Distinguishing and aggregation: the concept and q about implementation

[Yakov]

Hello everyone.

Today I have probably quite complicated concept and I think it needs a
bit of brainstorming. I'll describe it below and the questions are
once more: what possibility of implementation can you think of,
especially among existing plugins; and are there any ideas of
simplifying the concept for implementation.

It is about a) way of thinking and b) writing and reading the ~text.

Writing: distinguishing.

When I write a text, it's a usual situation if there appear questions
about things I write (if I think carefully); or things to do or a
proposal about some existing project; or just an idea (which either
will remain an idea or gets it's realization) or ..

There appear things that I want to highlight. Some other examples:
things that are not clear, information from some sources which should
be checked, terms, just plugin descriptions..

The common thing is that a) this things imply some metadata, b)
metadata consists of somewhat common to all the "categories", is it a
question or information "from outside"; and c) it is not seldom if
there's no need to highlight them visually (or vise versa, it's better
to add a display:none; property).

However, it is usually desired to write some metadata the next moment
I wrote a piece of a "category".

Reading: aggregation.

Now when I read the text (or perhaps I don't even want to see the text
itself) I usually want to get fast access to the set of categories in
one of the following senses:

a) just rereading and orginizing. You know, question is a good thing,
but at least I need to decide whom I'm going to ask it to [sorry, if
my eng grammar got twisted here]. Or things to do: I need to decide
what I'm going to do this Monday (at least if everything goes right,
you know)). So I need to add some "tags"/"properties" to the
categories; or just make a list of them (the Monday one).

b) end reading. When I meet Jonny and Jonny, two grand specialists in
banks [(c), Fistful of Dynamite], I think "aha, there were some
question for them!" and want to read the questions which are addressed
to them.

Cleaning.

Sometimes questioins and things to do get topical or of interest no
more, so I delete them in the text and it is natural to imply that
they disappear as specimens of a category. Afterall if the thing to do
gets of it's own value, I can add a tiddler which describes some aims
(or interests in the case of questions) and add the thing to do to the
specimen of the aim category. So what I do mean is automatical remove
of the category specimen description (or metadata, as I called it
above).

Implementation.

No it's the painful part) As for now, I only can think of WikiWord
classes (which being used in a tiddler make a reference to, perhaps
nonexisting, tiddler of a category). For example if I mark smth with a
ToDo class, I can see in the "ToDo" tiddler a reference to the tiddler
which __contains__ the thing to do. It is, of course, a very poor
implementation: it only allows to distinguish and allows an ugly
possibility of "end reading" ) Well, here my thoughts end and I would
appriciate any of yours. XD Especially if they help to implement this.
Joking aside, I suspect this would need much efforts to do this.

[Tobias Beer]

For such a system I would recommend at least the following...

[1] TagglyTagging - especially the sitemap feature

[2] GotoPlugin + SimpleSearchPlugin - to search fast and simple

[3] TagSearchPlugin - for easy accessing and tagging to categories

Maybe too much for starters, but you can see these and other things at
work in tbGTD [4]

Cheers, Tobias.

[1] http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com
[2] http://tiddlytools.com/#GotoPlugin
http://devpad.tiddlyspot.com/#SimpleSearchPlugin
[3] http://http://tagsearch.tiddlyspot.com
[4] http://http://tbgtd.tiddlyspot.com

[Yakov]

Thanks Tobias.

As for now, I haven't analysed tbGTD yet, but let's make a little sum
up.

Distinguishing.

As I can see there's still no mechanism of distinguishing. I forgot to
mention that in ideal the metadata tiddlers are generated
automatically (with some markup used in the text). The fastest way to
generate tiddlers for category specimens is to make an additional menu
with newTiddler macros with some parameters. When a new tiddler is
created, a link should be placed in the text and put into class
wrapping.

As some properties of categories may be represented as a text (for
example, a question formulation for reading in vacuum), they probably
should be placed into slices. A slices-table can be generated as a
template buy the newTiddler macro for the category. Btw, is there any
mechanism to make a checkbox "show empty slices" (which causes the
corresponding effect)? And actually can a slice with no value cause an
error?

So, once the tiddler is created, the link is placed and.. perhaps some
tags are applied to the tiddler we turn to the next step. Here
TagSearchPlugin can help for some quickening.

Aggregation: rereading and organization.

Let's see.. I want to reread my questions. At least I want to get a
list of them. This can be achieved by tags, so let's imply that the
newTiddler macros for categories add corresponding tags ("question"
etc). By using tags I can also add some scope, some realms they belong
to. I can write whom I can ask them; this must not be done by tags
because if I want to see what I have about Mr. X I want to see a well-
organized page and the list of questions should be at least separated
from things I want to do for him and from things he borrowed from me.
Ehm, the question is if it is possible to make a list of tiddlers that
have both "[[Mr. X]]" and "questions" tags and a list of "other
notes" (tiddlers with "[[Mr. X]]" and without "quesions", "borrowing"
etc). Is it possible with standard tools?

Aggregation: end reading.

Now we ran into reading. Lots of stuff is written and we need to do
smth with it. TagglyTagging allows a very important thing - to make a
"slider view" in the list of questions. However I can't see any
possibility of more selective view. For example those "questions for
Mr. X". Or, even less likely, there's a way to select them basing on
their slices, is there?

I haven't studied the filter mechanism yet, may be this can help? Or
it can't be used so that TagglyTagging applies it's new presentation
(with sliders etc)?

Another thing is representation. If a thing to do is less important,
it is good if I can mark "low" in a slice "priority" and get it with
font-size:smaller; property in the to do list.

And the last thing is selecting custom slices for view. For example,
sometimes it is important to see not only the steps to do but also
purposes, to think about their importance. This could be achieved by
showing a table with a colomn containing the "thing to do description"
and a colomn with purposes.

Any suggestions?