Sharing word and PDF documents through Tiddlywiki

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Karishma Patel

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Jan 7, 2015, 3:40:09 PM1/7/15
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Hi,

I'm new to Tiddlywiki and have only used a few other wikis in the past. I like Tiddlywiki because it's simple, portable, and just feels light. Also, for someone who doesn't have a tech background, it's easy enough to manipulate and allow for others to collaborate. However, I also hope to be able to upload word documents or PDFs for templates, tools, or forms for work that colleagues can download/print to use adhoc. Are there any plugins for this sort of thing or creative ways to link Tiddlywiki to something online to make this possible?

I hope what I'm asking is clear, but let me know and I can clarify anything.

Thanks in advance!

Karishma

Tobias Beer

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Jan 7, 2015, 4:28:03 PM1/7/15
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Hi Karishma,

With TiddlyWiki there is no "uploading" in this sense, as there is no server in the basic setup. There only is embedding or linking, whereas you can currently embed some image, and audio file types and also pdf, but not doc or other commom filetypes.

The reason is that — as a standalone file — TiddlyWiki is really not designed to dump (bigger) external files into it. You would rather see to it that you place those documents either on the web or in the folder or a subfolder of your wiki file and then use external links...


Makes sense?

As the server sides evolve there may be snippets or forms that allow you to upload binary data to your server storage... but all that will be based on TiddlyWiki communicating with a serverside.

Best wishes, Tobias. 

Mat

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Jan 7, 2015, 6:47:53 PM1/7/15
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@Tobias - excellent summary of external links!

@Karishma - Geat to hear you like TW! Do tell your friends about it. BTW, check out Tobias site for a lot of other valuable stuff. :-)

<:-)

Karishma Patel

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Jan 8, 2015, 11:20:46 AM1/8/15
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Thanks for the prompt response guys! Will definitely keep exploring. Do you thinking uploading the wiki to something like Dropbox could help with this kind of situation

Karishma Patel

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Jan 8, 2015, 11:20:48 AM1/8/15
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Thanks for the prompt response guys! Will definitely keep exploring. Do you thinking uploading the wiki to something like Dropbox could help with this kind of situation?

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Jed Carty

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Jan 8, 2015, 12:37:55 PM1/8/15
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The wiki I use for most things is hosted on dropbox, with most of the pdfs and images used in it linked from a folder called 'images' and a folder called `pdf` in the same dropbox folder as my wiki so I can display them in the wiki and not have to import them. That works well for me.

I do have a wiki in a shared dropbox folder that multiple people use. It works very well for us. The problem here is that there isn't any multi-user control on the wikis yet, so if two people are editing at the same time anything the first person saves will be over written when the second person saves. This doesn't mean you can't do it, just make lots of backups.

I am not sure if either of those cover your situation exactly, so if you have further questions please ask.

Tobias Beer

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Jan 8, 2015, 1:28:41 PM1/8/15
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Karishma Patel

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Jan 8, 2015, 1:50:26 PM1/8/15
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This is great! I'll see what I can come up with as I explore and update the topic.

Look forward to more suggestions/developments.

Talk soon, K

Greg Davis

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Jan 8, 2015, 7:48:52 PM1/8/15
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Question. I'd tried to do this on Dropbox but my images are not showing up. The img (images) directory is in the same directory as the tiddly file, does it have to be shared too?

The following works locally but not from the share on Dropbox:

<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<title></title>
<style type="text/css">
</style>
</head>
<body>
<article>

<p><img src="images/lights.jpg"></p>
<p>one</p>
</article>
</body>
</html>

[img [images/lights.jpg]]

two


[ext[cute lights|images/lights.jpg]]


three

{{$:/images/lights.jpg}}


four


Thanks,
Greg

Tobias Beer

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Jan 8, 2015, 11:28:06 PM1/8/15
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May I ask why we're seeing all this html stuff in your example?

My test wiki is in a public folder, and img is a subfolder to that.
Obviously, I'd say, if you want to access those images from within the wiki, both need to be publicly accessible.

Best wishes, Tobias.

Greg Davis

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Jan 9, 2015, 11:09:31 AM1/9/15
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Thanks Tobias,

The HTML was to see if it made any difference to see the image on Dropbox. Although I do archive a lot of web pages in TiddlyWiki using that HTML around the content, so I can copy the tiddler content and paste into new web page.

I tried sharing another folder (wiki) in it is the TiddlyWiki file and the images sub-directory with the lights.jpg I can link to the TiddlyWiki but the images don't show. Everything works when I try locally on my hard drive. The example is at:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/sh/9nit3lo3i0o45hm/AAApinc6zrKWKmqcrdMRUmDBa/ec4FNmB1.htm

Greg

Tobias Beer

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Jan 9, 2015, 12:17:32 PM1/9/15
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Mhhh, something is quite different in your link...
 

...as compared to mine... 


How do you get that link and why are these file and folder names so ridiculously cryptic?
Are you sure we're in that public folder?

Best wishes, Tobias. 

Jeremy Ruston

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Jan 9, 2015, 1:33:05 PM1/9/15
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I believe that's what going on here is confusion because of the different ways that Dropbox allows stuff to be shared:

* Early Dropbox accounts provide a single public folder; all the files in the folder are shared. Tobias - I think yours is one of those public folder links
* All Dropbox accounts allow a public link to be created for a single file or folder. If you create a link to a file then that file won't be able to access other files in the same directory: you need to create the link for the containing folder

The following help article implies that newer accounts can now enable the old public folder functionality:


Best wishes

Jeremy


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Greg Davis

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Jan 9, 2015, 3:18:40 PM1/9/15
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Jeremy, Tobias

Looks like I would have to upgrade to a Pro account to get the equivalent of the old Public folder funtionality. Evidently shares on free account will not let TiddlyWiki file access other files in the shared folder. I may play with it a bit to be sure. Not sure I really need a Pro account for my usage.

Thanks for taking a look.
Greg

Ed

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Mar 22, 2015, 8:03:56 AM3/22/15
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Op donderdag 8 januari 2015 18:37:55 UTC+1 schreef Jed Carty:
The wiki I use for most things is hosted on dropbox, with most of the pdfs and images used in it linked from a folder called 'images' and a folder called `pdf` in the same dropbox folder as my wiki so I can display them in the wiki and not have to import them. That works well for me.

Hi Jed, Tobias & Any other helpful wizard,

Wanted to put relatively quickly something on Dropbox to test out and show to somebody.
However the images did not display. Tired and very late night experimenting & headscratching
did not help me to solve the problem. Now a little TW5 file shows but no pic.
Please have a look, must be something simple I stupidly overlooked or....
Now very basic TW5 with only one image, both embedde and external.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/dzvegmchjlzf95l/TW5Imageexperiment-empty.html?dl=0

Thanks in advance! 8-)), Ed

Jeremy Ruston

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Mar 22, 2015, 9:23:12 AM3/22/15
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Hi Ed

I believe that the problem you are seeing with external images is because you've shared the HTML file as a Dropbox link which only provides access to that individual file. You can't use it as the base for relative URLs to images subfolders. The URL that is generated for the image is:


The alternatives are to use a Dropbox public folder (https://www.dropbox.com/enable_public_folder) or to try sharing a folder instead of the individual file.

Best wishes

Jeremy.




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Ed

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Mar 22, 2015, 1:54:49 PM3/22/15
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Op zondag 22 maart 2015 14:23:12 UTC+1 schreef Jeremy Ruston:


Hi Jeremy,

Thanks man, for trying to help out so quickly.

From TiddlyWiki.com
It is funny in a way, as I tried to follow your explanation on TiddlyWiki.com:
“Select Dropbox's "Share Link" option to obtain a public URL for the file.”
That is why I shared the file, thinking that that TW5 would “read” the image
from the image directory, like it works locally, both file + image directory being
in the same higher directory. Alas, it was not to be.

I tried out your suggestion of sharing a folder. (Interestingly the share-folder-URL
that you get is a bit different from the Share-file-URL. The URL-part “/s/” has
changed into “/sh/”. ) Anyway

The result was again negative, as I get the 404 page from DropBox.
If I choose the other option: “Invite people to collaborate” then you get the content
of the folder and not the opened TW5 file.

Public Folder Option Read me text
"The Public folder lets you easily share single files in your Dropbox. Any file you put in this folder
gets its own Internet link that you can share with others -- even non-Dropbox users!

Step 1:  Drop a file into the Public folder.
Step 2:  Right-click this file, then choose Dropbox > Copy Public Link. This copies an Internet link to
your file that you can paste anywhere: emails, instant messages, blogs, etc.
That's it! To share your file, just send the link to a friend.

Happy Dropboxing!
- The Dropbox Team

P.S. You can only link to actual files within your Public folder, not to folders. For help with sharing files visit http://www.dropbox.com/help/16"

Folder- way doesn't work. So sadly nothing seems to working.

Present Option?
So the present option for me seems to be to embed all images to be used in the TW5 file.
As I wil need quite pictures that might bloat the file quite a bit. Present estimate is about
120 - 150 (very rough estimate) could be more.

Jeremy, would that create in any way a problem knowing that eventually, in the farther future,
I want it to be a website under its own domain name? Speed problems. loading time problems,
whatever? I value your advice very much as you are the TW-Kahuna.

Further Options
How the heck are others doing it? Need anyway to check on Tobias as I seem to remember
another thread where he presented a solution, I think.

Jed, any comments, perhaps?
Salut! Edm.

Jeremy Ruston

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Mar 22, 2015, 2:16:03 PM3/22/15
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Hi Ed

> Folder- way doesn't work. So sadly nothing seems to working. 

I think that the help article you quoted may be misleading. I've one of the original Dropbox accounts, which always supported a "Public" folder, and it definitely allows HTML files hosted in the public folder to make relative references to files in subfolders. I think the problem with the article is that they teach people to generate the link when in fact links to content in the public folder are just a prefix attached to the relative file path.

> As I wil need quite pictures that might bloat the file quite a bit. Present estimate is about  120 - 150 (very rough estimate) could be more.

Ouch, that might be getting a little large. At 50KB per image that's over 7MB binary, which would expand when encoded in base64 in the TW HTML file. On reasonable computers, people seem to be getting along fine with TW files up to 10MB or so, assuming a decent internet connection.

Another option might be to host the images elsewhere, if they are not private. For example, I believe that Flickr provides a URI that can be used for embedding an image elsewhere.

> Jeremy, would that create in any way a problem knowing that eventually, in the farther future,  I want it to be a website under its own domain name? Speed problems. loading time problems,  whatever? I value your advice very much as you are the TW-Kahuna.

You'd always be able to change things back to externally linked images in the future, which would generally perform better.

Best wishes

Jeremy.

Ed

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Mar 22, 2015, 10:18:50 PM3/22/15
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Hi Jeremy,

I really appreciate the time and effort you put into making TW5 and trying to help me out.
But after 7+ hours I give up for the moment. It is rather frustrating and at the moment I feel
that TW5 might not be for people like me, reallll beginners, cause the jargon used here in the
groups is a sort of javascript-incrowd language. Too many things are taken for granted.

It is a great pity as TW5 is a most excellent piece of software that could be immensly helpful
when I think about the shitty software I had and have to use at work. The flexibility is quite
incredible, really.

I know it can work
To come back to this whole image business
Link: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/tiddlywiki/TW5$20DropBox/tiddlywiki/J1opoHoBt8Y/II-BX06oy2cJ

Greg Davis* gives here an excellent example that what I want to accomplish will work.
But he had to use Identify Element and Edit in HTML. If you know what to do fine.
Actually Tobias described it as a pain. 8-))

Now I for the love of Pete wouldn't know how to do that. After some guesswork I opened
the Inspector (I know nothing about that) and found the part relating to the image.
Did a right-click and found in the little menu Edit in HTML. But after that? No idea.
Or even befor that, for that matter.
* Thanks Greg!!

Getting it seen on the net
As far as I can see now, Greg first shared a file, because of the "/s/" part.
To get his TW file on the net via DropBox
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/hjdhlbvya1yyppf/ec4FNmB1.htm

To Show the picture inside
Inside the tiddler there is a shared folder,because I see the "/sh/" part
trial six - image in shared dropbox folder -
[img [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/sh/h8q01y5kygoyhch/AADohj2X5FBnxMccuiLISCXva/images/lights.jpg]]
Correct?
But how to do that myself, beats me at the moment.

Yes, I agree of course with you that a bloated TW with lotsa embedded pictures is not the way to go.
Indeed Flickr and als0 PhotoBucket, as advised by Tobias is a better road.
But now It's 03:18 and I have to wake up at 07:15AM
Salut! Ed

Greg Davis

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Mar 23, 2015, 3:15:31 PM3/23/15
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Hi Ed,

Glad you found my post on Dropbox and it helped a little. I hoped it might be easier for someone to find if I separated it from this thread. I went ahead and did a Step-by-Step version which I hope gives a better explanation of where to find the link and how it must be modified. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/hjdhlbvya1yyppf/ec4FNmB1.htm#Step-by-Step%202015-03-23

Unfortunately it is a bit complicated, especially for a larger number of links. Each image has a largely unique address, you can't just take the link for one image in a shared folder and then merely change the image name. For this example I built everything locally to see that it worked then synced to Dropbox. I then had to open the shared image folder on Dropbox and extract the links for each image. I temporarily stored the links in notepad and made the necessary changes there. (changed www to dl and added usercontent) Then opened up the TiddlyWiki locally on my PC and pasted the corrected links into the appropriate places. Saved the TiddlyWiki and synced Dropbox again. Done! I have not looked into Tobias' suggestion yet since so far I am not sharing that many images.

Hope this helps.

Greg

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