Advice on using TW to manage a complex amount/level of info?

[DaveP]

I am planning to use TW manage alot of (well all of, if i can) my
activities both personal and work related.
As such i envisage it will need to perform quite a number of different
task.

These could be hugely varied to:
- having my most used weblink on the default Tiddler,
- along with link to my language program,
- my video library,
- my recipes (made a good start)
- my TO DO LIST ( a real challenge here would be to have it sync with
my MS Outlook ToDoLists hmm)

Basically when i start my pc i want to have a TW (or something) that
comes up with a main page with all the important items i want to see
and manage immediately.

So the question(s) i pose is:

Q1 - What are you thoughts, experiences and suggestions on
this.....even if the answer is not to do
it this way (se next para) or with TW, let me know why?

Q2 - My thought is to have a Main wiki with sub-wikis which contain
the respective info as mentioned
above in the first paragraph - is this a good sound/logical
approach?

Q3 - Or should i just build it all in one gigantic TW which in some
ways sounds good but (being an
Aero Design Engineer) does not sound practical or wise on a
number of levels, especially from
a data management point of view?

Q4 - I would especially be interested to hear if this is better/more
easily managed in something like
X/HTML, using Java, PHP ??

Looking forward to your brutally honest input :)

TIA

/br

Dave

[AlanBCohen]

Hi Dave,

(Oops, I just had a flash from HAL 9000)
I'm not much more experienced than you with TW, but I can give you
some feedback. At work, I've got three TW files, index.html,
project.html, and journal.html. Index is also my home page in
firefox. I use it to keep my links to important systems, like the
ones I'm supposed to maintain, the trouble ticket system, the weather
map, the cafeteria menu, and the other TW files. I also used the
LaunchApplicationPlugin to setup several rows of buttons to launch
applications and file browsers on important directories.
Project contains the organization hierarchy of my project, all the
people, client and consultant, the employers and their team
assignments - as I have been able to compile them, along with their
skill sets (func, tech, dba, applications, etc.) as I find out who are
the 'goto's' on each topic. I started this file because I couldn't
get anyone to tell me where this info was, so I built it.
Journal has tiddlers by day and trouble ticket number, along with
using tags for categories and tiddler with the same name as the tags
setup with ForEachTiddlerPlugin routines to make nice lists. I use
the daily journals to assemble my weekly status reports. Right now, I
am finding a fair amount of cut/paste to maintain tiddlers by both
date and trouble ticket; I'm considering using 'YYYY-0MM-0DD_Ticket#'
as a tiddler key and then just use the ForEachTiddler macros to make
lists both ways. That is the core of my work system. I haven't split
this up for any problems; I just like the redundancy that even if one
file gets corrupted, the others are fine.
Since I'm on the functional side (I may be a geek, but t the center of
it all, I'm still an accountant), I can't speak to other
technologies. At work, I am limited to the management-imported
software tools and have no access to the outside internet, so there
may be better tools than I am using; there certainly are a lot of
Plugins I don't have access to. So, others may have better ways to do
things. But, if you need to do things like I've described, TW will do
them well, with a little forethought.
I have to admit, my home use is a lot less sophisticated as I have a
lot less time to work on it. But, I've got a rudimentary addressbook
up and running with a good subset of my 12 year collection in my Palm
using TWAB. Because I can't take a pda into work, I've fallen back on
a dayrunner book for my calendar and a subset of my addressbook. I'd
love to figure out how to print out from TWAB on to Running Mate-sized
paper (3.75" x 6.875", 6 hole,I think). If I could find the paper!
Other than that, I do have a local home page in TW that performs much
like the work one. I'm not yet sure what to do about a calendar in TW
yet.
I hope this helps.
Alan

[wolfgang]

> - having my most used weblink on the default Tiddler,
> - along with link to my language program,
> - my video library,
> - my recipes (made a good start)
> - my TO DO LIST ( a real challenge here would be to have it sync with
> my MS Outlook ToDoLists hmm)
>

All these things can be easily done with TiddlyWiki, also in just one.
If performance becomes too slow with a certain size of data (though
that's a much lesser factor contributing than many different plugins
installed) you always can still divide the one into many TiddlyWikis,
for example with ExportTiddlersPlugin and based on tags.

http://www.tiddlytools.com/#ExportTiddlersPlugin
http://www.tiddlytools.com/#ExportTiddlersPluginInfo

Regards..

[DaveP]

Hi Alan,

Thanks for the detailed reply, nice of you to spend the time to share
your thoughts and experiences thus far.
Unfortunately in this day and age communication through the internet
and on forums replies are generally limited down to 2 or 3 sentences
at best; so well done.
On my first pass I thought wow there's alot of info here and it will
take a few more times reading it so i have a clear picture in my head
of what and how you are doing things.
I did notice though you making refence to several things which i need
to go off and read a bit more about to understand like
#LaunchApplicationPlugin and #ForEachTiddlerPlugin.
Both of these sound like they could be of use so a little reading to
understand their functionality and usefulness to my needs. My needs
are in reality probably not so different to what anyone else my want
so they probably can be adapted in some fashion i think, hooray and
thanks for the tips to these two plugins.
I definitely want to understand ''LaunchApplicationPlugin to setup

several rows of buttons to launch

> applications and file browsers on important directories.'' Especially the last bit about (if i understand it right) importing directory listings..... is that the gist of it?
I have a reasonably clear goal mapped out as to: (a) what i want, (b)
how i want to achieve it and (c) what sort of functionality i think i
need.
The problem i find being a 3week newbie is that i don't know half of
what is available for TW in the way of plugins and that is forgetting
about scripts, macros and anything else.
The other dilemma is that when you do go trawling around you
invariably find a bunch of other useful stuff which then splits the
thought process (well mine, actually in two) and that is do i spend
time evaluating the new plugin, test and assess its usefulness?? All
of which eats up the all too limited precious commodity 'time' and
when you start messing around assessing something else no matter how
good the intentions are you lose sometime.
Or do I ( and i probably should) continue on developing my TW (s) as
originally intended and then comeback and implement updates once i
have a working TW.
As you can see my thoughts get sidetracked at times, although to be
fair i suspect this happens to all of us when you discover a new toy
(TW in this case for me).
Although as i write my mixed thoughts down as i explain the point,
issues and various other things something become a little
clearer......food for though perhaps.

So thanks for you time, sharing you experience and pardon my little
ramble :)

/br

Dave

[DaveP]

Hi wolfgang,

Thanks for taking a moment to reply, i think it will be useful to know
this.
Although i am fairly clear what my goals and requirements are i am not
certain as to how i am going to go about achieving this yet.
As i said to AlanBC in a previous reply my trouble is that being a
relative newbie to TW is that i have no real feeling for what it is
capable of. The dilemma this creates is that i start creating, hit a
snag, start asking you good folk questions to which you provide useful
info.
Trouble is then that i end up learning about some other useful
function, plugin, script or macro (BTW i have no idea how to use the
later two at any rate) Then i have a slight loss of focus as to
whether to continue down the original path intended or go off and
evaluate the new found feature and if it is suitable for my needs :=)

Although i expect this comes as no surprise to all experienced users
hearing this, reminds you what is was like when you got that 'new toy'
couldn't wait to play with it and find out what it could do.

Enough rambling, thanks once again i am sure it will prove of use.

/br

Dave

[AlanBCohen]

Hi again Dave,
Both of these plugins (with documentation) are available at TWHelp
(http://tiddlyspot.com/twhelp/), an excellent site for newcomers (a
version from last year was imported to the intranet at work, so I have
access to it there). Actually, to browse your own computer or network
is relatively straightforward, even from your browser without TW. The
syntax for the links is simply 'file:///home/alanbcohen/' (on linux)
or 'file:///C:/' (on windows). Just use that in a link like [[Browse
C: Drive|file:///C:/]] The bad part is that while you can browse
drives and see the files (and open data files like pictures or
document, if you have mime types defined to your browser - most people
do), you can't start applications directly. That's where
LaunchApplicationPlugin comes in handy. The following is a simple
example (directly from my TW). This is the whole body of my tiddler
'WinXPFileManager', which launches Windows Explorer at the default
location.

<<LaunchApplication "WinXP File Manager" "Explorer" "file:///windows/
explorer">>

Or from TWHelp, this example of opening a directory in Explorer:

<<LaunchApplicationLink "C Drive" "Folder" "file:///c:/">>


As far as ForEach is concerned, it can get quite complicated, but a
simple example from TWHelp is:

''Tiddlers with the tag 'memorize'.''
<<forEachTiddler
where
'tiddler.tags.contains("memorize")'

>>
The first line is just a heading, the body of the macro sits between
the << >>. I often create a tiddler with the same name as a tag,
and use a similar ForEach macro to display all the tiddlers with that
tag.


BTW, the word 'script' in the TW world usually refers to Javascript
routines which you can include in tiddlers with the
InlineJavascriptPlugin installed


Hope that is useful. One of the things that impressed me about the TW
community is their willingness to help newcomers; all I can do is to
try too.

Alan

[DaveP]

Hi again Alan,

You are quite right in what you say about the TW community in that
they are very willing to help newcomers and the help is appreciated,
yourself included.

In fact they are so helpful providing info my head is a veritable wash
with new sources, tips and references that it is fairly swimming so
much it is hard to concentrate one thing at a time actually.

Being still new it is going to take me some time to digest 'this
helping' yet once again and it is appreciated.

Only hope that i can repay and pass on the favour by helping another
in return one day.

Thnx

/br

Dave

[Anthony Muscio]

Perhaps I can share with you my approach

With the help of judicious backups I tend to live my life in a single tiddlywiki which I have built a piece at a time. With Tasks list and contact info I have slowly evolved it into something greater.

Like the Computer metaphor "Booting", I lift my self up by my bootstraps. Each time I need to develop a new feature I just add it if the need demands.

Sure a couple of times I have had to revert to a previous version or disable all plugins progressively until I identify the problem one.

I am also very aware of all the tools for developing multiple tiddlyWiki systems using external tiddlersplugin, import/export, though I have not needed to split it yet.

Using optimisation techniques and now the latest firefox the speed is adequate to support a 7MB file.
See http://www.giffmex.org/twfortherestofus.html
for Tips for speeding up performance on large TiddlyWikis

I am very happy.

Some hints, if there is no compelling reason to link say recipes to your to do list create a separate tiddlyWiki also always use good tagging practices and if you need to export/import a pile of tiddlers to a new tiddlywiki then it is easy.

So keep it simple and evolve your wki into what you want it to be. Step at a time.

Regards Tony

TonyM

If you have not found an easy way to do it with TiddlyWiki, you have missed something.
www.tiddlywiki.com