Request: PasteUpPlugin enhancements for touchscreen devices

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Yakov

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Dec 28, 2011, 2:13:29 PM12/28/11
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Hello Eric,

As I mentioned some time ago, PasteUpPlugin has a problem with touch
screens: usually "double-click" event is captured by browser for some
action, usually zooming. Now I've run to this issue in practice.
Fortunately, my touch-screen device has keyboard also.

While dealing with capturing of the double-click event may be more
problematic (I'm not sure, though), the following solution would be
great: add a global option which switches "double-click -> edit" to
"shift+click -> edit". Does this have anything to do with
PasteUpPlugin itself, or it's rather a "system option" (and is equal
for included tiddlers and for editing of just a tiddler)?

Sure, the solution I suggest is useful only for devices with keyboard,
but others (handling of other events/dealing with browser event
capturing) seem at least more browser-dependent (and perhaps more
complex).

Anyway, your help in this matter would be appreciated very much.

Regards, Yakov.

PS Of'course, if anyone else has an idea regarding the problem, you
are welcome to step in too!

Yakov

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Dec 28, 2011, 5:50:36 PM12/28/11
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Actually, I remembered a much more natural approach. The border of
dots appears after a single click on the inserted area; it would be
quite useful if an edit icon/button appears in the inserted area after
one click. This approach would be good for any touchscreen device
(with or without keyboard).

Yakov

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Jan 6, 2012, 7:02:32 PM1/6/12
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Dear Eric,

could you please comment this somehow (this issue is quite crucial for
me)?

HansBKK

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Jan 6, 2012, 11:58:17 PM1/6/12
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Sorry I can't help, but I'm curious if people could chime in

How many people have been successful getting plain-vanilla TiddlyWiki working on mobile devices, and if so, which devices and browsers?

I had just assumed it wouldn't work at all given the problems with modern browsers in general. . .

Måns

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Jan 7, 2012, 7:37:16 AM1/7/12
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Hi Hans

> How many people have been successful getting plain-vanilla TiddlyWiki
> working on mobile devices, and if so, which devices and browsers?

I'm using AndTidWiki on a small HTC (I think it's a Desire S..)- every
day at work.
The TW is use is heavily modified one containing a lot of personal
information, phone numbers and lists... (It works very well with
<<wikify [[<html><a href="tel:%0"> %0 :☎</a></html>]]"phone@$2">>) ..
I've put an empty space with most of the templates here:
http://huskelister11-12.tiddlyspace.com/
It's in danish I'm afraid...

Cheers Måns Mårtensson

Yakov

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Jan 7, 2012, 11:07:41 AM1/7/12
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> How many people have been successful getting plain-vanilla TiddlyWiki
> working on mobile devices, and if so, which devices and browsers?

I know 3 options of platforms where TiddlyWiki works (can save
changes): in Android (via AndTidWiki, FireFox or FireFox beta), in iOS
(via TWMobile or TWEdit or recently announced tiddlyNotes which is far
from vanilla TW; all these are not free) and in Maemo (and probably
MeeGo), where main browser is FireFox-based and FireFox is available
too. Perhaps in some other platforms there's also some FireFox-based
browsers which I'm not aware of.

As for successful usage, that's a longer story. While exploring proper
technologies, I keep in mind that I'd like to be able to view/edit
some tw-documents in different devices (for instance, in a PC and in
an Android talbet, while the file is stored in a usb-stick), and
that's what I mean further.

Now as for Android tablets, I'd say that usage of TiddlyWiki is quite
smooth. Here I'd like mention that I use asus eee slider device which
has keyboard, so don't suffer of probable markdown drawback (it needs
many non-alphabet symbols, so one has to switch abc/@#_ keyboards
often). On the other hand, Mans sais that he uses TW on a keyboardless
smartphone every day, so probably it's not of that concern. On
tablets, if TW is used for complicated content, there are some
problems, though:

1. Problem with PasteUpPlugin I mentioned above.

2. For keyboard enhanced devices - bad support of keyboard in both
AndTidWiki and FireFox: things like ctrl+c/ctrl+v/ctrl+x, ctrl+a, ctrl
+z/ctrl+y, ctrl+arrows (for jumping over words), shift+arrows (for
text selection) are mostly not supported. In recent FireFox beta
there's no way to select a part of text: both shift and finger
selection don't work. I'm going to establish consistant feedback with
FireFox developers, but now I don't know where feedback put from the
main page goes and how to trace it.

3. For Android devices fonts can't be installed unless a device is
rooted. This is important for Plugin: jsMath.

4. I failed to get FCKeditorPlugin work.

But most of things work, including IncludePlugin ("file interaction"
plugins are most vulnerable for incompability). Basically one gets
touch-screen isntead of mouse/trackpad which is ok.

In smartphones, things are much more complicated. There's BidiX's iTW
[1], but for me it's not good enough because of single-page mode and
other things. So I'll list basic problems which are to be overwhelmed
to have TW usable in mobile phones:

1. Lack of space forces to do smth with menus, hide them somehow. It
can be done, for instance, as in iTW, or using ToggleSideBars
transclusions [2] (this is not that simple, though, if you want to be
able to open menus right away when you are near the bottom of the page
without getting to the top). Also, there's a very interesting
"Triptych" theme [3] which I would like to explore in a talbet. It's
discussion is at [4].

2. Nobody would love scrolling over many pages. Despite the presence
of the jump toolbar button, it's better to use SinglePageModePlugin
[5] (I wouldn't do so due to some workflow issues) or
TiddlersBarPlugin [6] (like it's already done in "Triptych" theme).
Not only much scrolling is bad without them. When one opens a tiddler
to edit, he or she gets two scrolling entities: page scrolling and
tiddler's content scrolling. In mobile, this hinders workflow utterly
(I guess, this depends on browser, thought). Each of this plugins
solves this (if lists like timeline are hidable), because the edit
area of one tiddler goes in one page.

3. Styling should be edited. Fonts should be much larger, and page
header is better to get smaller/be removed. For fonts, probably
FontSizePlugin [7] would be very good (it can make tw-documents more
device-independent).

4. Some items from QuickEditPackage [8] are very useful, especially
QuickEdit_link and QuickEdit_split. They allow to skip many annoying
steps in some actions: QuickEdit_link, for instance, eases remembering
the name of a tiddler which one would like to link without usage of
search etc.

5. What is most painful -- sharing of settings, plugins and other
tweaks between tw-documents. I really wouldn't use TW in a smartphone
unless I have an engine which would allow me to install each plugin
once etc.

Basically, all the problems of tablet usage are inherited in mobile
and flavoured by many others, that's why my idea is to get able to
work with TW in tablets first, and then start to adopt it for mobile.
One should keep in mind, though, that I have very high demands to
TiddlyWiki because in a mobile device I keep over 1000 rich text files
for different things, starting from philosophical notes and finishing
with daily todo lists and some idle interests and notes, and moving
them into TW just *requires* heavy set of technologies. So, some other
people can find usage TW in mobile much less problematic.

[1] http://itw.bidix.info/
[2] http://tiddlytools.com/#ToggleLeftSidebar%20ToggleRightSidebar%20Welcome
[3] http://triptych-theme.tiddlyspace.com/
[4]
http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki/browse_thread/thread/336977345667aea1/5313789a5e359f61?lnk=gst&q=almost+here#5313789a5e359f61
[5] http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#SinglePageModePlugin
[6] http://visualtw.ouvaton.org/VisualTW.html#TiddlersBarPlugin
[7] http://tiddlywiki.squize.org/#FontSizePlugin
[8] http://tiddlytools.com/#QuickEditPackage

Eric Shulman

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Jan 8, 2012, 3:39:21 PM1/8/12
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If you are using PasteUpPlugin along with EditSectionPlugin, then a
*single* click invokes the EditSection "popup editor" to edit the part
content. If you also install PasteUpHelperPlugin, then the single
click invokes a popup *menu* that leads to separate "helper" dialogs
to edit the part, and you can use shift-click to invoke the
EditSection popup editor as a fallback.

It is only if you don't have either extra plugin installed that
PasteUpPlugin uses the double-click action to trigger editing (by
opening the corresponding tiddler in edit mode). For consistency,
this handling should be changed so that a simple click or shift-click
can be used to open a standard editor for the embedded tiddler
content. I will also re-factor the mouse event functions so that they
can be more readily modified for custom handling of touch-specific
interactions (e.g., using other modifier keys, etc.)

I will post when I have an update to the plugin.

-e

Yakov

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Jan 9, 2012, 3:12:32 PM1/9/12
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Great, thanks Eric.

On the one hand, PasteUpHelperPlugin mostly solves the issue. On the
other, I found behavior of the PasteUp family quite strange, so I've
made some tests (in Opera 11.60, FireFox 8 and 9, and FireFox for
Android [I can't see the version]; I tested plugins at the TiddlyTools
page through http and in a local TW v2.6.5). The results are listed at
[1].

The only issue to me about PasteUpHelperPlugin is that when I click a
link or a slider button or whatever inside the included area, the
helper's menu appears anyway. I think it would be more convenient if
it can be set (a cookie-parameter) so that shift+click opens the
helper menu/editSection editor, but single-click doesn't.

Regards,
Yakov.

[1] http://yakovl.bplaced.net/materials/PasteUpTestResults.txt
(let me know when you download them along with the picture, this is a
temporary storage place since it's not well-organized)
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