Using TW for a Geology (or Scientific) Thesis (and creating a mod)

[Tomás Iglesias]

Hi everyone, just discovered TiddlyWiki a few days ago and I'm already trying to use it as my main information center. The problem is that I've never had a personal wiki before, so I'm geting used to this new system, and I'm not sure of how to use it for my thesis. Should I use it just as a notebook for thoughts and ideas? should I write most of the thesis in a TW and then generate my latex document? use different TW for both ideas and have links between them? or both ideas in one big TW?

I have seen http://tesis.tiddlyspot.com/ and http://tw5.scholars.tiddlyspot.com/ from Alberto Molina, and both are awesome, but are too focused in humanities from my point of view and I'm not sure that they will do a better job than Zotero and my latex file (maybe I'm wrong). If I find the time and knowledge, TW for Scholars would be my starting point to mod it a little bit for a more "writing in progress" approach.

So, for a newbie, where should I start to understand the way to store information in TW for my thesis (or just enter lots of bits of information and then figure out how to use it?).

thanks in advance

[Eric Shulman]

On Thursday, September 18, 2014 9:37:28 PM UTC-7, Tomás Iglesias wrote:

Hi everyone, just discovered TiddlyWiki a few days ago and I'm already trying to use it as my main information center. The problem is that I've never had a personal wiki before, so I'm geting used to this new system, and I'm not sure of how to use it for my thesis. Should I use it just as a notebook for thoughts and ideas? should I write most of the thesis in a TW and then generate my latex document? use different TW for both ideas and have links between them? or both ideas in one big TW?

So, for a newbie, where should I start to understand the way to store information in TW for my thesis (or just enter lots of bits of information and then figure out how to use it?).

One of the major features of a "wiki"... especially a personal wiki... is that you don't need to plan ahead of time.  

If you just start creating tiddlers -- and remember to think in SMALL chunks -- then you can easily assemble that content by linking/embedding those chunks in other tiddlers to construct a variety of presentation(s).  You can also start tagging tiddlers with meaningful keywords so you can group things semantically.  You can then use TiddlyWiki as a "discovery tool" to explore concepts related by tags, without hand-building "presentation tiddlers".  As you enter more content and create more tag keywords, the organization of your content will start to become more apparent.  Then, if needed, you can re-factor your TiddlyWiki by adding/removing/editing your tiddlers and tags to clean things up.

enjoy,

-e

Eric Shulman

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[Alberto Molina]

Hola Tomás,

 Should I use it just as a notebook for thoughts and ideas? should I write most of the thesis in a TW and then generate my latex document? use different TW for both ideas and have links between them? or both ideas in one big TW?

First of all, try to generate a latex document from a TW with transclusions and different formatting (bullets, tables, etc.). If it works well, then I would recommend NOT separating your thoughts and thesis writing in two different TW, but that's just my opinion. I think it's a lot easier to link and transclude content if all is in a single TW.

 

I have seen http://tesis.tiddlyspot.com/ and http://tw5.scholars.tiddlyspot.com/ from Alberto Molina, and both are awesome, but are too focused in humanities from my point of view and I'm not sure that they will do a better job than Zotero and my latex file (maybe I'm wrong). If I find the time and knowledge, TW for Scholars would be my starting point to mod it a little bit for a more "writing in progress" approach.

I'm glad you like them. I also use Zotero to manage my bibliography, and its great for that purpose, but I personally don't like the interface when it comes to adding/reading notes or comments to the references. Its the reason why I set up those wikis. They are focused in humanities because its what I'm working on, but I think the structure can be customized for other purposes. Just change the autor/paper/quote categories to meet your needs. The important thing is that you find your own way. TW for Scholars is mine, but maybe its not yours. You need to find out.

 

So, for a newbie, where should I start to understand the way to store information in TW for my thesis (or just enter lots of bits of information and then figure out how to use it?).

Eric Schulman's answer is a very good starting point.

Best wishes,

Alberto

[Alex Hough]

Alberto,

Do you think an integration with Zotero could be built -- like the Word and Open Office plugins -- which automatically create bibliographies?

Alex

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[Andreas Hahn]

Am 19.09.2014 12:57, schrieb Alex Hough:
> Do you think an integration with Zotero could be built -- like the
> Word and Open Office plugins -- which automatically create bibliographies?

Hi Alex,

I just asked myself the same question and judging from their Web API,
yes it is possible to do that and parts of the API are even pretty
simliar to TiddlyWeb (on a superficial level).
But it will surely be a lot of work though.

/Andreas

[CB]

I am a PhD student in Electrical engineering and I have been using Tiddly wiki for about 2 years now. Inline are my comments from my experience. I hope that it helps. 

On Thursday, September 18, 2014 9:37:28 PM UTC-7, Tomás Iglesias wrote:

Hi everyone, just discovered TiddlyWiki a few days ago and I'm already trying to use it as my main information center. The problem is that I've never had a personal wiki before, so I'm geting used to this new system, and I'm not sure of how to use it for my thesis. Should I use it just as a notebook for thoughts and ideas? should I write most of the thesis in a TW and then generate my latex document? use different TW for both ideas and have links between them? or both ideas in one big TW?

It depends on what 'gap' do you want to fill up with TW in your own workflow. My approach is to use a single TW for note-keeping, brainstorming etc. I always exclusively use latex for writing the documents. TW is driven by the idea of several micro-contents and it work really well as non-linear notebook. This works perfectly for research: you got some idea about a new experiment or a new section/figure in your thesis - you quickly jot it down in a new tiddler and add a relevant tag(s). Later, when you are back to your work you can search TW based on tags or search directly for keywords - then go through the idea, refine it, do some more research, add more information to TW (if needed create new tiddlers) etc etc.. 

 

I have seen http://tesis.tiddlyspot.com/ and http://tw5.scholars.tiddlyspot.com/ from Alberto Molina, and both are awesome, but are too focused in humanities from my point of view and I'm not sure that they will do a better job than Zotero and my latex file (maybe I'm wrong). If I find the time and knowledge, TW for Scholars would be my starting point to mod it a little bit for a more "writing in progress" approach. 

So, for a newbie, where should I start to understand the way to store information in TW for my thesis (or just enter lots of bits of information and then figure out how to use it?).

In general, TW is flexible and super searchable. Tags are very helpful. In my workflow, I have also changed my home to look something like following images, where I can automatically filter all the tiddler depending on tags. Each tab in the image is one of my research topic/sub-topic and it shows all the tiddler based on one tag (or combination of tags). This way I can very easily keep all the information categorized by basically doing nothing (well just tagging appropriately). 

Home screenshot: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1659299/public_share/tiddler.jpg

My research also involves experimenting with different ideas. For that I have created my own list based to-do task. It just plain un-ordered list but uses some CSS to change bullet settings etc. It helps me to keep track to status of the job. This screenshot may be more clearer to understand: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1659299/public_share/todo-task.jpg 

You can also see this, but it did not suite my work flow:  http://tiddlywiki.com/static/TaskManagementExample.html

 

thanks in advance

[PMario]

On Saturday, September 20, 2014 7:39:54 AM UTC+2, CB wrote:

My research also involves experimenting with different ideas. For that I have created my own list based to-do task. It just plain un-ordered list but uses some CSS to change bullet settings etc. It helps me to keep track to status of the job. This screenshot may be more clearer to understand: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1659299/public_share/todo-task.jpg 

That's a great idea. Can you share your Stylesheet CSS for this setting?
-mario

[Alberto Molina]

Hi Alex and all,

Do you think an integration with Zotero could be built -- like the Word and Open Office plugins -- which automatically create bibliographies?

Hi Alex,

I just asked myself the same question and judging from their Web API,
yes it is possible to do that and parts of the API are even pretty
simliar to TiddlyWeb (on a superficial level).
But it will surely be a lot of work though.

/Andreas  

I don't know anything about programming and APIs, so I cannot give a better answer than Andreas'

 +1

Alberto

[Tomás Iglesias]

Gracias a todos! Thanks to all!

Lots of answers in a little time.

Alberto,

I will follow your recomendation of having everything in one TW. I don't use the notes in Zotero either, I fell that they would stay there for ever and won't be available for me when I need them.

CB,

Thankfully there isn't much of my thesis written, so I don't have a real workflow as of now, I just have some notes in Evernote, but I don't feel comfortable using it. That's the reason I am experimenting with TW =). On the other hand, before reading this answers I didn't realize that the idea is having small pieces of information linked together, but after playing a little more with TW this seems like a natural way of doing it (and you can link things SO easily!).

TW for Scholars will be my weapon of choice, as I have to read A LOT and take notes of all that reading before I can do something else.

Tomás

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[Alberto Molina]

Hi Tomás,

 

TW for Scholars will be my weapon of choice, as I have to read A LOT and take notes of all that reading before I can do something else.

Be aware that TW for Scholars is still using version 5.0.15. Now that 5.1.0 is released, I'm going to upgrade and there's a lot of work to do, with many incompatible changes. That doesn't affect the contents you add (books, quotes, etc.) but all the rest will change.

I'm planning to create a plugin with it, for it is easier to upgrade, but it's not going to be soon because I have little time now to experiment.

Ánimo con la tesis!

Alberto

[CB]

On Saturday, September 20, 2014 5:07:12 AM UTC-7, Alberto Molina wrote:

On Saturday, September 20, 2014 7:39:54 AM UTC+2, CB wrote:

My research also involves experimenting with different ideas. For that I have created my own list based to-do task. It just plain un-ordered list but uses some CSS to change bullet settings etc. It helps me to keep track to status of the job. This screenshot may be more clearer to understand: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1659299/public_share/todo-task.jpg 

That's a great idea. Can you share your Stylesheet CSS for this setting?
-mario

 +1

Sure. Here is TW 5.1.0 with my ToDo list. I am glad that you guys liked the idea :)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1659299/public_share/ToDo_list.html