TiddlySheets? (idea tease)

[Charlie Veniot]

G'day,

I love a little gem called TreeSheets for the very infrequent times I want to quickly cobble together some information that is hiearchical and/or fits well into rows and columns.

Very infrequent?  Understatement.  I almost uniquely am awash in a tsunami of non-linear/hyperlinked/intertwingled thinking: everything is connected to everything else within oh-so-few degrees of separation.

Hence my appreciation for TiddlyWiki.  For this kid, nothing else touches TiddlyWiki.  Recording all of them thoughts and the links between them, organizing it all is like trying to herd a mass of puppies and kittens.  Can't do it without TiddlyWiki.

A recurring thought that always smacks me silly at any moment: how would I do "this" or "that" with TiddlyWiki?

The latest:  how would I do TreeSheets with TiddlyWiki?

Although only in the early beginnings, what I have built so far (see attached screenshots) has me thinking: sure this might someday do what TreeSheets can do, but for now, I'm thinking other useful purposes:

• dashboards
• reports
• content layout (like old-school html tables of old)
• picture puzzles?
• yet another Kanban?
• anything else?

I have a "Sheet Editor" tiddler, and each sheet created by, and edited in, the editor keeps the data for any sheet in a data tiddler.

Each row can be moved up/down, and each column can be moved left/right.  Ability to move an individual cell from one location to another is on my mind.

Each cell should be able to (eventually) contain anything.  At the moment: text transcluded from some tiddler, OR textarea field (content saved to the data tiddler for no fuss no muss.)  A sheet inside a cell?  Hmm.

I think I'm going to try to put a little show'n tell video about this thing.

For now, attached snapshots for anybody interested.

BTW:  If this has already been done, please let me know so I don't re-invent the wheel !!!

[jtech108]

Howdy CJ,

Oh wow, interesting project (idea) you have there!

That concept looks marvellous.

Will be attentive to when you produce the video.

Many blessings,

Julio

[Charlie Veniot]

G'day Julio,

Thanks!  However, hold on to your ears...

I'm about 30 minutes away from a new post of an interesting concept that may be right out to lunch, related to this same project but wildly interesting of itself regardless.

Which I'll have to slap in the same video, I think.  Ugh.  Gonna be some work.

[Mat]

cj

Thinking out loud:

TreeSheets looks very interesting (I looked at their video) and it seems like a perfect conceptual fit for TW. It is really cool because I guess most of us have used a spreadsheet for making hierarchical notes but thought "Oh, a spreadsheet really isn't made for taking notes in. Maybe I should just use the word processor... but I like this hierarchical indentation with columns and how additional things can be added horizontally"

I wonder if the whole TW page could be a spreadsheet grid with subgrids. New items are insterted by clicking the grid borders on the items and their subitems. It seems TreeSheets has a main grid and their subitems are tables but this would be more powerful and elegant in TW where everything would be a tiddler... or would that actually make sense here? Imagine if a bullet list really consisted of tiddlers. A kind of mini story river. Sounds very bloaty but maybe it isn't? Would the table grid aspect of the page really be css (presumably "grid")? Pity subgrid isn't a thing yet. Maybe the TreeSheets concept should be a story view? Or does it go beyond storyview? I'm reminded of the github discussion around Jeremys proposal to redesign the whole wiki page. 

...

<:-)

[Charlie Veniot]

Dang it, Mat.  You've just eloquently expressed a thread of thought in this old sponge of mine that I couldn't put into words.  If I were a rich man, I'd be hiring you as official translator of the thoughts in me sponge.  Or curator.  Do you herd kittens and puppies as a side gig?

Well, I wasn't thinking so much about the whole TW interface.  That's an interesting proposition.

With Treesheets, everything is "open" in the sheet.  With TiddlyWiki, it might get really slow if everything is open.   Hence my other unspoken/unwritten thought about individual and somewhat narrowly focused tiddler sheets for whatever purposes.

Yeah, each and every thought in my sponge, as for each and every word to express that thought, as for organization of the words:  like playing "Where's Waldo" for each one.

Good times.

Thanks for your post, Mat.  Very good stuff.

Aside:

I'm also experimenting a bit with TiddlyTables.  Although of no use (as far as I can tell) for Treesheets type stuff (or anything else I'm thinking related to TiddlySheets), and a bit cognitively tedious for the way my sponge works, I really like how it handles "records", and I am having a blast turning getting individual cell to behave like full-fledged data forms.

 I guess I am overall in an exploratory mood.  Multiple threads of "how would I do this/that" and "could it do this/that" with TiddlyWiki or with plugins.

Almost way more fun than I can handle ...