TiddlySpace compatibility with existing apps?

[Eric Drechsel]

Hi. I really like all the work that's been happening on TiddlyWeb and
related serverside components.

I've been trying to track the development of TiddlySpace, but I
haven't found any sort of "master plan" or mission statement - there
is github, and the issue tracker, and a few list posts, perhaps the
important communications are happening "out of band"?

I'm particularly curious about whether the plan is to remain
compatible with existing TiddlyWeb plugins/apps such as mGSD. I was
able to get mGSD working with Hoster with little trouble (just create
a recipe with the system bag, a mgsd bag, and another to store your
data) but importing mGSD into a space seems to do nothing.

While I appreciate that work is being done to provide an improved
client-side interface experience, I would hope that this is being done
with an eye towards preserving compatibility with existing apps, or
else that a discussion of what level of support for old TW APIs is
appropriate. Perhaps a lo-fi version of the TS clientside could be
developed which focuses on maintaining compatibility?

Best,
Eric Drechsel
http://wiki.pdxhub.org/people/eric

[Jeremy Ruston]

> Hi. I really like all the work that's been happening on TiddlyWeb and
> related serverside components.
>
> I've been trying to track the development of TiddlySpace, but I
> haven't found any sort of "master plan" or mission statement - there
> is github, and the issue tracker, and a few list posts, perhaps the
> important communications are happening "out of band"?

Although the development of TiddlySpace has been primarily driven by
Osmosoft we've always strived to keep the communications in the public
groups so that the broader TiddlyWiki community can see what's going
on. As a result the project has benefited enormously from people
outside Osmosoft like PMario and Måns who have been using and
extending the system almost since the beginning. Being open has also
allowed ex-Osmosoft people like Jonathan Lister to stay involved,
which has been terrific too.

Anyhow, the "master plan" was published in the spring, primarily
through Chris Dent's manifestopheles:

http://manifestopheles.com/manifestos/tiddlyspace

Since then, most communications have taken place in IRC and here in
the TiddlyWeb group. Recently TiddlySpace has been coming up in the
main TiddlyWiki group a bit more as end users start to grapple with
it.

> I'm particularly curious about whether the plan is to remain
> compatible with existing TiddlyWeb plugins/apps such as mGSD. I was
> able to get mGSD working with Hoster with little trouble (just create
> a recipe with the system bag, a mgsd bag, and another to store your
> data) but importing mGSD into a space seems to do nothing.

Yes, we aim for full compatibility where ever possible. From a
client-side perspective TiddlySpace doesn't change things very much:

- There's a new theme in the form of new templates and stylesheets,
but they can be overridden or removed to revert to the default
TiddlyWiki theme
- Plugins to manage saving changes to the server
- Plugins to provide macros that give a user interfaces to TiddlySpace
features like logging in, viewing followers etc.

That's pretty much it. The save changes stuff is fairly mature and
solid, because it's been a part of TiddlyWebWiki for a long time, but
the other two areas are much more recent.

Because TiddlySpace is so new, as a community we'll have to debug the
rough edges that break compatibility with old stuff, but there's no
fundamental obstacles.

> While I appreciate that work is being done to provide an improved
> client-side interface experience, I would hope that this is being done
> with an eye towards preserving compatibility with existing apps, or
> else that a discussion of what level of support for old TW APIs is
> appropriate. Perhaps a lo-fi version of the TS clientside could be
> developed which focuses on maintaining compatibility?

All TW APIs are supported in TiddlySpace. The inclusion mechanism
allows space owners to override any of the default functionality or
themes so we shouldn't need a distinct lo-fi version.

Cheers

Jeremy

> Best,
> Eric Drechsel
> http://wiki.pdxhub.org/people/eric
>

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>

--
Jeremy Ruston
mailto:jer...@osmosoft.com
http://www.tiddlywiki.com

[PMario]

slightly OT

> Anyhow, the "master plan" was published in the spring, primarily
> through Chris Dent's manifestopheles:
>
> http://manifestopheles.com/manifestos/tiddlyspace

Ahh. I thought manifestopheles.com, is an evolved version of chris
dent's work at burningchrome.com [1] with Warp [2]. I thought, it is
an experiment. Clicked a little bit and left. But now I see, that
there are (should be) menues at the left side, of the browser. But
with Win7, FF 3.6.8 only very small red lines are shown. Clicking
doesn't do anything. win7 chromium can't display it either. win7
safari displays half of it. Clicking does nothing. (all browsers
actual versions)

Fixing this, would be cool.

http://burningchrome.com/~cdent/
http://burningchrome.com/~cdent/index.cgi?word=1

[chris...@gmail.com]

On Sat, 11 Sep 2010, PMario wrote:

> slightly OT
>> Anyhow, the "master plan" was published in the spring, primarily
>> through Chris Dent's manifestopheles:
>>
>> http://manifestopheles.com/manifestos/tiddlyspace
> Ahh. I thought manifestopheles.com, is an evolved version of chris
> dent's work at burningchrome.com [1] with Warp [2]. I thought, it is
> an experiment. Clicked a little bit and left. But now I see, that
> there are (should be) menues at the left side, of the browser. But
> with Win7, FF 3.6.8 only very small red lines are shown. Clicking
> doesn't do anything. win7 chromium can't display it either. win7
> safari displays half of it. Clicking does nothing. (all browsers
> actual versions)

There were some versions mistmatches between manifestopheles, instancer
and chrjs which I believe have now been resolved. Clicking some stuff
ought to work.

There are probably some issues with CSS that some browsers will not
work with. I decided _not_ to try and make it work with older
browsers. I developed it on safari webkit nightlies.

> http://burningchrome.com/~cdent/
> http://burningchrome.com/~cdent/index.cgi?word=1

Warp was originally developed for this:

http://burningchrome.com/~cdent/sliswarp/

which talks about the nature of Hypertext. Manifestopheles was
developed to take some of those ideas and do them via TiddlyWeb,
without using any TiddlyWiki. The piece of writing that started it in
now in manifestopheles store:

http://manifestopheles.com/manifestos/manifestopheles

I've release the Python code to PyPI:

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/tiddlywebplugins.manifestopheles

--
Chris Dent http://burningchrome.com/
[...]

[Eric Drechsel]

On Sep 12, 8:16 am, chris.d...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Sep 2010, PMario wrote:
> > slightly OT
> >> Anyhow, the "master plan" was published in the spring, primarily
> >> through Chris Dent's manifestopheles:
>
> >>http://manifestopheles.com/manifestos/tiddlyspace

There it is! I think I had seen this at some point using firefox,
however the manifestopheles side menu renders off-screen in chromium
(all platforms, stable and dev channels) so I hadn't been able to find
it recently. I really like the idea of overlapping dictionaries from
manifestopheles. It's really great that you can automatically create
rich information networks from such a minimal data structure (a
dictionary/hash coupled with a list of references to other
dictionaries).

> > Ahh. I thought manifestopheles.com, is an evolved version of chris
> > dent's work at burningchrome.com [1] with Warp [2]. I thought, it is
> > an experiment. Clicked a little bit and left. But now I see, that
> > there are (should be) menues at the left side, of the browser. But
> > with Win7, FF 3.6.8 only very small red lines are shown. Clicking
> > doesn't do anything. win7 chromium can't display it either. win7
> > safari displays half of it. Clicking does nothing. (all browsers
> > actual versions)

good catch, this helped me!

> There were some versions mistmatches between manifestopheles, instancer
> and chrjs which I believe have now been resolved. Clicking some stuff
> ought to work.
>
> There are probably some issues with CSS that some browsers will not
> work with. I decided _not_ to try and make it work with older
> browsers. I developed it on safari webkit nightlies.

I think it is the CSS issues that PMario and I are experiencing.

[Eric Drechsel]

On Sep 11, 2:26 am, Jeremy Ruston <jeremy.rus...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi. I really like all the work that's been happening on TiddlyWeb and
> > related serverside components.
>
> > I've been trying to track the development of TiddlySpace, but I
> > haven't found any sort of "master plan" or mission statement - there
> > is github, and the issue tracker, and a few list posts, perhaps the
> > important communications are happening "out of band"?
>
> Although the development of TiddlySpace has been primarily driven by
> Osmosoft we've always strived to keep the communications in the public
> groups so that the broader TiddlyWiki community can see what's going
> on. As a result the project has benefited enormously from people
> outside Osmosoft like PMario and Måns who have been using and
> extending the system almost since the beginning. Being open has also
> allowed ex-Osmosoft people like Jonathan Lister to stay involved,
> which has been terrific too.

It's been really nice to watch the creative process unfold in the
open!

> Anyhow, the "master plan" was published in the spring, primarily
> through Chris Dent's manifestopheles:
>
> http://manifestopheles.com/manifestos/tiddlyspace
>

thanks! I had seen it before, but couldn't find it recently.

> Since then, most communications have taken place in IRC and here in
> the TiddlyWeb group. Recently TiddlySpace has been coming up in the
> main TiddlyWiki group a bit more as end users start to grapple with
> it.

What is the IRC channel? irc://freenode.net/#TiddlyWiki?

There is alot of information in the list archives which I haven't read
through entirely. Distilling knowledge shared on lists and IRC into
centralized documentation (list of resources, how to help, etc) might
get more people testing and providing feedback. I recall seeing
TiddlySpace "user stories" somewhere (maybe on Hoster?).

Thanks for the detailed and useful response!

So:

I create a new template space:

http://mgsd.tiddlyspace.com/

remove the "system-theme" include, and import a blank mGSD TW.

In order to use this space as an include, I publish all the tiddlers
using the <<TiddlySpacePublisher>> macro (the "Unpublished" tab was
missing from the backspace for some reason, probably mGSD overrides
something). Everything goes kind of backshit until I reload (macro
errors etc).

After reloading, I seem to have a fully functional mGSD. Impressive!

I run into trouble when trying use the mgsd space as an include in a
new private space. It seems that the default includes end up
overriding a bunch of settings from mGSD. I think this would go away
if I could create a new space without the default includes (in
particular "system-theme"). Perhaps allow selection of includes when
creating a space?

I really like the simple bag and recipe management provided by hoster
(a thin wrapper over the underlying data model, without focusing on
individual tiddlers) and wonder: will it still be developed, or will
TiddlySpace will grow to replace it?

Best,
Eric

[chris...@gmail.com]

On Mon, 13 Sep 2010, Eric Drechsel wrote:

> There it is! I think I had seen this at some point using firefox,
> however the manifestopheles side menu renders off-screen in chromium
> (all platforms, stable and dev channels) so I hadn't been able to find
> it recently. I really like the idea of overlapping dictionaries from
> manifestopheles. It's really great that you can automatically create
> rich information networks from such a minimal data structure (a
> dictionary/hash coupled with a list of references to other
> dictionaries).

Yeah, that's pretty much the point of the system: the information and
the connections between are really the only parts that matter if you
want to get richness. I'm convinced that if you add too much other
stuff that other stuff obscures the information, limiting the
discovery/traversal opportunities.

This corresponds nicely to your "thin layer" comment elsewhere.

> I think it is the CSS issues that PMario and I are experiencing.

Can you state again which browser you are using? I've just tested in
the safari/webkit, firefox and chrome I have on my machine and they
seem happy.

[chris...@gmail.com]

On Mon, 13 Sep 2010, Eric Drechsel wrote:

> What is the IRC channel? irc://freenode.net/#TiddlyWiki?

#tiddlyweb

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this group and the irc channel
becoming the tiddlyspace group and channel. We'll probably want to
think about making some adjustments at some points.

> There is alot of information in the list archives which I haven't read
> through entirely. Distilling knowledge shared on lists and IRC into
> centralized documentation (list of resources, how to help, etc) might
> get more people testing and providing feedback. I recall seeing
> TiddlySpace "user stories" somewhere (maybe on Hoster?).

They've been in a variety of places, but the latest landing point is:

http://tiddlyspace.tiddlyspace.com/

A related space that ought to evolve to something useful is

http://docs.tiddlyspace.com

> So:
>
> I create a new template space:
>
> http://mgsd.tiddlyspace.com/
>
> remove the "system-theme" include, and import a blank mGSD TW.

If you look at the tiddlers that are coming from the system-theme
space (one way to do that is like this:

http://tiddlyspace.com/bags/system-theme_public/tiddlers

) you'll see that there are various *Template tiddlers in there. It is
quite likely there are incompatiblities between what mGSD wants to do
with the templates and what the system-theme templates provide.

This has been a concern all along with TiddlySpace, one that has never
been perfectly resolved. Being able to remove the system-theme space
helps, but means it is not easy for the casual visitor to create an
mGSD ready space just by including another space.

> I really like the simple bag and recipe management provided by hoster
> (a thin wrapper over the underlying data model, without focusing on
> individual tiddlers) and wonder: will it still be developed, or will
> TiddlySpace will grow to replace it?

I continue to claim that hoster will live on and plan to stand by
that, largely because I like its simplicity, approve of the "thin
wrapper" way of doing things and generally think its non intrusive
way of providing power is a Good Thing™.

However, experience shows that it doesn't quite rock for people who
aren't of a sort of hacker or unixy mindset. Hoster proved that
TiddlyWeb _could_ be the basis for a robust and complex multi-user
hosting thing, spawning TiddlySpace as its more friendly and featured
sibling.

So, while TiddlySpace has the resources of the entire gang @osmosoft
behind it, hoster updates are waiting on just me (and a bit of FND) to
surface from the intense work that happened over the summer to get
TiddlySpace born. Thankfully TiddlySpace has driven a _ton_ of
improvement in TiddlyWeb core and plugins which will shore up hoster
nicely.

Much of that improvement has already shown up just by installing
TiddlyWeb 1.2.x, which was done a few days ago.

And since all this stuff is open feel free to contribute in whatever
way time and interest allows. For hoster in particular just a little
bit of knowledge in Python and Javascript can go a long way to
changing how the system looks, feels and behaves.

Thanks.