Needed: A Basic Data Format For Sharing

[@TiddlyTweeter]

David Gifford's TiddlyToolMap has succinctly illustrated THE way to solve much of the fragmentation of resources TiddlyWiki lays in adopting structures for shared info on (a) resources; (b) documentation.

TiddlyToolMap emerged from David's own frustration of not being able to find what he needed at the time he needed it.

His solution was simple: collect on a list, with basic categories, links to major useful innovations.

Its imperfect, not comprehensive, somewhat messy when looking at items as there is no standard of presentation, and it includes nothing about whether a solution will all work in all TW generations.

BUT the key points are:

• largely it works;

• its the only attempt of its kind currently alive;

• he is happy its taken on, as he says: I would hope that ... people ... would feel free to use the info in my toolmap to create similar things according to the criteria they set.

• most IMPORTANT, it is being picked up on in the wild as a major resource repository ... see, for instance, this German blog post: https://toolblog.de/2018/06/16/die-ultimative-liste-fuer-tiddlywiki/?

TiddlyToolMap is a VERY good example of "auto-marketing".

It fills a need, and despite being very crude in structure, and sometimes painful to use, it DOES "hit the spot" of "Wider Use". It appeals. Is increasingly used. And addresses the lack of a full Resource Base elsewhere.

It is for these reasons I ask you help to develop a BASIC DATA FORMAT FOR RESOURCES (i.e. a list of minimal fields that can capture and organise plugins, macros and documentation) so that David's resource could be exported in a FORM that can be used and developed and NOT get lost.

Yes?

Please feel free to ask questions if anything I wrote needs clarifying.

Best wishes
Josiah

[TonyM]

Josiah,

I have being looking closely at the optimum way to represent all resources us TiddlyWiki enthusiasts use in the process of developing a Community resource website, also within my own network of wikis I have built informal standards around storing such things in Tiddlers. This is not yet exhaustive but that is where I am headed.

It is critical to develop such methods as tiddlywiki can generate a lot of details people can make use of, for example in my MyMenus plugin every menu item can also be a code snip-it people can use and I have almost 100 of these and I have only started.

Basing everything on a tiddler model makes sense because they immediately become shareable, and can carry the required tags to make them work.

My own method includes creating fields such as field-caption menu-caption to define "field tiddlers" and "menu tiddler "and where ever a macro is defined in a tiddler a field macro-macroname with the "syntax" in the field value etc... is another standard.

Some reoccurring objects in tiddlywiki  such as macros, buttons etc... are often already grouped using the relevant system tag that results in their display, which may be a sensible way 

• view template additions  $:/tags/ViewTemplate for the view template
• view toolbar additions $:/tags/ViewToolbar for the view mode tiddler toolbar
• edit toolbar additions $:/tags/EditorToolbar
  

Note that there are some cases where an Item could be validly tagged with more than one

So If we take the urls from TiddlyToolMap we could create tiddlers that have say the tiddllywiki-resource field containing the url, use the title and description fields even an icon if one is available.

It would be quite easy to build some macros that display and list such items intelligently.

I suppose my point is this is about knowledge and information management and we have the perfect tool for this, tiddlywiki all we need to do is promote some defacto standards and share them.

Regards

Tony

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao TonyM,

TonyM wrote:

I have being looking closely at the optimum way to represent all resources us TiddlyWiki enthusiasts use in the process of developing a Community resource website, also within my own network of wikis I have built informal standards around storing such things in Tiddlers. This is not yet exhaustive but that is where I am headed.

Basing everything on a tiddler model makes sense because they immediately become shareable, and can carry the required tags to make them work.

I agree on the end-sharing part. But I'm not so convinced on single TW's dynamic in creating the "feeder resource". Mark S., over in the other thread I started on this suggested something like a MediaWiki where its a shared dedicated resource base/lister. That makes sense, I think.

Right now I'm personally interested in trying to leverage David's data into a format I can use more easily to Tweet to the Twitter TiddlyWiki group where I'm pretty sure posting more entries from it would be welcomed.

And I think that illustrates my main point.

That David's list has had great effects. And helping him, or branching it into other formats, could be great for (a) Existing Users; (b) More actively Promoting TW and the huge range of what it can do.

So whilst I do see sense in Tiddlerising it, I'm interested too in simply fieldising it in a way that can be used in various ways. The two things are not at odds.

I suppose my point is this is about knowledge and information management and we have the perfect tool for this, tiddlywiki all we need to do is promote some defacto standards and share them.

Right. I guess some kind of "standard format" for resource listing would eventually be ideal. But with a collaborative framework for additions too. Something like that.

Best wishes
Josiah

[TonyM]

Josiah,

Thanks for sharing more how you wish to use such resources.

As I have implied already I am building a series of websites to assist in this and will open them up to contributions from anyone that is interested. This would include both embedding and possibly importing Davids list (to be determined later).

Is there a TiddlyWiki solution to view your Twitter feed in TiddlyWiki itself?, I would like to embed your tweets in the website as well to promote it for the twitteratie

As I design the website I have identified a number of TiddlyWiki objects I would build "objects" for, plugins, styleSheets, Macros Buttons etc... At this level they would be effectively database objects or in WordPress custom post types, this allows different tools to consume them. Each could be linked to a tiddler version, or in time we may even be able to import, export or drag and drop from such objects directly into a TiddlyWiki or as in your case tweet about them with a reference back to the resource that will evolve with changes.

Nirvana is approaching :)

Tony