Is this out to lunch? Using a "Data Entry" tiddler as a transclude template

[Charlie Veniot]

G'day all,

As I plug away at the TiddlySheets idea brewing in me old sponge (related thread) ...

A few definitions first:

• "Sheets Editor" is a tiddler to create and edit "Sheets."  Think of "Sheets Editor" as analogous to the Google Sheets App (or to, ugh, MS Excel): it has all of the smarts to enter content and layout/format the content
• Any "Sheet" tiddler is a data tiddler, containing everything (content info, layout info, meta data, etc.), analogous to a Google Sheet Document (or an Excel document/file)

(Refer to attached screenshots.)

I wondered: how would I go about displaying any sheet in any other tiddler (whether in the story river, or sidebar, or anywhere else)?

And how do I show that content with the layout setup via the Sheets Editor ? And how do I go about that without duplicating all of the smarts in the Sheets Editor?

Solution: modify the Sheet Editor tiddler so that it can fulfill two roles: 

• "Editor" of data tiddlers
• Display template for transclusion of those data tiddlers

Because I am so "transclusion-minded", that immediately feels like the right way to go for me.  How would you go about it? 

Cheers !

[Charlie Veniot]

Arg, I just fixed a wee problem with empty rows and empty columns not showing in transclusion of data tiddler.

An empty row/column makes for a space between cells of content.

So TestTiddlerDataTransclusion snapshot replaced by this attached one.

[Jean-Pierre Rivière]

Interesting possibilities. But could you please tell me how you get that toolbar for your tiddler-in-edit-mode?

I have hacked a bit an earlier work (not mine!) to have a spreadsheet within a tiddler (I just added support for dictionaries+index instead of just fields -- that needs an external data sheet but it's more user friendly (for me at least). It could get further. I am pretty rooky about template tiddlers.

[Charlie Veniot]

The Sheets Editor is the tiddler that edits all sheets.

Then, wherever we want to show the sheet, we transclude whatever tiddler has sheets data using the sheets editor as transclusion template.

The point of TiddlySheets is not to be a spreadsheet application, but rather to be something like TreeSheets: a way to enter information and organize (layout) that content with the help of rows and columns.

What I've quickly realized is that every cell can be more than just an edit text widget.  Every cell can old content managed with any kind of widget, and any cell can also be a transclusion of content from some other tiddler.

So suddenly TiddlySheets has the potential of being a TreeSheets on steroids.

Even more interesting:  TiddlySheets could be used as a Forms Creator.

Oops, I went off-track.  Not sure exactly if I answered your question.  Please let me know if I was clear as mud and/or answering a totally different question...  

[Charlie Veniot]

Arg.

"Every cell can hold content managed with any kind of widget, and any cell can also be a transclusion of content from some other tiddler."