[Mark S.]

Here's something to try. The attached makes changes to $:/.giffmex/ViewTemplate/refstransclude and adds a tiddler to track states.

This adds a "fold" or "unfold" icon next to each title. The default is folded.

The states of folding are saved in a single data tiddler, so you don't have to worry about a lot of background tiddlers building up. The downside is that the state will be forgotten when the tiddler name is changed. Since that is likely to be infrequent, and only results in a tiddler defaulting to the closed state, that seems like a minor price to pay.

Just drag and drop (I assume you have backups ;-) )

[David Gifford]

Hi Mark

Thank you for your kind and patient efforts to improve TiddlyBlink.

I installed your json attachment in an empty file of TB, and refreshed, then created 'Parent topic' and with the clock button created two child tiddlers. The unfold icon appears for each in the parent tiddler, but nothing happens when I click the icon. Interestingly, the child tiddlers DID show something, but when I clicked hide, it completely hid it, with no unhide button or anything, so it disappeared completely.

[Mark S.]

Needless to say, it works perfectly when I do it. See below Maybe you could send me or link me what you're doing?

Thanks!

[David Gifford]

I uploaded it for you to see at https://giffmex.org/experiments/tbmetemplatetestfolding.html

[Mohammad]

David,

This is a great tool now!

I would appreciate when you have time add some documentation explaning differect aspect of TiddlyBlink!

Thanks for all your efforts.

--Mohammad

[David Gifford]

Thanks Mohammad.

I am presently reading a book and taking notes in a special TB modified for me: I am using tagging to keep certain types of tiddlers from showing in the transclusion section:

Tag: sources (book tiddlers)

Tag: outlines (outlines I am manually creating based on topic tiddlers I add)

Tag: meta (all tiddlers like home, and the list-search tiddlers for

Tag: passages (Bible passages, to distinguish them from other topics)

You can see this in the file I uploaded for Mark (https://giffmex.org/experiments/tbmetemplatetestfolding.html), but my refstranclude tiddler is different from his:

$:/.giffmex/ViewTemplate/refstransclude

\define mycrit() (?i)\b$(searchspx)$\b
<$vars searchme=<<currentTiddler>> searchspx={{{ [<currentTiddler>escaperegexp[]]}}} >

<$list filter="[!is[system]regexp:text<mycrit>!tag[outlines]sort[title]] -[is[current]]"><$link><span class="graybox"><$transclude field="text" mode="block" /></span></$link></$list>
</$vars>

[Mark S.]

Hmm. It's the colons in your default names. The colon is used as a key separator in the data dictionary.

Ok. Delete "TiddlyBlinkFoldData" Now when you run and click on unfold, it will create a JSON data dictionary which is immune to the ":" problem.

[David Gifford]

Thanks Mark! Works great. I am making some additional documentation and options for TiddlyBlink, and will notify here when it is ready.

[Mark S.]

You might consider listing the required and recommended plugins in your documentation, and maybe where to get them. I was

going to do that in the attached files readme, but ran out of time (see below).

Usually you would not package other peoples' plugins inside of yours, even though that might seem convenient. There's the

possibility of plugin conflict, for one thing.

I've attached a first pass at making your project into a plugin. I just used Tinka, which makes the process pretty easy.

The main non-intuitive thing is the names for the readme files. They're your stem name ($:/plugins/giffmex/tiddlyblink/) followed by "readme", "dependents", etc.

HTH

[David Gifford]

Hi everyone,

Mark S: I did not try your plugin because I was in the process of writing a large amount of new documentation as well as changing some of the system tiddlers.

Everyone: Please have a look at a significant update to TiddlyBlink (https://giffmex.org/gifts/tiddlyblink.html). I think this is cleaner and adds more functionality and options.

[Mohammad]

@Mark

 Thank you for sharing. This is now a clean plugin can be shared and installed by everyone!

I tested it on tiddlywiki.com and create a home tiddler and I saw some references at the bottom!

Seems there was some links to my newly created Home tiddler! :-)

@David,

Thank you for all your effort. The latest version with the cover page documentation show a clear and small learning path to use the pro TidlyBlink.

Hope you have added this to Tiddlywiki Toolmap.

Best

Mohammad

[Mark S.]

Hi Dave,

I think I need to see an example page in action to understand how you're using

the sources and outline features.

Thanks!

[TonyM]

David,

I saw that you suggest dragging and dropping a large number of tiddlers to install tiddlyblink in another wiki. I did a quick experiment that had such good results I thought I would share the result with you.

Drop the attached file on an empty tiddlywiki and save and reload. 

It is basically a plugin package with all the suggested tiddlers.

If you install it on your site a simple link in a tiddler 

[[TiddlyBlink Package]]

can be dragged and dropped on any wiki

All the tiddlers will be there also as shadow tiddlers as its a simple plugin

I must document what I did, if I can remember

Regards

Tony

[TonyM]

If david can list the tiddlers containing an example I can make a test data package as well :)

[David Gifford]

Hi Mark

I have updated https://giffmex.org/gifts/tiddlyblinkexample.html to make outlines clearer. See the landing page there.

Sources are just tiddlers tagged with `sources` so they appear in the Sources tab in the home page.

[David Gifford]

Wow, TonyM, that is fantastic!

Questions:

1. Can I edit tiddlers that are already packaged, rather than have to go through the packaging process again? (I have already made changes to two documentation tiddlers, and don't want to bother you every time I make minor edits)

2. The tiddlers that start with $:/.giffmex/ViewTemplate/refs... have the $:/tags/ViewTemplate tag removed, so the checkboxes do not appear in the TiddlyBlink sidebar tab. And "5. Learn more about TiddlyWiki", which is in the package, does not show up in the list on the "TiddlyBlink' tiddler. Does your process remove certain tags from the packaged tiddlers?

3. Is it possible for the package to be a system tiddler? Not a deal-breaker, but would mean that the All and Recent tabs would be clean for the user.

4. I need to update that list of tiddlers to include. At that point can I ask you to do a new packaging of the list?

Thanks again, this is really helpful.

[David Gifford]

I just want to post again to say how grateful I am to Eric Shulman, Mark S, Mohammad and TonyM. for their feedback and suggestions, and especially for their contributions with snippets and packages. This project snowballed more than I anticipated, and you guys helped me turn it into something way more helpful. Would be neat to get more people back into TiddlyWiki (I have already counted three returnees or potential returnees, two here on the forum and another on Twitter).

[Mark S.]

With this color scheme, all the controls except one are invisible in full screen editor mode.

[David Gifford]

Just gotta squint a little harder, is all. :-) When I get back I will change the palette to default.

[David Gifford]

Thanks for the heads up Mark! Made the change.

On Saturday, February 1, 2020 at 4:31:33 PM UTC-6, Mark S. wrote:

[TonyM]

David

I will repackage asap. But I'm on the road. I hope to empower any one to package anything including a repackage. Edit tiddlers. Repackage, reimport new.

This my recent discovery so needs to be matured. Are the tiddlers correct on the demo?

regards
Tony

[TonyM]

David

I am grateful to you for asking for a real world solution and managing it to a reality. We need not expect more.

Tony

[David Gifford]

Hi Tony, Yes the tiddlers on the tiddler "$:/.giffmex/meta/How to add TiddlyBlink to your TiddlyWiki" have been updated.

Thanks for your help with this.

[Diego Mesa]

Hey David,

This is great work! Is it possible to package this a plugin? 

[David Gifford]

Yes, Diego, as you will see from reading the thread, TonyM has been helping me, and will soon package this as a plugin. Blessings!