TW5 as Electron app?

[Dave]

I was listening to a podcast, an interview with this fellow: https://plus.google.com/+MartinWimpress talking about the viability of Electron apps (in a Linux context) and I looked it up and it makes use of node.js.

On an older thread someone mentioned that electron apps *don't* have access to node.js.  Maybe he was just talking about his app.

Anyway, is that a worthwhile direction to go if I both wanted to make TW5 "apps" (with node.js) as well as (maybe) other things?  I.e. can you do TW5 in Electron?

[PMario]

Hi Dave,

TiddlyDesktop is a very similar project, but using a different framework [1] https://nwjs.io/ . ... The problem with apps like this is, that users start to demand functionality, that they are used from standard web browsers... Jeremy clearly stated, that he doesn't want to go that route, which is very understandable.

Electron is a framework, with a different approach. Electron [2]  emerged out of the Atom [3] text editor project, which, i think, was launched by github, at a later date than nwjs.

The cool thing about Electron is its multi platform approach. So you can build macOs, Linux and Windows apps, with just one build source. ... That doesn't mean, that everything is easy, but it means its possible, with the right resources. ...

There are actually several Electron apps, where users, don't even recognize the difference to native apps. ... For more about this, see the electron homepage. 

BETA - BETA - BETA

There is a cool project, that I'm watching since some time now. ... Actually Jeremy pointed me in that direction, in connection to the DAT project [4]. ...

The beaker browser [5]. It is only available for macOS at the moment. Linux binaries (that I play with) have to be built from source. Windows builds don't work yet.

This browser exposes a file API, that can be used by TiddlyWiki to save itself. ... Jeremy implemented a file saver module in the version 5.1.14, which is very promising. ...

Since the whole stuff is still in beta status, there are a lot of changes going on, in the whole stack. So with the upcoming beaker version [6] v0.7.0, it seems, we need to modify the TW module a bit. ... more investigations needed!

If you have a closer look at the DAT project, you'll see it would be a very nice fit for the TiddlyWiki community. ..

just some thoughts
have fun!
mario

[Arlen Beiler]

Yes, you can run TiddlyWiki 5 on electron. I have done it with both HTML files and the NodeJS​ code that can be downloaded from NPM or GitHub. It is fairly easy and works well.

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[Arlen Beiler]

I should add that you need to do a bit of coding for both.

[Arlen Beiler]

https://gist.github.com/Arlen22/45f1a460c9e348fa50ad

[Edoardo Tenani]

Hello Arlen,

by chance do you have an example using the nodejs version of TiddlyWiki? I was trying to do that a couple of days ago but I would get an initialization error (a null path during boot) when loading the TW from an electron window.

On Tuesday, 16 May 2017 at 01:08:50 UTC+2 arle...@gmail.com wrote:

https://gist.github.com/Arlen22/45f1a460c9e348fa50ad

On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 7:45 AM, Arlen Beiler <arle...@gmail.com> wrote:

I should add that you need to do a bit of coding for both.

On May 15, 2017 07:44, "Arlen Beiler" <arle...@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes, you can run TiddlyWiki 5 on electron. I have done it with both HTML files and the NodeJS​ code that can be downloaded from NPM or GitHub. It is fairly easy and works well.

On May 15, 2017 06:25, "PMario" <pmar...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Dave,

TiddlyDesktop is a very similar project, but using a different framework [1] https://nwjs.io/ . ... The problem with apps like this is, that users start to demand functionality, that they are used from standard web browsers... Jeremy clearly stated, that he doesn't want to go that route, which is very understandable.

Electron is a framework, with a different approach. Electron [2]  emerged out of the Atom [3] text editor project, which, i think, was launched by github, at a later date than nwjs.

The cool thing about Electron is its multi platform approach. So you can build macOs, Linux and Windows apps, with just one build source. ... That doesn't mean, that everything is easy, but it means its possible, with the right resources. ...

There are actually several Electron apps, where users, don't even recognize the difference to native apps. ... For more about this, see the electron homepage. 

BETA - BETA - BETA

There is a cool project, that I'm watching since some time now. ... Actually Jeremy pointed me in that direction, in connection to the DAT project [4]. ...

The beaker browser [5]. It is only available for macOS at the moment. Linux binaries (that I play with) have to be built from source. Windows builds don't work yet.

This browser exposes a file API, that can be used by TiddlyWiki to save itself. ... Jeremy implemented a file saver module in the version 5.1.14, which is very promising. ...

Since the whole stuff is still in beta status, there are a lot of changes going on, in the whole stack. So with the upcoming beaker version [6] v0.7.0, it seems, we need to modify the TW module a bit. ... more investigations needed!

If you have a closer look at the DAT project, you'll see it would be a very nice fit for the TiddlyWiki community. ..

just some thoughts
have fun!
mario

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[TiddlyTweeter]

Dave & PMario 

A few comments .... PMario starts nicely limited ... on which I can say a bit.

PMario wrote:

TiddlyDesktop is a very similar project, but using a different framework [1] https://nwjs.io/ . ... The problem with apps like this is, that users start to demand functionality, that they are used from standard web browsers... Jeremy clearly stated, that he doesn't want to go that route, which is very understandable.

 Right. These kinds of tools are extrapolations from a sub-set of browser code, FREED.  But users often tend to focus, incorrectly, on what "browser things" they drop.

MUCH more interesting is what they permit. Basically they gain INTERACTION with the OS. And developing that in a structured way is far more interesting/useful than browser clampdown.

Just a comment

TT 

[PMario]

On Friday, September 18, 2020 at 10:56:10 AM UTC+2, Edoardo Tenani wrote:

Hello Arlen,

by chance do you have an example using the nodejs version of TiddlyWiki? I was trying to do that a couple of days ago but I would get an initialization error (a null path during boot) when loading the TW from an electron window.

There has been a link in the last post from Arlen here in this thread.

https://gist.github.com/Arlen22/45f1a460c9e348fa50ad

I didn't test it.

-m

[Edoardo Tenani]

Not exactly, that link uses electron to display a HTML TW (this is my understanding).

I would have liked an example with electron loading a nodejs version (using the npm tiddlywiki CLI) so displaying a wiki at http://localhost. I had troubles and was wondering is someone else made it work :)

[Jed Carty]

While it isn't electron BobEXE is an executable that runs the node version of tiddlywiki. I had considered using electron for it but then remembered that I really dislike electron so I used nexe instead.

https://github.com/OokTech/TW5-BobEXE/releases

[Edoardo Tenani]

Hello Jed,

I completely missed that BobEXE had a Linux version! 

I'll try it out, thanks!

Best,

Edoardo

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[Jed Carty]

Yes, I develop it in Linux and for a while there wasn't a windows version. I don't have any windows machines so there are always problems with windows because I can't test it. The name is there because people insisted that it needed something to show it could work on windows and after the annoyance that made me pick the name 'Bob' instead of a more interesting name I just went with the first suggestion, which of course causes the opposite problem. It has osx, linux and windows versions.