[TW5] Successfully created a plugin library

[Jed Carty]

I finally got around to actually making a plugin library that TiddlyWiki can use. I put step-by-step instructions here. It is pretty straightforward.
If you would like to test it out you just need to import the tiddler listed at the top of the one linked to.

All the normal warnings apply. Also I put all the plugins I am working on in the library, so some are broken or are not useful. Be careful.

[Mat]

I thought 5.1.8 already introduced a plugin-library, no? Or is yours different?

And, actually, I'm not really sure what defines a plugin so can I ask if this (type of) library would be a good place to store any kinds of "tweaks", "tiddlers needed for a theme", perhaps even "a gallery of embedded images" etc?

Thanx Jed. You have an impressive production rate of great stuff!

<:-)

[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi twMat

On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 11:41 AM, Mat <matia...@gmail.com> wrote:

I thought 5.1.8 already introduced a plugin-library, no? Or is yours different?

There's two parts to the implementation: code within TW to access the plugin library, and the actual plugin library itself, which lives at:

http://tiddlywiki.com/library/v5.1.8/index.html

What Jed has done is to implement his own plugin library to which TiddlyWiki can connect, alongside or instead of the standard plugin library. It's part of the plan for the plugin library: it's useful to have a centralised library but it's also handy in some circumstances to be able to set up additional or replacement libraries. For instance, in a school setting, the administrator might set up a TW plugin library that contains course materials. By dragging and dropping a single tiddler, individuals can then connect to that library and import its resources.

> And, actually, I'm not really sure what defines a plugin 

A plugin is a bundle of tiddlers packed together into a single tiddler. Plugins can be manipulated (imported, enabled, copied etc) as a unit, but manifest themselves as their individual tiddlers appearing as shadow tiddlers.

So plugins can be used to distribute anything: JavaScript code modules, content, images, fonts, stylesheets, lesson plans, code snippets etc.

Best wishes

Jeremy

 

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[Mat]

Thank you Jeremy! This sounds more than terrific!

For instance, in a school setting, the administrator might set up a TW plugin library that contains course materials. By dragging and dropping a single tiddler, individuals can then connect to that library and import its resources.

Hm, extremely interesting. Does this mean vanilla TW5 can do what I believe otherwise only the node.js version can do, i.e to momentarily/session-wise import tiddlers? Or maybe we are talking about the node.js version to begin with?

> And, actually, I'm not really sure what defines a plugin 

A plugin is a bundle of tiddlers packed together into a single tiddler. Plugins can be manipulated (imported, enabled, copied etc) as a unit, but manifest themselves as their individual tiddlers appearing as shadow tiddlers.

Ah, great! Is it correct that we currently do not have a simple way to bundle up arbitrary tiddlers into a plugin?

Also... and I'm digressing here but: I'm investigating the terminology we're using for things in TW. Is "plugin" a carefully picked term here or really of more spontaneous origin? The thing is, I'm beginning to be concerned that the eventual Federation will need a very strict and carefully chosen terminology to minimize confusion because I expect the Federation to be a boost for community growth attracting people with niche interests that are not as interested in TW per se but more in a particular Application for TW (e.g "authoring books" or "course material management") or particular Content (e.g "folk music", "Harry Potter",...). In other words, I think sub-communities will form and for, particularly, such "Application Communities", then we had better use a well defined lingo so to minimize confusion in the interaction. I may sound overly optimistic in this but I believe TW will be very big one day and nomenclature matters had better be straightened out before this day.

So, again, is "plugin" - as opposed to "addon" (add-on?), "extension", "bundle" and other terminology the best term for our case here? I'm in no way implying that it is not, I'm merely asking.

Thank you again Jeremy

<:-)

[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Mat

For instance, in a school setting, the administrator might set up a TW plugin library that contains course materials. By dragging and dropping a single tiddler, individuals can then connect to that library and import its resources.

Hm, extremely interesting. Does this mean vanilla TW5 can do what I believe otherwise only the node.js version can do, i.e to momentarily/session-wise import tiddlers? Or maybe we are talking about the node.js version to begin with?

Here we're talking about importing a plugin from the plugin library; there's nothing momentary about it, it permanently copies the tiddler from the library to the wiki.

The plugin library is entirely browser based.

 

Ah, great! Is it correct that we currently do not have a simple way to bundle up arbitrary tiddlers into a plugin?

It's simple enough under Node.js. The process in the browser is bit intricate because there's no user interface; it has to be done from the browser developer console

 

Also... and I'm digressing here but: I'm investigating the terminology we're using for things in TW. Is "plugin" a carefully picked term here or really of more spontaneous origin? The thing is, I'm beginning to be concerned that the eventual Federation will need a very strict and carefully chosen terminology to minimize confusion because I expect the Federation to be a boost for community growth attracting people with niche interests that are not as interested in TW per se but more in a particular Application for TW (e.g "authoring books" or "course material management") or particular Content (e.g "folk music", "Harry Potter",...). In other words, I think sub-communities will form and for, particularly, such "Application Communities", then we had better use a well defined lingo so to minimize confusion in the interaction. I may sound overly optimistic in this but I believe TW will be very big one day and nomenclature matters had better be straightened out before this day.

So, again, is "plugin" - as opposed to "addon" (add-on?), "extension", "bundle" and other terminology the best term for our case here? I'm in no way implying that it is not, I'm merely

I think "plugin", "add-on" and "extension" are all synonyms. I chose the word "plugin" because I think it's the strongest word; it describes the mechanism, while "add-on" and 'extension" are more about what the mechanism accomplishes. "Plugin" is also in very common usage, and I wanted to exploit users existing understanding of the "plugin" concept.

I don't think that the word "plugin" is suitable for talking about the payload of federation. We'll probably need to adopt/evolve a new vocabulary for federation.

Best wishes

Jeremy.

 

asking.

Thank you again Jeremy

<:-)

[Matthew Lauber]

Just wanted to throw out a big thank you for this guide.  I'm still working on getting everything setup the way I want it to be, but I've got a working plugin library now, which will help out a lot.