Using Fields: Pros and Cons

[Mohammad]

I have read Jeremy has made fields the first citizen of Tiddly wiki!

But what are the pros and cons of using fields? How do you recommend to use fields in Tiddlywiki?

In another thread there is a discourage to use data tiddler in favor of fields! I wish to know how and when to use

fields!

- when you put everything in fields, most search facilities in Tiddlywiki do not easily find what you are looking for

- transcludind fields value in text and other place makes it too difficult to find the tiddler you look for

- transcluding fields cause confusion for people not familiar with Tiddlywiki

Pros

- field can be used for templating abstraction

- field can be used to create databases

- inheritance can be implemented using fields

What do you think?

[TiddlyTweeter]

Mohammad

It is an interesting question. I have another question too. 

       Are we making best use of the TEXT field?

For instance, rather than add tags in the tag field, I often add hashtags to the TEXT field like: #Iran #Kiarostami #director

Searching for those in the text field is just as accurate as if they were TW tags.

A comment :-)

TT

[Mohammad]

On Monday, December 16, 2019 at 7:11:15 PM UTC+3:30, TiddlyTweeter wrote:

Mohammad

It is an interesting question. I have another question too. 

       Are we making best use of the TEXT field?

Absolutely NOT!

 

For instance, rather than add tags in the tag field, I often add hashtags to the TEXT field like: #Iran #Kiarostami #director

Searching for those in the text field is just as accurate as if they were TW tags.

That is true! But these need to be learned! Where is the good Tiddlywiki practice?

[Mark S.]

But you have to remember that the hash exists, and exactly how you spelled it, preferably including capitalization.

You only have to look at the tag list for GG to see how easily that can go off the wheels.

Also, the tag then becomes embedded in the text, which might mess with presentation. Text might be tagged with terms (#economic-justice #eschatology) that don't actually occur in the text.

[Eric Shulman]

On Monday, December 16, 2019 at 7:41:15 AM UTC-8, TiddlyTweeter wrote:

       Are we making best use of the TEXT field?

For instance, rather than add tags in the tag field, I often add hashtags to the TEXT field like: #Iran #Kiarostami #director

Searching for those in the text field is just as accurate as if they were TW tags.

But... you can do things with tags other than "searching"... like:

1) generating lists using filter="[tag[foo]]"

2) navigating to tag-related items by using a tag pill

3) customize the ViewTemplate with conditional elements based on tags

Sure, you *could* do (1), and maybe (3) using filter="[search:text[#foo]]", but is that the best approach?

-e

[TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Mark

Yeah. You are right in that "#" in TW has a meaning it doesn't everywhere. I do switch it off when its a first character in a Tiddler line when I need to.

My hashtaggery comes because of its very wide use in social networks like Twitter & Telegram where I use it constantly.

But, I think, my key point was that the TEXT field can itself contain a Tiddler's own categorisation. 

The proliferation of fields is adjunctive. And sometìmes wonder if they are sometimes redundant?

Thoughts in process

TT

[TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Eric

Totally agree. The point I was getting at was that it is often not necessary to proliferate tags to IDENTIFY a Tiddler's scope through a #hashtag.

And that was my point. The very power of Tags in TW is superb -- when you need that -- in 90% of my cases I don't. A simple literal #hashtag will do the job!

Best wishes

TT

[Diego Mesa]

On hastags:

Ive always thought it would be really helpful to make use of the "On Save" action of tiddlers to employ a hashtag mechanism. If its enabled, when a user saves a tiddler the contents are scanned for hashtags and added as tags (according to pre-specified well defined rules, just like tiddler tittles). Also, any hashtags currently in the tag field that are not present in the text, can also be removed (this could be another option to enable this). 

[TiddlyTweeter]

A long time ago Riz made me a tool to convert inline hashtags into TW tags. Let me see if I can find it.

[Mark S.]

From the toolmap:

https://ibnishak.github.io/Tesseract/pluginsandmacros/hashtag2tag.html#Hashtag2tag

[TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Mark

That is it. TX! I feel ashamed as I actually use it but forgot her origin.

TT

[TonyM]

I would prefer to have such hash tags added to a custom list field on the tiddler it was found in. Adding it to tags not only potentially overuse tags but looses information unless you keep the leading #

I recently suggested such a field called keywords which is added to the default search mechanisium however unlike the default it also searches system tiddlers, also searching and returning the caption on the system tiddler if available.

This idea would in addition to globalizing keywords would allow system tiddlers like the tag manager to publish a user friendly name without the system prefix that users can locate with a standard search. Sometimes we do not want to hide a system tiddler.

I think you may use an independent hash-tags field in a similar manner to my proposed keywords field only that on tiddler save #word gets saved as word in the hash-tags field.

regards
Tony

[TiddlyTweeter]

TonyM wrote:

I would prefer to have such hash tags added to a custom list field on the tiddler it was found in.

Which hashtags do you mean? I'm unclear here caro what do you mean!!

FYI I like #hashtags for my purposes in TEXT.

No need for more. They do the job . Done.

The point is simplicity, I think.

Best wishes

TT

[TiddlyTweeter]

Just to make CLEAR the cases I am referring to are simply stuff like ...

Nestlé cannot claim #bottledwater is 'essential public service', court rules

 

Michigan’s second-highest court rules in favor of township in case that could damage company’s effort to privatize water http://ow.ly/FTRJ30pZFYM

In TW in text "#bottledwater" is fine in-text. Perfect to find. No need for tags.

It is a relaxed easy case already.

Best wishes

TT

[TonyM]

TT

Your use is fine if these are only used in non system tiddlers and my reply related to when someone wanted them to be tags, I thought they would be better in a custom list field than tags and searchable. The gentags plugin would allow them to be used in filters other than search as well.

Regards
Tony