Radically Newb .... apologising ahead of time.

[Mikel Azure]

G'day All,

I'm writing a novel using Evernote and it is great for the writing flow.   My encyclopedia for the world being built has got out of control and is now slowing me down.  I figured I better get a proper encyclopedia designed, with links and all that, before it gets insanely out of size.   SO,   I researched and decided on TiddlyWiki as the tool.  

I am a radical newb in the sense that never used any wiki before, never used google groups before, never used anything like the 'wikitext' language thing for writing instructions or code or whatever we call it.   So currently feeling a bit daunted by the overflow of new things to understand, but I am almost sixty,  I understand usage will bring comfort.... always has in the past. 

I also am a bit cautious because I don't want to spend hours putting my encyclopedia entries into Tiddlywikis only to discover my way of creating say 'contents' or 'links' is wrong and needs to be scrapped back to starting again.  

So I am apologising ahead of time for any annoyingly basic questions I ask which make you role your eyes at how I could not find the answer myself.    Here is one example -  I have noted the use of the term "story" and "sub story" but so far have not been able to find any definition of that term.  

I've looked at one or two youtube videos about getting started with TW and stumbled on the 'getting started' page linked to in one of the threads here.  All good.

I will finish with a question, if anybody managed to read this far.  :) 

I have templates for various encyclopedia entries - standard headings for a character profile  or  standard layout for a description of a species or culture, or cities history.   Those templates, in evernote, are formatted already so I can just rip the information into the headings without having to slow down to do the formatting and then get back to the actual novel writing.    My question - can formatted templates be created and saved and stored 'somewhere' in TW once, so I can just use them as needed?

Thanks ahead of time.

Mikel A

[Mat]

Hi Mikel. No need to apologize for not knowing stuff. There's a zillion things all of us don't know about.

You're in for a ride. But it is a very rewarding one if you're willing to put in the time.

First, you should note there is an Evernote to TW importer. I have no idea how well it works but you should probably investigate this first. Strangely, the only mention I find of it is a small note in a release note in the docs. Otherwise I imagine there's some exporter in evernote to excel or csv or maybe even JSON (preferred) which can then be imported into TW.

>I also am a bit cautious because I don't want to spend hours putting my encyclopedia entries into Tiddlywikis only to discover my way of creating say 'contents' or 'links' is wrong and needs to be scrapped back to starting again.  

If your e.g links stay consistent then you can probably correct them all at once even if they are all in some wrong format or so. You might have to retort to non-standard solutions but it is probably doable, if they are consistent. (For example, it is easy enough to open a TW in a text editor to see all of the TW code. Therein you can use a replace feature to e.g replace all occurences of some string with another.)

>I have templates for various encyclopedia entries - [...]  My question - can formatted templates be created and saved and stored 'somewhere' in TW once, so I can just use them as needed?

My guess(!) is that, yes, but it'll take some fiddling. TW definitely uses templates to present things but they may not be "connected" to the content in the same way that Evernote connetcs its templates to the contents. To be able to fully answer this question of yours one would have to know what a "template" is, programmatically, in Evernote.

<:-)

[Charlie Veniot]

G'day Mikel, and welcome to TiddlyWikiHood!  (Or, less a mouthful:  TiddlerHood !)

See if maybe my first TiddlyWiki project gives you some ideas:  Le P'tit Aurèle (a lexicon of Acadian French)

If I was a "White Belt" in the art of TiddlerHood when I put together that first project, I'd say I may be a Yellow Belt today.  And when I can find the time, I'll be revisiting that first project and making some changes based on the good stuff I've learned.

Cheers and best regards !