The synergy of TiddlyWiki + { ??? }

[Charlie Veniot]

A "Note Taking in 2021 (article & reflection)" offshoot ...

I've been really thinking about it a lot lately: although TiddlyWiki is my goto tool for serious information/knowledge/content management, it isn't my preferred tool when I do want to quickly want to write something down for later TiddlyWiki-ing.

So I was thinking, whatever tool(s) I prefer use in particular circumstance(s), I'd want some real synergy (?) between TiddlyWiki and the other tool(s): i.e. they compliment each other, and it is easy for me to copy content from one to the other, with TiddlyWiki being the central tool for that serious information/knowledge/content management.

Although gmail, google calendar and google keep tend to be my goto tools for quick jotting things down, I've been looking into the business of quickly writing more elaborate content on my chromebook (my goto machine for digital whatever, since I don't have a tablet and hate using smartphones unless I really have to.)

So after a lot of looking around (I still have some more experimenting to do), I think my star candidate is Zim Wiki for quick writing of things for later inclusion in a TiddlyWiki for some serious work.

• To me, a wiki is not a wiki unless it can do transclusion, so a consider Zim Wiki "wiki-esque"
• So TiddlyWiki is the real workhorse because of transclusion and the muscle of filtering

Early-going, I'm finding TiddlyWiki + Zim pretty sweet with "markdown" being the cross-copying glue between the two.

Some notes about Zim: 

• really fast (because not all content is loaded up in memory all at once ?)
  • every page saved in its own text file
• wysiwyg is nice
• has some nice plugins
  • Might be nice for some things, but I'm mostly focused on just content that fits "markdown"
• preference option: default format for copying text to the clipboard
  • text, Wiki (Zim's wikitext), Markdown, RST
• has some nice plugins
  
  • might be nice for some things, but I'm mostly focused on just content that fits "markdown"
    

To copy content from Zim to TiddlyWiki, I'm pretty sure "markdown" is the key to happiness:

• Zim's copy page text to clipboard in markdown format
• the TiddlyWiki Markdown plugin, so that markdown text can be pasted into a "text/x-markdown" tiddler

This is going to be one evolving story about "The synergy of TiddlyWiki + { ??? }.  Maybe a video at some point.

Do you have a TiddlyWiki "synergy" story to share?

[TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao cj.v...,

Very nice post. Couple of things ... 

First, questions ...

-- Am I right that you using Zim via Linux on Chromebook?

-- I also wondered a bit about if we could create for  TW easier import gizmos to de-Zim Markdown to full WikiText? (Just a thought!)

Second, comments on the AIM ...

-- I was kinda wondering what the optimal COMMON cross-browser and cross-platform way might be nowadays?

-- What I find INTERESTING is that, longer-term, we tend to gravitate to what we (a) know reasonably well [i.e. produces least cock-ups on the practicals]; and (b) the ENVIRONS of work matter [e.g. Chromebooks are really neat in that getting the cat-to-fly either works or it doesn't. At least you know where you are with it.]

-- Just FYI I tend to write/copy-paste notes into any text file and then process that for TW import prep using Powershell scripts with a lot of Regex.

This reflects my background as they about the only two things I'd say I'm good at.

Signing off from the far side,

TT x 

[Charlie Veniot]

G'day g'day TT,

Yup, Zim installed in "Crostini" (i.e. the virtual machine, aka container, running Linux).

Although I prefer having Zim and TiddlyWiki open side-by-side to copy content from Zim to TiddlyWiki, I'm sure some skilled and enterprising person could create some fancy gizmo to sync a node.js version of TiddlyWiki with Zim.  Each page in Zim is saved as a text file with Zim's Wiki formatting.  Just a matter of said gizmo comparing individual Zim page files to individual TiddlyWiki tiddler (*.tid's just being text) files.  

Aside: gizmo would need to know how to convert Zim's wikitext to TiddlyWiki's wikitext.  (why I like the markup scenario, as a way for Zim and TiddlyWiki to talk a very similar language.)

I'm pretty sure "optimal" very much depends on individual preferences.  Optimal for you could be the exact opposite for me.

Although there are some info/knowledge/content capturing circumstances in which I'd prefer Zim over TiddlyWiki, there are other circumstances in which I'd prefer Google Keep, or even just Google Mail or Calendar.  So whatever is the best tool for the job at the moment.

In scenarios in which I do want to quickly capture a lot of content that needs some wiki-esque good-enough organization and formatting, Zim would be my go to, for later serious work in TiddlyWiki, knowing that if needed, I can copy the markup formatting from Zim and it will work in TiddlyWiki (with markup plugin).

Other small and quick things might go in my Google Calendar (or Google whatever) with reminders to add to TiddlyWiki later.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want an import process (with prep or without) just hauling everything from Zim (or whatever) to TiddlyWiki.  Copy/paste from Zim to TiddlyWiki, one thing at a time, along with whatever decision-making and/or considerations each time would be more my cup of tea, manually fitting each thing in a wysiwyg (connecting all of the intertwingled TiddlyWiki things) type of process.