[TW5] MyMenus Plugin - forshadowing

[TonyM]

Folks,

I just wanted to post that I am developing a MyMenus Plugin for TiddlyWiki, I am very excited about it and close to finishing, unfortunately some international travel may delay publishing.

• Below is a summary of what I am trying to achieve, references to "prior art" (others work) may be helpful.
  
• A Couple of outstanding issues are also listed should you have something to contribute.
  

This is my first plugin, and so it is taking a little longer to refine it before publishing.

Just a Quick Summary

• The my menus plugin provides a quick and easy method of building menus in wikitext, view templates and elsewhere using existing or dedicated tiddlers.
• The method I am using makes it possible to use almost any wiki text or macros to build menu items
• This means the sky is the limit, and MyMenus may be a great way to implement any number of solutions with TiddlyWiki
• This complicates publishing my plugin because I want to provide a rich set of examples in the Documentation
• Menus can appear as a dropdown menu, simple links, or within details sections.

Here is a few examples

A Menu to

• Handle tagging logic
• Tiddler Types
• Field manipulation
• Task and Project management
• Executing macros
• New Tiddler and New Journal
• Lists of items tagged or tagging
• Help information
• Access to Various system settings

The menus are also readily exchanged with other MyMenu's users, so I hope to build an eco-system of solutions.

I strong use case is add tools menus during the design phase and remove them before publishing your wiki.

The Plugin Site is now Online at http://tiddlywiki.psat.com.au/mymenus/ however I the plugin does not have its licencing details and may not work

Please leave Comments Here

Outstanding issues

• Enabling subMenus
  Whist this is possible I cant seem to get cascading menus - perhaps because of my style sheet, which does not include any state handling (attached)
• Conditional Display in ViewTemplate
  I understand various possibilities, but I am finding it difficult to include one or more filters in a menu tiddler (in its fields), that determines one or more cases where it will be displayed in the view template.
  Examples include
• Show if Tagged foo
• Show if Field exists
• Show if Field exists and has a value or specific value
• Show if title Prefixed
• Show if specific tiddler
• Show if tiddler title same as Menu Tiddler title
  
  The trick is combining one or more filters to show one or more menus according to their individual filter sets on a single line.
  
  

Any way, I hope you are as excited as I am on this and can contribute now and test when released.

Regards

Tony

[Alfonso Arciniega]

Great idea, Tony!

The MyMenus stylesheet plugin will be very helpful to everyone, in my opinion.

Like many people out there, I am one of those folks that a) don't know the language of TW5 enough to customize my TW's, and; b) don't have the time to learn the language except for very basic formatting, editing, saving. I am sure I am not the only one with this time constraint issue; and I believe this like to time to learn the TW5 way of customizing is one of the main issues for widespread adopting of TW5 by the general public. There are lots of useful resources, no doubt about it, though not many people has the time to peruse them. I am for the MISS concept here, no apologies.

Therefore, I have a request in addition to your idea. Maybe you already thought about it though I don't know, so here it goes.

In addition to your list, I would like the plugin to be able to change styles in an easy way (note I am talking about "styles" here, not "themes"). Also adding a "checkbox" capability to the plugin to perform the changes. Below are, in no particular order, a few examples (some of them may be already implemented in the empty.html):

1. Change the position of menus (above the sidebar, top of page, bottom of page)
2. Hide/show main menus
3. Have "Accordion" and "Drop-down" menus
4. Hide/show "Breadcrumbs" or "Tab" menus
5. Change the location of sidebars (left/right)
6. Hide/show "Edit" and "View" menus
7. Hide/show some of the sidebar menus
8. Change the position of title/subtitle
9. Change the type and size of fonts, separate options for the "Story View" and the "Toolbars"
10. Change the colour of fonts/background
11. Add the capability to make the changes somewhat permanent, like cookies, for each TW
12. Optional: a simple hover menu that does not use complicated icons (simpler than Saqlmtiaz's lewcid site in TWC)

The above menu features should work with the original "Snow White" and "Vanilla" themes; without messing with icon based menus or other complicated features. I believe more people would adopt TW5 if they see basic customization of original themes be done easily than rich feature and colorful themes. So no theme customization, just menus within current stylesheets.

Regards,

Alfonso

[TonyM]

Alfonso,

Thanks for your enthusiasm. A number of your requirements are built into the first release such as

1. Change the position of menus (above the sidebar, top of page, bottom of page)
2. Hide/show main menus

3. Have "Accordion" and "Drop-down" menus 

and most of the rest should come very soon.

What is important to understand is MyMenus provides a platform on which to build menus, each item in a menu can be wikitext macros etc... that you can place in any tiddler.

 

If you can do it in wikitext you can do it in a menu item

So for example if you install a breadcrumbs plugin and know how to toggle it on and off in wiki-text you can make it a menu item to do so.

There is however a lot that can be done even with native tiddlywiki, such as toggling system tags, from view templates to alternate Stylesheets.

I expect we can quickly build a list of shareable menus that do much of what you ask above, and where they must we can indicate they have a dependency on another macro or plugin.

People with the knowledge and experience to do so, can contribute menus that manipulate the elements that you ask for,  to customize your TW's,

I hope the library of menus we build will meet all your needs. I will add these to the requirements.

Regards

Tony

[TonyM]

Top post updated to include plugin site details

Tony