[Outreach] Communicating to writers the benefits of TW -- #21 FUTURE TIDDLERS

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Here we tend to focus on technical solutions to technical problems.

That is good.

But I think we often underplay the obvious for potential users. We under-promote what we have already normally.

For a moment consider TW as a Writing Medium, by which I mean normal authors of fiction or fact.

One outstanding thing is that you can so easily create "placeholders". A ref to a Tiddler that does NOT yet exist. That is exactly like many people's writing process. You know you need to "fill in gaps" later to make better writings. TW facilitates that very well indeed.

For instance a writer needs to know they can write a text referencing stuff they need to expand on but haven't written the expansions yet. TW EASILY provides the "placeholders" for these.

This simple mechanism is not advertised enough IMO.

Best wishes
Josiah

[h0p3's Wiki]

Agreed. I'm always trying to convince the writers I know to give TW a spin, and this is one of those simple mechanics which turn out to be super useful. Whether they are building character bibles, graphing their plots, or mind-mapping their epistemic periphery, placeholders are outstanding "to-do" or even "maybe" flags sitting in your writing. For me, it's an organization tool helping me break bigger problems down into smaller ones, and it helps me explicitly state to myself that I need to expand or connect something in the first place. When I'm in the flowstate, I don't have time write in every direction I'm thinking; I have to triage. Placeholders help me leave the breadcrumbs necessary to come back and iteratively grow some web of thought.

There's another kind of placeholder I use as well. Sometimes, I have something to say, but I don't quite know where to put it or what I should name it. I need to get it out on a page and worry about how to categorize it later. "Create a new tiddler" automatically applies "PH" to my title. Sometimes I'll spin up several placeholder tiddlers until I've figured out how they fit into the bigger picture and why.

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[@TiddlyTweeter]

Basically, writers are more interested on content than mechanism. I often have hot sweats over whether I should include Bucket's Theorom or just go for a saying of Crusoe (Crusoe says to Crusoe, "Crusoe you should say 'Crusoe'".)

h0p3 I really like your writing which is both tech-jiggled and wanting to get to the point.

I sometimes think we could help writers by giving more examples of writing in TW?

Best wishes
J.

[Mark S.]

By placeholders, you mean links, right?

The problem is, what do you do when you want to assemble a final doc? Also, when I write, I don't necessarily want to "jump" from one context to the next. I want to sweep my eyes back and forth to make sure I've maintained tone, voice, wording.

The "smallest semantic" unit also poses questions. What is the smallest unit? A paragraph? A chapter?

Thanks!

-- Mark

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Mark S. wrote:

By placeholders, you mean links, right?

This a bit weird but works for drafting well for me ..

Crusoe is cruising near [[Crusoe Island]] looking for Crusoe. Crusoe sees Crusoe with {{binoculars}} looking for Crusoe.

Even though "binoculars" don't appear yet.

The problem is, what do you do when you want to assemble a final doc?

Isn't that a kind of jujitsu that no rule-book exists for?
 

The "smallest semantic" unit also poses questions. What is the smallest unit? A paragraph? A chapter?

Totally agree. Its a deep semantic problem of semantics.

The best shot I had at answering that was: fit the unit scale to the final purpose. But that just shifts the problem around and it doesn't offer a method.

Good stuff
Josiah

[BurningTreeC]

I'm just adding my 2cents with an idea:

a small macro that displays a link if the tiddler is missing, but transcludes the tiddler if it's not:

in a macro-tiddler:

\define trl(text)
{{$text$||transcludilinktemplate}}
\end

in the "transcludilinktemplate":

<$list filter="[<currentTiddler>is[missing]]">
<$link to=<<currentTiddler>>><<currentTiddler>></$link>
</$list>
<$list filter="[<currentTiddler>!is[missing]]">
<$transclude/>
</$list>

... call it with <<trl "tiddler title">> and it's a link as long as the tiddler doesn't exist and it transcludes it when it does, neat!

[Mark S.]

Nice!

The next step would be to have a button next to each item that allows you to switch from link to transclusion. And/or a small link when displayed as a transclusion so you could quickly edit the text. The current status would be stored in a flag in the tiddler. The macro might also need a way to display different text when linking. And also default to using  caption (ala uni-links) when no  link description is given. There would also be a master configuration tiddler for final publication that only shows the transcluded results with no buttons.

These ideas are motivated by the need to move quickly between edit/view modes, and the fact that there is no easy way to change the contents of macros (or links) globally. So once you've created a title, it's easiest to stick with it though you may want it to be displayed differently.

-- Mark 

[TonyM]

All,

As a "want to be writer",

 

I imagined using an outlier view with a toc in the left hand panel with the tools to add siblings view edit etc... wrapped around a Custom view/edit template.

a toggle to display the whole or part tree, as a transcluded "preview" with in line editing with a click. Once done with preview or recapping, also toggle to a final print mode with all the edit icons and tools removed.

The idea would be to use tags like a normal toc to build the document structure and subtiddlers of the form tiddler/subtiddler to store writers/editors notes - you could also have a section in the toc that lists separately all the <<trl entries as suggested by BTC

I think anything is possible here, the trick is knowing what is most important to us.

Regards

Tony

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Thanks BTC

Wow! Very neat. It took me a bit to work out how it works. For others reading: here are the components with a bit more detail...

Global Macro Tiddler, i.e. tagged: $:/tags/Macro titled: anything you want

\define trl(text)
{{$text$||transcludilinktemplate}}
\end

Tiddler titled: "transcludilinktemplate". Note when you save it will display the message "Recursive transclusion error ..." Don't panic :-). You can safely ignore it, nothing is actually wrong.

<$list filter="[<currentTiddler>is[missing]]">
<$link to=<<currentTiddler>>><<currentTiddler>></$link>
</$list>
<$list filter="[<currentTiddler>!is[missing]]">
<$transclude/>
</$list>

BTC ... call it with <<trl "tiddler title">> and it's a link as long as the tiddler doesn't exist and it transcludes it when it does, neat!

Test content tiddler ... Title: anything you want ...

Once upon a time there was a [[Roving Tiddler]] called {{Harold}} who knew how to call <<trl "Harold">> to the table for spaghetti.

This renders as ...

Once upon a time there was a Roving Tiddler called who knew how to call Harold to the table for spaghetti.

Note the first "Harold" transclusion doesn't show because it doesn't yet exist, but BTC macro allows a place holding link for the same transclusion.

Click it and it creates the "Harold" Tiddler. In the text content write "Gerald" Result ...

Once upon a time there was a Roving Tiddler called Gerald who knew how to call Gerald to the table for spaghetti.

I think this is already really useful for some writing situations. It really makes sense once you start using it.

AND also, as Mark S., hinted, its illustrative of perhaps a kind of potential for a few more tools like this. I was amazed at the simplicity of it. The bang for buck is fantastic.

Thanks, best ...
Josiah

[@TiddlyTweeter]

TonyM wrote:

As a "want to be writer",

 

I think anything is possible here, the trick is knowing what is most important to us.

Ciao Tony

There are a lot of tools in TW that aid writer's both for scholarly writing and for literary endeavours. I think its an area of usage ripe for an OVERVIEW of what exists and what can be done already. I think that might help identify what is missing. 

Personally, on why I started this thread, I think WRITER'S KITS, that are TW assemblages of basic needed tools, could help uptake. At the moment a beginner has to figure out, bit by bit, what is available and how to find it, or even that such solutions exist. Its daunting for someone who just wants to write. Better to provide "packages" with replete function.

Best wishes
Josiah
 

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Mark S.

I thought your comments very astute.

From my point of view when writing the "document" is the "emergent whole concept". The less I have to go out of it the better. Having tools and methods WITHIN it that let me, say create a link to a transclusion, footnote, expansion etc the better.

Your idea of having a "tooled version" and an "output version" that hides all the tool mechanisms makes a lot of sense to me.

Best wishes
Josiah

Mark S. opined ...

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao TonyM

TonyM wrote:

I imagined using an outlier view with a toc in the left hand panel with the tools to add siblings view edit etc... wrapped around a Custom view/edit template.

I have seen fantastic work by someone privately that uses a kind of outliner/Table of contents as a complex navigator. It has multiple live columns that can be kept in edit mode. It requires a large desktop monitor to get the best from. I'm gonna write him and see if he might want to comment publicly because I think some of his approach is really helpful.

Best wishes
Josiah

[Mark S.]

If you're actually using TW for a writing tool, then perhaps you have the write (right?) kit ??

From a mechanical perspective, I find too much in TW requires the mouse in order to function. Ideally, your fingers would never have to leave the keyboard, interrupting the train of thought that would lead to the next Great Ankporkian novel.

-- Mark

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Mark S. wrote:

From a mechanical perspective, I find too much in TW requires the mouse in order to function. Ideally, your fingers would never have to leave the keyboard, interrupting the train of thought that would lead to the next Great Ankporkian novel.

Of course I want to write The Library of Babel.

Recent Keyboard work by BTC is very good.

I'm wondering about what an auto spell-checking, word-counting, keyboard-driven, fully edit-driven (i.e. like BTC's pre-transclusion placeholder thing), fuzzy-searching, TW thingamy might look like, optimised for screen use on edit ... plus contraction and expansion gadgets (like Stretch-text) and inline footies... plus???

Josiah 

[PMario]

On Monday, September 3, 2018 at 4:27:54 PM UTC+2, @TiddlyTweeter wrote:

...

I'm wondering about what an auto spell-checking, word-counting, keyboard-driven, fully edit-driven (i.e. like BTC's pre-transclusion placeholder thing), fuzzy-searching, TW thingamy might look like, optimised for screen use on edit ... plus contraction and expansion gadgets (like Stretch-text) and inline footies... plus???

IMO

 - spell-checking is built into browsers as plugins for a reason ... The needed databases are huge in size and the algorithms are language specific

 - word-counting is a plugin, ... that can show approximation because wikitext also contains "meta-text" eg: transclusions, which makes it hard to be precise.

 - fuzzy search is language specific and needs tools that either need some preprocessing, which has a performance impact or it introduces complexity to the user experience.

 

 - ...

All in all a wiki with all the features will be bloated at least. ... So a single page app lke TW has to go for a compromise between "I want it all" and "It should be usable"

have fun!

mario

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao PMario

Thanks for the notes related to performance.

PMario wrote:

 - spell-checking is built into browsers as plugins for a reason ... The needed databases are huge in size and the algorithms are language specific

My comment was just a "riff". I agree spell-check should be browser driven. I was a bit confusing as I wasn't differentiating TW from a final "functional whole"--a writer's tool, regardless of whether its just TW or TW Plus Other Things.

 

 - word-counting is a plugin, ... that can show approximation because wikitext also contains "meta-text" eg: transclusions, which makes it hard to be precise.

Agreed. But on things like Twitter posts which are plain text its excellent. Thomas Elmiger made a neat plugin that not just counts but counts with indication of when a "target number" is reached by the counter changing colour when it reaches a target number. That is real added value for coping with the 280 character limit of Twitter.

Its also very good for screenplays which are nearly totally plain text and where counting matters a lot since timing is related to "page length" (the convention is 1 minute of film = 1 page of script).

So whilst I agree there are downsides (for instance, for Twitter, an URL is always counted as 20 characters regardless of its actual length) , for some writing scenarios its extremely useful to have counting.

 - fuzzy search is language specific and needs tools that either need some preprocessing, which has a performance impact or it introduces complexity to the user experience.

Right. I'm still playing with this. Search gets quite complex across languages. On the other hand some scenarios  benefit. In particular, in may case, I often just need a more "regex" type search of the full text field than default search offers.
 

All in all a wiki with all the features will be bloated at least. ... So a single page app lke TW has to go for a compromise between "I want it all" and "It should be usable"

I broadly agree. But I also disagree in the sense that SOME use situations a replete set of plugins might work well.

I think its, finally, about testing empirically case by case to be sure?

Thanks for your post! It gave me a chance to say a bit more that I think makes sense too.

Best wishes
Josiah

[Mark S.]

Here's a start that has most of the mentioned features:

\define linkfullname() $(target)$!!linktype
\define makelink()
<$reveal type="nomatch" state="""$(target)$!!caption""" text="">
<$set name=title tiddler="""$(target)$""" field="caption">
<$link to="$(target)$"><<title>></$link>
</$set>
</$reveal>
<$reveal type="match" state="""$(target)$!!caption""" text="">
[[$(target)$]]
</$reveal>
\end
\define maketrans() <$transclude tiddler="""$(target)$""" mode="block"/>
\define makeedit() {{$(target)$||$:/core/ui/EditTemplate}}
\define tle(target)
<$set name="target" value="""$target$""">
<$reveal type="nomatch" text="yes" state="$:/state/publish">
<$radio tiddler="""$target$""" field=linktype value="link">L</$radio>
<$radio tiddler="""$target$""" field=linktype value="trans">T</$radio>
<$radio tiddler="""$target$""" field=linktype value="edit">E</$radio>
<$reveal type="match" text="link" state=<<linkfullname>>>
<<makelink>>
</$reveal>
<$reveal type="match" text="trans" state=<<linkfullname>>><br/>
<<maketrans>>
</$reveal>
<$reveal type="match" text="edit" state=<<linkfullname>>><br/>
<<makeedit>>
</$reveal>
</$reveal>

<$reveal type="match" text="yes" state="$:/state/publish">
<$transclude tiddler="""$target$""" mode="block"/>
</$reveal>
</$set>
\end

$:/state/publish

Publish?
<$radio tiddler="$:/state/publish" field="text" value="yes">Yes</$radio>
<$radio tiddler="$:/state/publish" field="text" value="no">No</$radio>

----
<<tle "Your tiddler title here">>

"tle" stands for "Transclusion, Link, Edit". The "edit" part is clumsy since it just uses the edit template without mods to make it flow in the current river. But it basically works and might serve as a start. The "link" element defaults to using the caption if available so you can write more descriptive titles without having to break links. It actually creates the tiddlers just by clicking on the corresponding radio button.  It does this because it stores the current tle setting in the target tiddler. You can put more <<tle>> macros into sub-tiddlers displayed via transclusion, allowing a kind of sub-structure if you want. Though in general I think I would just let the top tiddler provide the structure.

This requires TW 5.1.15 or higher.

Have fun,

-- Mark

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Mark S.

Thanks!

That is an hugely interesting, working, prototype.

It looks like it will match a bunch of writers' concerns.

I will use it a bit more and get back to you in more detail.

(One small teething point I noticed is that currently on "Publish" all items end up as "T"s.)

Best wishes
Josiah

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Mark S.

I am still playing around with this and thinking about it. I think its really good.

More than anything its suggestive of a potential full design to be able to handle "placeholders" of all types. So you don't need a footnote plugin, or a stretch-text plugin, or manually typing commands for inline v. block transclusion,  or ferreting around for transcluded Tiddler that hasn't been created yet. You have one in-line interface that handles it all.

It looks to me as if this one approach could, maybe, handle the whole shbang?

I'll comment more fully later.

Best wishes
Josiah

On Sunday, 16 September 2018 00:04:45 UTC+2, Mark S. wrote:

[Adam Sherwood]

I've come to TiddlyWiki as a potential platform for writing. I'm still trying to get it setup to do what I want it to do. I'm not really a programmer. So there isn't much I know how to contribute there, but I can think of some features that I think would improve ease for writers.

So far, I've included tongerner's sticky tiddlersbar and some of his associated plugins for easy navigation.

I've also included OokTech's word counter, which is great. Though I'm wondering (as a non-programmer) if there is someway to use the same parser that manages the markup vs. visible text distinction to create a word counter that just counts visible text.

Some kind of placeholder would be fantastic. Though even just a footnote system that incremented automatically and used the form [[superscript 1 | tiddler link]] would be great.

Another thing that I think would be useful is an easy to use and navigate parent/child relationships that didn't rely on tags but on some kind of custom field that got auto-populated with child/parent links. This would be useful for version control and editing, I think. First draft being the root, and various other versions branching off it. Something like that. That, in cunjunction with tiddlymap would be a wonder.

Tongerner also has a "new template tiddler" button. I wonder if that could be adapted to easily make multiple new custom template buttons for initializing different kinds of tiddlers with ease.

I realize this is turning into a sort of feature wishlist. Sorry about that.

The only other thing that springs to mind is a clone of The Most Dangerous Writing App. For those who haven't used it, it's a web app in which you must type constantly for some set amount of time (say 5 minutes) and if you stop typing for more than three seconds, it erases everything you've written. That, combined with custom template tiddlers, so you could initialize a Most Dangerous Writing App tiddler that would then become a normal tiddler (preserving your text) once the time limit had been reached.

Any suggestions of where I could look, or how I could help in making something like this are most welcome!

Best regards,

Adam

[S. S.]

On Thursday, November 1, 2018 at 7:31:20 PM UTC+7, AdamS wrote:

...

Tongerner also has a "new template tiddler" button. I wonder if that could be adapted to easily make multiple new custom template buttons for initializing different kinds of tiddlers with ease.

I realize this is turning into a sort of feature wishlist. Sorry about that.

...

I imagine there are much more elegant solutions than mine to handle this kind of frequent repetitive task.

This is how I use a drop-down list of buttons to create new tiddlers from templates: Buttons for Making New Tiddlers.

[AdamS]

Yes! That's just what I had in mind.

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao S. S.

That's a very interesting wiki illustrating that writers need Templates and confidence getting on to solve it. By "templates", ultimately, I guess the nicest way would be to be able to do something like Word does

... like "save this as a template" .. in TW its not yet quite that easy. But templating matters if you write a lot.

Best wishes

Josiah

[@TiddlyTweeter]

AdamS wrote:

I've come to TiddlyWiki as a potential platform for writing. I'm still trying to get it setup to do what I want it to do. I'm not really a programmer. So there isn't much I know how to contribute there, but I can think of some features that I think would improve ease for writers.

I feel your difficulty.

As a relative newbie you have the big hurdle of not knowing what exists that could help.

Reading your post I highly recommend you look at the work of Thomas Elmiger (https://tid.li/tw5/plugins.html) .... he's the writer's friend :-) for instance ...

- His counter (that builds of OokTech's) has colour coding for target numbers and better configuration ... https://tid.li/tw5/plugins.html#%24%3A%2Fplugins%2Ftelmiger%2FEditorCounter

- If you writing a book or sectioned document his ListReveal could help ... https://tid.li/tw5/plugins.html#%24%3A%2Fplugins%2Ftelmiger%2Flistreveal

- He has a useful notes/footnotes gizmo that dynamically gives the numbering using CSS counters (note its experimental!) ... https://tid.li/tw5/hacks.html#TextStretch%20Footnotes%20Extracted%20as%20List

He has other helpful tools too, you'll see.

The PLACEHOLDER idea looks very promising. Both BTC & Mark S. show ways it could work. It needs a lot of work yet but it could address the need for more "in context" editing that folk who just want to write need.

HTH

Josiah

[TonyM]

Adam,

Have a look at Marios tocP which uses the "parent" field rather than tags to build and list a Table of Contents. Comes with a custom new here button.

Also I am using my own custom "new from template tool", I hope to publish one day.

Regards

Tony

[AdamS]

I'm looking into the great links you folks are posting. There's so much material to learn, but it's giving me lots of ideas!

Here's a little update on what I've been working on. I found that the word counters I'd found weren't necessarily great for prose. They didn't map onto what was displayed in a tiddler if it was transcluded in for example. They seemed to focus on counting the text in the editor pane. So here is my adaptation of OokTech's word-counter to adapt it to prose writing. It is rather buggy, but mostly seems to work. Haha.

All suggestions appreciated!

Thank you all for your help. This is an exciting community.

Best regards,

Adam