macOS, widgets and deeper OS integration in Quine

[Peter Hajas]

I love Quine on my iPhone and iPad. I know that Chris is working on a new version of Quine. I think it'd be great to have deeper integration with the OS in this version:

- macOS app! TiddlyDesktop doesn't run natively on Apple Silicon, and an app built on WKWebView would be really nice

- allow users to show a tiddler (rendered through templates, maybe?) in a widget

  - for example, my Daily Journal, Inbox, etc.

  - I think this could be done by snapshotting the webview when a particular tiddler is loaded, but it may be more difficult than that

- Shortcuts support

  - appending to a tiddler

  - getting the contents of a tiddler

Love the app - thanks for it!

-- Peter

[Quine]

Hi Peter,

Thank you for the feedback and the positive remarks - both greatly appreciated :-)

The input re the needs/wants is especially helpful. I think you can kind-of do what you are asking re-tiddlers already using native TiddlyWiki. Have you tried exporting a tiddler to html - and then opening in Quine as an html file? If I understand you correctly - what might be interesting is to hide the export and open steps in a single "view in Quine" (needs a better name) optional action - and from that have a simplified wkWebview modal view of the tiddler. 

Let me know what you think - and I'll play with it a little.

Re macOS - I'm using my prototype code in production for myself - but waiting for iOS 16 an macOS13 before I really get moving. The tooling for app development (Xcode) for the next OS releases is still in beta - very stable - but it's too early to tell how things will really run when the new OS releases arrive. There will be much work once that happens. Meanwhile I am doing a complete rewrite and taking the opportunity to optimize a lot of the core components for the new OS's. All good fun.

Please could you expand on your request around shortcuts?

Cheers - Chris.

[Peter Hajas]

Hey Chris,

Thanks for your kind note!

For widgets, I'd like to show a rendered tiddler (from my single-file wiki) inside of a home screen widget, backed by WidgetKit. For example, the tiddler at `$:/phajas/inbox` or `TodayTasks`. If run through view templates, this could be a nice way to integrate TiddlyWiki deeper with my day-to-day (I could pin a tiddler to my home screen, or even lock screen with the new iOS features). I'd want this to act as a lens into my existing TiddlyWiki.

For Shortcuts, having some actions to slice and dice tiddlers would be great. For example, Quine actions to:

- get the contents of a tiddler in a wiki by name (as rich text that is formatted or plain raw-wikitext)

- list all tiddlers in a wiki

- add a new tiddler to a wiki

- append to the contents of a tiddler in a wiki

- replace the contents of a tiddler in a wiki

- delete a tiddler

These (and the widget) would likely require deeper integration of TiddlyWiki into Quine (Quine would have to understand the TW format to be able to parse these at a fine-grained level).

Thanks again for Quine!

-- Peter

[Quine]

Thanks Peter,

Your expanded requirement/request description helps - thank you - I'm thinking about it - I really like the ideas. I've been hoping for some good user ideas re widgets - and this is interesting. 

Still grinding through updates and rewrites re the the latest iOS and macOS changes. Still engrossed.

More news as soon as I feel I can see the horizon.

Chris.