A Beginner's View of TW

[Richard U]

I am a hobbyist programmer, at best. I do read documentation, but also jump in pretty quickly since documentation often becomes incomprehensible without context. Here are some thoughts on how I was able to get TW to work for me.

First, I had to learn that TW is really two things: Classic and TW5. After playing with TW5, I had to learn that TW is really three things: Classic, TW5 and node.js. A little more overview on this in the documentation might have helped.

I thought TW5 would work for me, but it loads too slowly on a Galaxy GS4, so I switched to node.js which I installed on a Win10 VM that runs on my unRAID server.

My workflow is that my desktop home page links to my node.js site. To make node.js available throughout the network, I use:

tiddlywiki --server 8080 $:/core/save/lazy-images text/plain text/html Richard "" 0.0.0.0

I can make changes there anytime. Everywhere else: (phones, tablets, other desktops for family memebers) loads a static site for speed.

To rebuild the static site was easier than I expected. Shut down the server with ^c. Then run these lines:

 tiddlywiki C:\Tiddly\UHP --rendertiddlers [!is[system]] $:/core/templates/static.tiddler.html static text/plain
 tiddlywiki C:\Tiddly\UHP --rendertiddler $:/core/templates/static.template.html static.html text/plain
 tiddlywiki C:\Tiddly\UHP --rendertiddler $:/core/templates/static.template.css static/static.css text/plain

This creates an output sub-folder with a file: static.html. The key (for me) is not to use static.html. It includes a nuisance sidebar that doesn't do anything. 

Instead I go into the static folder and link to UHP.html (the name of my opening tiddler. I am in Zoomin mode). That page has links to my other TW pages, in this form: 

<$button style="width:150px;background-color:#E0F0FF">[[Lights]]</$button>

Interestingly, images don't load in my node.js site (I know how to fix this but it doesn't matter). However images work perfectly in my static site using this:

[img[example.gif]]

Include a copy of example.gif in the static folder.

I had to do some weird stuff with buttons, but that's probably not of general interest. The important thing was that I could ask almost any question, and someone would have the answer, often within minutes. I used this site and stackoverflow.com for some CSS knowledge.

I hope this helps someone. I'll be glad to answer any questions, but my greatest contribution will probably be to provide an outsider's perspective. In thinking about this, I suddenly remembered that the first program I ever wrote was on punch cards. Yikes.

Richard

[PMario]

Hi Richard,

Thx for sharing!

-m