TiddlyWiki for Books (Newbie Questions)

[Bigosinski, Jeremi J]

Hello,

I've been looking into using TiddlyWiki to create an online instructional manual. I'm not clear on three things and am wondering if someone could help me:

1) When the TW is published to the web, can anyone edit it and change it (a big problem for obvious reasons). I don't mind if they want to change their "view" or navigation, but not the content. I saw this article: http://80.56.108.132/TW5/TW5_readonly.html that makes the TW read-only. Is there an easier way to lock the file with User Access Control, or more blunt like with CHMOD or HTACCESS or would that break TW? For example, I write up the master file on TiddlyDesktop and then upload it to the web and lock it...

2) The tagline for TW is a non-linear personal notebook. I like how the tiddlers operate versus other wikis and the ability to hide the "cards" (tiddlers). But, as I want to use TW in a VERY linear fashion, am I making more work for myself than by just using other software tools?

3) How well does TW play with Javascript? I want to implement an open source image compression algorithm that doesn't yet have major browser support. The only way to use it at the moment is to wrap the image in a javascript script. For those interested, I want to use this: https://flif.info/

Thank you,

Jeremi

FLIF - Free Lossless Image Format FLIF - Free Lossless Image Format. FLIF is a novel lossless image format which outperforms PNG, lossless WebP, lossless BPG, lossless JPEG2000, and lossless JPEG XR in terms of compression ratio. flif.info

[Mat]

Welcome Jeremi

I've been looking into using TiddlyWiki to create an online instructional manual

Shold be perfect for it.

 

1) When the TW is published to the web, can anyone edit it and change it (a big problem for obvious reasons).

Yes and no. Or I should say No and yes because it is more "no". If you use the standard way that TW is designed, visitors can edit it but not save changes to your server. But it is fairly easy to remove the editing possibilities e.g the "edit" button. But if you make a public wiki you'll not want the edit button and some other stuff to show anyway, like some of the sidebar stuff. So you'll have to tweak it regardless.

 

2) ... I want to use TW in a VERY linear fashion, am I making more work for myself than by just using other software tools?

Hm, if you really mean "VERY" then, yeah, TW is not the thing.  But what do you actually mean with "VERY linear fashion"? You can easily make, say, a bunch of tiddlers appear as a monolithic and linear group (use transclusion in a wrapping tiddler). But it is not a "word document".

3) How well does TW play with Javascript? I want to implement an open source image compression algorithm that ...

You can package the JS into and make it work. (I don't know how, but people do it.) But why would you do image compression in TW? If your intention is to show images in TW you should note that they are best not stored in the very TW file because it bloats the file and makes it slow to load. Instead images are stored elsewhere and shown in the TW. 

<:-)

[Mark S.]

TW is just a web page powered by Javascript. Out of the box, it can't save to a website. So you can load it to your site just like any other web page. Someone could of course modify their own version, but that wouldn't save back to your site.

Even linear things, like books, are broken into pages and chapters and sections. So nothing is really linear ;-) Having the ability to search can be a very useful thing with an instruction manual. If it was me, I'd try writing a chapter to see how hard it is and whether you like the results.

TW5 does tend to keep you at arm's length from Javascript. You, or somebody who was interested, would have to find some way to wrap the library in a javascript macro or widget. How hard that is depends at least partly on they've written the library. In this day of cheap server space, I'm wondering what the point of more compression is ? Most compression routines I've seen that promise better compression than some existing tech end up only being a few percent better. 

[PMario]

On Monday, February 8, 2021 at 3:41:48 PM UTC+1 jbigos...@ncc.commnet.edu wrote:

3) How well does TW play with Javascript? I want to implement an open source image compression algorithm that doesn't yet have major browser support. The only way to use it at the moment is to wrap the image in a javascript script. For those interested, I want to use this: https://flif.info/

TW plays well with JS, if you know how to do it. It is more advanced as adding a script to a static page. TW is highly interactive and the "visual elements" can be redrawn anytime. ... So you probably will need a new widget, that can deal with your image format.

FLIF will probably _never_ be supported by major browsers, since it is superseded by JPEG XL which seems to be ISO standard now. According to the "tracking bugs" browsers are focusing on JPEG XL.

There seems to be a FLIF browser polyfill, that can be used. ... I did play a little bit with the polyifll demo page. The advantage of the FLIF file format seems to be, that it can "partially" download the image and still show something. ... The polyfill seems to always download the whole file. .. So IMO there will be no advantage.

The github-flif page says, that development has stopped. ... So for me it doesn't make too much sense to use this file format, except you absolutely have too.

Is there a reason, why you want to use FLIF? ... Or is it just a "want to have"?

-mario

[Bigosinski, Jeremi J]

Thank you kindly Mat, PMario, and Mark S for all your comments. You have given me much to think about it.

 

In response to some of the clarifying questions, here are my justifications for pursuing TiddyWiki, and my current requirements:

 

• I like the fact that TW is a one file that can be easily viewed, downloaded or make derivative works from. I can see, however, that may cause file bloat and when adding images. A 400 mb single file isn’t going to work when students will be likely using their underpowered smart phones to read the text and images. Maybe I can host image in a folder and link to it from TW, but that would break the derivative part unless there is a plugin to automagically create PDFs, downloadable EPUB, etc ( like there is download option for Wikipedia\Wikimedia). I just don’t want to constantly maintain and update a separate file for that purpose. An acceptable compromise might by a chapter by chapter download versus the whole thing. Or maybe I shouldn’t care and just leave it to the end-user to figure it out. Seems very rude though IMHO. This isn’t a critical feature for me, but it is part of the OER ethos.
  
  
• To me, a linear process is going from Step 1, Step 2, and likewise, reading from Chapter 1 to Chapter 2, and so on. You are correct that books, per se, are not very linear in their creation, but I was alluding to the process in which they are read or understood. I don’t want to confuse students by making it too easy to skip around and miss critical concepts by not going in a specific order, which can happen with “Research Wormholes” on Wikipedia where all you wanted to find out was about Topic A but then you get off-track by reading Topic B,C,D,E, etc.
  
  
• I’m drawn to FLIF as a modern alternative to animated GIFs., which depending on size and resolution can result in massive file sizes. I do not think that JPEG XL can serve animated content, if only be going by the lack of doing so for JPEG and JPEG2000. Considering device issues and internet connection speeds, GIFs really aren’t going to cut it. I could fall back on APNGs, but that format doesn’t have much browser support either but it may end up being the necessary compromise if I can’t get FLIF to work correctly. The only player left in this small format field (AFAIK) is Google’s WebP format, but cursory research reveals double the file size of an equivalent animated GIF. http://littlesvr.ca/apng/gif_apng_webp3.html You might point out to just use videos, but people read faster than listening to the spoken word or watching a video. I want to be able to serve short animations of 5-30 seconds of content at a time, as necessary, fronted and backed by the appropriate text explanation. I’m not a back-end developer so by suggesting to figure out a widget to make FLIF work with TW is probably the answer – not going to happen. =)
  
  
• I just saw the post about a TiddlyWiki Textbook. That’s really cool and will try attempt to contribute only to see if that’s going to work for my needs. In the meantime, I guess it’s time for some rigorous testing. Aside from TiddlyWiki, I’ve been looking at DocuWiki and Wiki.js. I might have an open source webhost lined up too (where server space and bandwidth is limited – necessitating image compression algorithms), we’ll see.
  
  

 

Best wishes,

Jeremi

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[Odin]

You can make a list of tiddlers that are supposed to be viewed in order. Add this macro (or a variation of it) by Mohammed (https://kookma.github.io/TW-Utility/#demo%2Fsimple-navigation). This adds navigation to those tiddlers, so users can press 'previous' and 'next' buttons to go back and forth in a linear manner. You can then ofcourse style the buttons however you please.

What makes this macro pretty handy is that it uses the order that is in the tag-dropdown list. You can drag-and-drop tiddlers in that list to change the order. So it is easy to rearrange and order your tiddlers, without changing links you've made in the text.

Op dinsdag 9 februari 2021 om 16:32:15 UTC+1 schreef jbigos...@ncc.commnet.edu:

[Ste]

Animated svg's?
https://app.svgator.com/