Ideas from a non-techie

[Dave Gifford]

I am someone who doesn't know CSS or Javascript but finds TiddlyWiki
very useful. My pet peeve is that much of the documentation and many of
the features are not user-friendly for people like us. A few simple
words and tweaks in the documentation would help people like me a lot.
So I offer these ideas for you all to consider.

1. In the Tiddler that tells you how to format text, put a short note
at the top, saying, "To see how to format text in the styles below,
double-click this Tiddler to see the code for each style."

2. When you offer features, give us non-techies some instructions on
what to do to apply it. Usually there is just a Tiddler with a box of
code in it. What does the code do? Where do I insert it to see how it
works?

3. You might think about having a page listing different formats of
TiddlyWikis to choose from--listing what version, what main features,
what colors, what width the Tiddlers are, and where the menu is, top or
left. It would be nice for non-specialists like me to be able to have
options to choose from. For example, I like the GTD TW, font choices
and colors, but I'd like to make the actual Tiddler area wider. I have
no idea how to do that. But if I had a variety of styles to choose
from, I could pick the one that is most useful to me.

Anyway, you guys are doing a great job with TiddlyWiki. Thanks to all
of you for your tweaks and your making this such a great tool.

[Ken Girard]

I think we all agree with you that TiddlyWiki documentation needs to be
better.

This is why work recently started on developing better documentation
over at: http://doc.tiddlywiki.org/

Needless to say that with 2.1 launching folks have not had a lot of
time to work on it recently, but since it is a serverside version of
TiddlyWiki you can also contribute to it.

Although for number 1 I prefer
{{{<<newTiddler}}} = <<newTiddler>>
as it show that typing in the first one will resault in the second one.
If you don't get what I mean by that paste it into a tiddler.

Ken Girard

[Andrew Lister]

The other side of this coin is that people like me who have used TW for
a while but are not programmers need to join in on the documentation
effort. Often, for example, Plugin documentation will provide a good
overview of what the Plugin can do, but not detailed instructions on
how to do particular things with a plugin - especially things that
involve interactions between plugins. That's understandable, and
that's where users need to get involved in documention.

For example, I've got Eric's SelectStyleSheet Plugin working now so
that on my course website I have separate styles and templates for:
a. me editing online (using the UploadPlugin)
b. students viewing online (no editing controls, simpler tabs, etc.)
c. me presenting material in class (bigger font, no sidebars, no title,
only 'edit' and 'close' in the toolbar, etc.)
What I should have done already - what I will do - is to create some
step by step instructions about how to do this, or maybe just put
together an otherwise blank TW with these modifications, and some
instructions. Someone could find some discussion about this here, on
Google Groups, but I'm sure there are things I figured out in the couse
of setting up the website, beyond the helpful instructions that I got
here from programmers.

There is a risk that a user like me will post misleading instructions -
instructions that work only in a special case, procedures that work but
are needlessly complicated - but those kinds of problems should be
solved by a bit of editing by the experts. That seems to me an
efficient division of labour.

[George]

I echo David Gilford's views, myself being a non programmer. I find
that the learning curve to customize TW is very steep, and practically
impossible to do from ground zero. However, the assistance given in
this Group is tremendous.

As regards the documentation page mentioned above, currently it does
not load and times out.

[Simon Baird]

There's an alternative wiki for TiddlyWiki docs. It's open to editing for anyone who would like to contribute some content.

 

http://tiddlywikiguides.org/

 

On 10/5/06, George <cha...@gmail.com> wrote:

As regards the documentation page mentioned above, currently it does
not load and times out.

 

 

--
Simon Baird <simon...@gmail.com>

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Though Gifford started in 2006 he's remained a smart cookie ...

This is not just nostalgia. Its interesting.

Josiah

[Dave]

This site can’t be reached

tiddlywikiguides.org’s server IP address could not be found. :(

[Dave]

nevermind (read the dates Dave ;)