Tony's - Smart Document Initiative - Expressions of interest

[TonyM]

Folks,

I just wanted to make public a project of my own I am developing to make tiddlywiki suitable for use as smart documents.

Ideas and Suggestions welcome. Including supportive input if this sounds like something you would like!

Background

Those experienced with TiddlyWiki5 in particular may already be using TiddlyWiki as smart documents. An example may be a sophisticated CV that permits easy updates and revisions. Since TiddlyWiki can work well as a self contained html file we tend to think of it as a website, or an app on its own but not so much as a document. It is not always so easy to send someone a TiddlyWiki "Document", especially the first time they have seen one and have them up and running.

Smart Documents

I am working to identify what it would take to let tiddlywiki be more readily used as standalone exchangeable documents and building the plugins and macros to support this. Some features include;

• A Specific file extension .tw to differentiate it from other html content
• Easy to download, email and send documents
• Automatic Version Control, release management and more
• Check in Check out
• Encryption
• User management
• Review, approval and Feedback tools
• Establish the "Source of Truth" document
• Smart Document Template
• Update and change management
• Document Information panel
• Edit online, on the desktop, mobile or in the cloud/browser
• Documents that can carry the "Business logic" within them.

Just think of how TiddlyWiki can be superior to a Word Document then consider the features MS word has, from Macros, to Mail merge, to custom fields and more yet TiddlyWiki is capable of all these things and much more even without a bloated software package installed. If necessary such features could be brought in to achieve an outcome then removed once done to keep the document smaller in size, or similarly export the content separately from the design of the content.

My Relevant background

Having worked professionally with Information and Knowledge management and multiple document management systems I see great potential here in part because TiddlyWiki Smart documents can take the document management system with them, in each and every independent document. What if for example by simply creating a document and providing some basic details it told you where it should be stored, thus where the latest version (source of truth) will be found and more organisationally sound practices.

Advanced Features

I have an idea called "generational templates", The idea is that the template content and logic can be updated and enhanced and passed on to future documents while using the template to generate a specific document. So that you can save a new enhanced template (without the current documents content) for your future Smart Documents, that now include money handling features. That is the evolution of your templates, every generation for which a template is used new and smarter features can be collected and made available to future documents without rework.

One day perhaps a back to base connection that gets the various versions of a document report registered documents back to base to keep track of its versions, forks, location and templates.

In closing

If handled correctly such that tiddlywiki documents are self documenting and I believe it is a fast route to proliferating TiddlyWiki, as well as introducing new users to one of its winning features, that is "its ability to evolve in the users hands".

Regards

Tony

[TonyM]

Additional Feature Idea

Single Use Password

The idea of a single use password, provided in a HTTPS: URL that allows the recipient of that url to open a hosted tiddlywiki for edit. Their changes are saved and the password is destroyed. They can no longer edit the document unless the owner provides a new password url. 

This would support secure "serial editing" even in a non multi-user environment. Good for reviewers, approvers and contributors to a document someone "owns".

Regards

Tony

[Mohammad]

Great idea Tony

I heard Jeremy has converted a doc file of hundreds pages into Tiddlywiki. He talked about speed.

By the way, we need some specification, ho to do this.

Lecture note taking was quite good with Tiddlywiki, of course there is still rooms to improve.

Having bibtex, and katex, preparing scientific article is another example.

The problem with TW is most people work in development section and there is little or no attention for application / user section.

Cheers

[Ste Wilson]

Yes! Would need to be able to record and retrieve students answers to questions.

Coupled with random question generation and automatic marking...

I can dream :)

[Jeremy Ruston]

> I heard Jeremy has converted a doc file of hundred page into Tiddlywiki. He talked about speed.

The work I’ve been doing on this is for a law firm, and it’s a 14,500 page Word document, weighing in at 30MB. It converts into an 85MB file with 50,000 tiddlers. It performs well on my ancient laptop, but it’s important to note that the tiddlers are relatively short, and only feature simple typographic formatting.

> By the way, we need some specification, ho to do this.

The conversion code that I’m working with is highly specific to the structural conventions of the specific Word document that we’re using, and isn’t suitable as a general purpose converter. I plan to incorporate what I’ve learned from it into the text-slicer plugin, giving it the capability to directly split Word documents.

Best wishes

Jeremy

>
> Lecture note taking was quite good with Tiddlywiki, of course there is still rooms to improve.
>
> Having bibtex, and katex, preparing scientific article is another example.
>

> The problem with TW is most people work in development section and threre is little or no attention for application / user section.
>
> Cheers
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tiddlywiki+...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to tiddl...@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki.
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/42a99c7c-a34a-40af-8b48-bf9aa5cd3b40%40googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[TonyM]

Folks

Thanks for the input so far. The smart document features should work on any wiki but some of the suggestions sound more like surveys, or document conversion to tiddlywiki. I am keen to provide the methods to replace traditional documents such as word, open document, pdf etc with smart tiddlywiki documents with added read, print, search, edit and with document managment and review/approval/version control etc...

Surveys, questionairs, reference material and document conversion etc... May all be valid in a smart document but tiddly wiki offers a number of way to address these other uses that may or may not use the smart document model. For example I would never use a word document for a survey or a spreadsheet. So I would question using a smart document for a survey when it could be online with immediate update.

Actualy this highlights a possible need for both active smart documents, and smart documents for authors and colaborators that hide most features when published. There are already some nice solutions for reader focused publishing.

Please keep the ideas comming.

Regards
Tony

[TonyM]

Josiah,

Of course It makes to have persistent rights, but see my recent post and about surveys. If you have a large number of potential contributors the document file model may not be the best.

Keep in mind tiddlywiki documents can be read only yet also interactive so a survey respondent could export their responce and send it in separately (I hope to automate this with mailto and attachments).

A single use password says go here make changes and save them. They are throw away, they may be in a link, can only be used once and you can see if they have being used. You could allow people to get one on demand, even transparently. If you control the issuing of the password you can manage serial users and workflow. The are not for everyone but they have some great use cases.

I hope this stimulates more feedback
Tony

[TonyM]

Jeremy,

You may be aware your document is most likely highly compressible. I wonder if we could compress save open and decompress a filtered range of tiddlers, then give the user the choice to save decompressed versions.

I expect there are come good javascript compression libraries.

It would need a plugin, perhaps two, one each way, and a seed password. Selective provision of the password and plugins would also add alternative distribution models. My team could all have a custom plugin they install to decompress, decrypt content, the plugin is not sent with the document, but a link to a secured location would allow those with access to decompress.

The point however is everyone can open the wiki, only some can access the content. In some cases everyone can decompress the content but not compress it (without a custom plugin). This would allow the the source document to be identifiable, because only it is compressed. Perhaps importiant in your legal document, so modified documents are identifiable.

Regards
Tony

Regards
Tony