[TW5] The TWederBob plugin and demo (TWederation, with Bob)

[Jed Carty]

With the TWederBob plugin I have the first working parts of TWederation set up to work with Bob.

You can now configure Bob servers to enable pushing and fetching tiddlers from wikis served with Bob. I also added this to the online version that I made. I am hopefully going to be making the server component of that publicly available in the next few days.

What all of this means right now is that you can use the TWederBob plugin to push or pull tiddlers to/from your Bob wikis from other wikis. The online demo only allows fetching tiddlers from the public wikis because none of the wikis are editable without authentication and no one outside ooktech has a login, but it is possible to log into a remote server using the Login plugin and pushing or fetching tiddlers from private wikis works if you have the required permissions.

Instructions for the demo are here: https://www.ooktech.xyz:8443/Public#Federation%20Demo

The TWederBob plugin is available on GitHub here https://github.com/OokTech/TW5-TWederBob

[Mohammad]

Great step!

Thank you Jed!

/Mohammad

[Mat]

This is all incredibly exciting.

It is also, so far, very complex so I will provoke you with some questions with the intention of formulating an as-simple-as-possible step-by-step instruction as well as a "why everyone really should care" description. I'll do this by first attempting to install everything from scratch. Prepare for bombardement with stupid questions. You have been warned ;-) ;-) ;-)

Now, as a first step I'm attempting to use the TWederBob Fetch Demo, at that site, to fetch "mu cat.png" from the advised wiki but nothing seems to happen. Am I misunderstanding sth? I tried all of filters "mu cat.png" and [[mu cat.png]] and mu cat.png - but there is no result and no feedback AFAICT.

<:-)

[Ste Wilson]

YAY!
(I may actually get time to get Bob on my pi sorted soon)

Is Bobtewd comparable with plain twed?

[Jed Carty]

Mat,

Thank you for doing that! I will try to answer the questions. The filters are normal filters so the filter would be [[mu cat.png]]

Did you just click on the button in the public wiki? Because that would fetch the tiddler from itself and there wouldn't be any visible change. If you put the plugin into a single file wiki than you need to do something to let things loaded on file:/// uris use cross-site requests. This has to be done by you and I can't write anything that would automatically allow it.

In safari:

-you need to turn on the developer menu first by opening the menus Safari->preferences->Advanced, then at the bottom of the advanced menu you check 'Show Develop Menu in Menu Toolbar'

-Then in the Develop menu that appears check 'Disable Local File Restrictions'

In firefox:

-I think it may work out of the box without any changes. Or I have unknowingly changed things on all of my computers and don't remember. So if anyone has trouble let me know so we can figure out how to get around it.

In Chrome, edge, IE, whatever:

I don't know, I don't have any other browsers on my computers.

[Jed Carty]

Ste,

It doesn't use the same thing as old twederation, but there isn't any reason that you couldn't have both in the same wiki. This new plugin only interacts with a server so it can't pull from single file wikis but there isn't any reason we couldn't have a hybrid setup that uses the older method for single file wikis and this one for wikis with a server back-end.

At its base it is moving tiddlers between wikis so you can have a network that is comprised of both the single file twederated wikis and the server-based federated wikis.

[Jed Carty]

Ste,

What problems are you running into with Bob on your pi? I have had it running on mine since before I announced Bob here so it is possible.

[Ste Wilson]

As discussed before, you had typo in your set up instructions and I was missing a comma in my config. I just haven't had a spare evening and or energy to fire up ssh, wrestle withand the command line and get it sorted. Will report back when I do.

[Mat]

(sorry for premature post here above)

WOW! I was really expecting a lot of messing around with Chrome in Win but.. nope, to an otherwise empty TW, I pulled over;

• TWederBob plugin
  ...and that minitest:
• TWederBob Fetch Demo
  

I was really prepared for a battle with Chrome but, nope, right away: into that Fetch Demo I type in 

[[mu cat.png]]

..and click the button AND IMMEDIATELY I GOT THE TIDDLER! No fuss whatsoever!

WOW it was so slick. Will now test more stuff.

<:-)

[Mat]

@Jed

In the tiddler What is this?, under the heading "Federation", I would like also a link to "Setup any TiddlyWiki for Federation"

IMO it would also make sense to use tags for drag'n droping these things instead of links. As you know, tags has the advantage of allowing deletable tiddlers to be batch imported so, for example, a "drag tag" named "Setup any TiddlyWiki for Federation" could include both the "TWederBob plugin" and the "TWederBob Fetch Demo" and when the user got tired of the latter he'd just delete it.

BTW, I would like to use your creations to discuss these things and come with proposals like these but in an implemented form so you can just "install" a proposal if you like it. We attempted this in the first rendition of TWederation and that is also how we discovered the problems with it. Hopefully things would go smoother this time around. Is that possible? I.e could you and I and others interested  in supporting the dev do this via TWederBob and your server?

<:-)

[Jed Carty]

Mat,

I am glad that it works. Safari is the only place I know where any additional work is needed then. I have no idea about Edge or IE. I was a bit worried when this didn't get much response.

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Jed, as I said before I think its low numbers, not lack of interest. I'm still catching up with your previous. I need a bit of time.

Josiah

Jed Carty wrote:

... I was a bit worried when this didn't get much response.

[Mat]

On Monday, August 27, 2018 at 6:48:25 PM UTC+2, Jed Carty wrote:

Mat,

I am glad that it works. Safari is the only place I know where any additional work is needed then. I have no idea about Edge or IE. I was a bit worried when this didn't get much response.

OK, windows 10:

Edge - RSOD erros msg: "Undefined error".

IE - RSOD  translated error message: "It's not possible to get the property getItem for a referece that is not defined or is null". 

Note that when I open IE, before going to anything TW related, there's some popup if I want to use recommended security settings for IE or customize. I just dismissed this, but I guess individual settings in this could affect TWederBob.

<:-)

 

[Mat]

On Monday, August 27, 2018 at 7:08:59 PM UTC+2, @TiddlyTweeter wrote:

Jed, as I said before I think its low numbers, not lack of interest. I'm still catching up with your previous. I need a bit of time.

I agree but I also think it is "lack of interest from ignorance". When people do eventually see what this brings they'll for sure be interested. At this stage, part of the difficulty is to convey what this is all about. I feel some responsibility in working with this aspect, given my evangelism for federation.

<:-) 

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Jed

Very nice! Tested on FF Windows 52.9 using single file TW with the TWederBob plugin. Tried ..

[[mu cat.png]]
[tag[Demos]]

Worked flawlessly first time.

I then deleted retrieved items, saved & refreshed and repeated. [[mu cat.png]] came fine. The [tag[Demos]] didn't.

Could that be a latency issue?

I repeated the steps a third time and it all worked flawlessly again.

Josiah

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Mat wrote:

... When people do eventually see what this brings they'll for sure be interested. At this stage, part of the difficulty is to convey what this is all about. I feel some responsibility in working with this aspect, given my evangelism for federation.

Yes. FWIW,  for a user like me its hard to "man-up" unless I see lots of examples. Not so much of how it works per se but what it works for. I think if the demos could, over time, become richer it would help. For instance, several example filters. Example of a one-push button e.g "Get all the Demos." In time the applications of it should get a lot clearer and its maybe that "end use" aspect that might matter quite a lot to uptake. Just thoughts.

There are also several basic things I'm unclear about (as an idiot :) and which I will ask about shortly.

J.

[Jed Carty]

This is only interesting if there are people who care about using it.

If you want a comparison to something that already exists, it is an alternate version of the plugin library that can get plugins from a wiki you can view instead of just a list of plugin names.

It does the same thing with any tiddlers.

And in addition to that, if you have write access to the wiki, you can submit your own plugins (or other tiddlers) to the wiki.

[TonyM]

Can I respectfully say

One reason I think there is a lack of clarity on federation is it has not being accessible to the broader audience and those in the know have seen it around for ages and have a strong knowledge of it and know what it means.

It is now polarised to those who know (a small number of people) and those who dont.

The discussion needs to go back to basics for most of us and those in the know need to explain the state of play in simple language.

As I understand it it forshadows the next generation.

Regards
Tony

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Jed Carty wrote:

If you want a comparison to something that already exists, it is an alternate version of the plugin library that can get plugins from a wiki you can view instead of just a list of plugin names.

 

... in addition to that, if you have write access to the wiki, you can submit your own plugins (or other tiddlers) to the wiki.

Right. To give just one example: A Bob Online TWederation server could seriously ease our current issues with finding and installing plugins. I think being able to submit plugins to a dedicated Bob Plugin Repository is a potential great step. I'm running ahead, but I think its important to smell the coffee.

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Okay, so here is one of my stupid questions (concerning TWederBob plugin in standalone TW)

-- Can I fetch a Tiddler from any online TW? Or can that only be from a Bob served wiki?

J.

[Jed Carty]

If you have a wiki (node, bob, tiddlyserver, single html file, it doesn't matter) and you add the TWederBob plugin then you can pull tiddlers from Bob servers and add a copy of the tiddler to your wiki. The demo for this is on https://www.ooktech.xyz:8443/Public

If you are using Bob than you can also set up Bob so that you can push tiddlers to a Bob wiki.

There are more details of how to set it up, but that is the general idea in its entirety.

One of the things that you can do with this is create an alternate plugin library setup. Because plugins are tiddlers you can pull plugins from Bob servers, or if you wish you could add a plugin to a Bob server by pushing the plugin to it.

The only things between what we have right now and a fully functioning community library is:

Actual community interest and participation

a server to host it on 

a URL for it

an interface

The interface could be the same as the current plugin library. It would take a few hours to put together I think.

[TonyM]

Jed,

Then we are almost there

Actual community interest and participation I AM VERY interested as are Others

a server to host it on If I can secure it I can now HOST nodeJS on the Internet and happy to offer it

a URL for it We have a range of choices but tiddlywiki.colabteam.com is readily available (even just under colabteam.com )

an interface I am not sure what this is?

I also have my own collected plugin library sitting on a current local bob server (needs a little work)

Regards

Tony

[HansWobbe]

Jed:

FYI: I remain a heavy Bob* user and would embrace the ability to host TWs in this manner.

Thanks for sharing all of your work.

Best regards,

Hans