Possible modifications to xlsx import plugin

[Steven Schneider]

Hello folks, 

I'm an avid user of the xlsx import plugin (see http://tiddlywiki.com/prerelease/editions/xlsx-utils/ ) using it for various purposes, including having students complete google forms and importing their responses to a class wiki, as a way to build student engagement with their texts (textbooks, articles, etc.). I'm beginning to roll out this approach to other faculty as well through a series of workshops & conferences.

One way that my colleagues are considering is to create a google form that students complete, and to import the submissions into a tiddlywiki file.  For example:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc9xmQ7sDbqAmSIZr-xe0dGGkum_QiorJlhqAMEF6leNbzGHA/viewform

Recall that Google Forms saves its responses to Google Sheets, which are then downloaded as xlsx files. Google accomplishes this by taking the question text from the form and using it as the column heading. That column heading is then used by the xlsx plugin to become aligned to a field. Thus, the column heading (or, in this case, the question text) becomes the field name or tiddler title.

It occurs to me that one way to make the process of importing a spreadsheet much, much easier would be to establish this as default (or option):

1. Designate a specific Column (ColA, ColB,etc) as the tiddler title.
2. Auto assign fields by columns. In other words, import contents of column A into field ColA; contents of column B into field ColB, etc.
3. Create "caption" or "label" tiddlers with import sheet name-column as title (Sheet-ColA) and question text as either text field or caption field.
   

This would make the import process much faster and transparent, and leverage the work of the forms creator / spreadsheet creator into the wiki.

Is this a trivial change to the plugin? Any other thoughts on ways to improve this really useful plugin?

//steve.

[Steven Schneider]

Is anyone else using the xlsx import tool? Just curious....

Another possible development: would it be possible to make a copy of a workbook (and all of its specifications) so that it becomes straight-forward to import 3 or 4 similar workbooks, without having to go through the entire field-level specification?

Thanks,

//steve.

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Steve

I think its a Minority Report.

There are not that many active users here to start with. And using that XLSX plugin you'd need a reason. I don't think its gaining traction yet because the number of people who know about it is minuscule.

Its exactly the same for me, who am very enthusiastic about Jeremy's Twitter plugin. My enthusiasm for it meets resounding silence here. That is NOT a criticism. I think its a numbers game & our overall numbers are too low for specialist traction.

In short: The XLSX plugin is brilliant and could be used in zillions of ways, but lacking synergy from more users its basically YOU pushing it on. SO :) and :(.

Best wishes
Josiah

[Steven Schneider]

So agreed.  But I know people lurk and search so by writing we are also documenting for the future emergent community. 

It's a fascinating plugin because it allows a visualization of tiddlers in a distinctive way that is familiar to many people (spreadsheets). And facilitates multi tiddler tagging which would is frequently desired. 

And building of interfaces through templates to spreadsheet data that can be streamed or imported once

I'll keep sharing developments. I use many things I never comment on from this group 

On Fri, May 26, 2017 at 11:47 AM @TiddlyTweeter <tiddly...@assays.tv> wrote:

Steve

I think its a Minority Report.

There are not that many active users here to start with. And using that XLSX plugin you'd need a reason. I don't think its gaining traction yet because the number of people who know about is minuscule.

Its exactly the same for me, who am very enthusiastic about Jeremy's Twitter plugin. My enthusiasm for it meets resounding silence here. That is NOT a criticism. I think its a numbers game & our overall numbers are too low for specialist traction.

In short: The XLSX plugin is brilliant and could be used in zillions of ways, but lacking synergy from more users its basically YOU pushing it on. SO :) and :(.

Best wishes
Josiah

Steven Schneider wrote:

Is anyone else using the xlsx import tool? Just curious....

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Steven M. Schneider
SUNY Polytechnic Institute (formerly, SUNYIT)  | http://www.sunyit.edu
Professor, Department of Communication & Humanities

st...@sunyit.edu | 315.792.7331 | http://sunyit.edu/~steve

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Steve, I agree.

I'm no good on doing things. I can see that plugin has huge scope.  I'm pretty good on reporting and I think a lot of the battle with getting TW used more is journalism for it. That I can willingly do. Its very easy for me to write when there is news of stories I can report.

Josiah

[sini-Kit]

xlsx import tool is the best TW5 plugin. I use it in my Tiddlywiki shop.

Open my empty shop empty.html (attached to this post) and drop and import my Excel goods, images and TOC NewGoods_2.xlsx to it.

you will see that many goods with pictures appear in this shop in top menu.

Excel is the best way to change prices, tags ant put  data from site parsers.

The final result will be https://tupper.online/shop2/ it use PHP (or google form) for sending mails and PHP for saving changes in wiki.

 

пятница, 26 мая 2017 г., 17:52:45 UTC+3 пользователь Steven Schneider написал:

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao sini-Kit

Clicking around that TW ... I realised you have proper in context editing too. Its impressive!

Best wishes
Josiah