using TiddlyWiki for note taking

[bopaige]

I have been using TiddlyWiki for several months now and thoroughly
enjoy the features, ease of use (and extensibility!). The only concern
I have is the scalability. I would appreciate some tips on either
using TiddlyWiki better, or another product that meets my needs
better.

I attend many meetings a day and create one tiddler for each meeting
for notes. In the notes I can easily link to pages for the attendees
and create other tiddlers for issues raised. The problem is my
TiddlyWiki is now > 600K and is a pain to save each entry (takes
several seconds). I can easily see my TiddlyWiki growing to > 1MB in a
couple months.

I have considered wikidpad. It scales well but does not offer
stylesheets or view templates so is not visually as good. Also,
extensibility is a bit harder; you write python scripts and store them
globally (as opposed to javascript plugins embedded with the
tiddlywiki).

I also considered splitting my tiddlers across multiple wikis and
using the includeplugin
I think my ideal tool would be an application version of TiddlyWiki.
Easily extensible through macros either within the wiki or shared
across wikis, stylesheets, etc, but also as quick wtih 1,000s of
tiddlers as with 10's.

Thoughts?

[Udo Borkowski]

> ... The problem is my

> TiddlyWiki is now > 600K and is a pain to save each entry (takes
> several seconds).

When using the IncludePlugin this problem should go away. Just move the "old tiddlers" into separate TiddlyWikis ( e.g. on a "per month" base) and include these "Archive TWs" in your daily work TW. This way you can keep your main TW small and saves will be fast again.

To speed up the initial loading time you may also consider the "delay" feature of the IncludePlugin (see http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/msg/44a3dffae057ba39)


Udo

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Udo Borkowski
http://www.abego-software.de

[Bob Paige]

Udo,

Is there an easy way to move tiddlers between files?

In addition to meeting notes I track issues that come up in meetings,
people related to them, etc. (using TagglyTags). 'Archiving' tiddlers
will be a real pain if I have to move them manually.

As I mentioned at first, I considered creating separate TiddlyWikis
for each type of tiddler, but I quickly saw this would be a pain
trying to decide which wiki to enter a given tiddler into.

In my mind, I would love it if it worked something like this:
1. create tiddler in my wiki as I do now
2. if I tag a tiddler as 'archived' (or something similar) then the
next time I save my wiki that tiddler is written to the 'archive' wiki
and removed from my primary wiki.
3. likewise, if I unmark something as 'archive' it is removed from the
archive wiki and saved in my primary.

This functionality is almost there with include plugin. Include plugin
will load the tiddlers from the archive wiki. The only part lacking is
automatic copying of tiddlers to/from the archive. I am not so
concerned about performance when moving a tiddler to/from the archive.
I am more interested in being able to change the 'archive' tag on
several tiddlers, saving it, and having them all moved for me.

The requirement by includeplugin that included tiddlers are not
editable is perfect. This enforces the idea that anything archived
should not be modified. If you really want to modify it, 'unarchive'
it first (which may take several seconds as the archive is
re-written).

TiddlyWiki already has a 'save backup' feature; it is not possible to
hook into this an decide which tiddlers to save where?

--
Bobman

[Eric Shulman]

> Is there an easy way to move tiddlers between files?

http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#NewDocumentPlugin
-- one-click to generate TW documents from current tiddlers
-- auto-select by tags

http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#ExportTiddlersPlugin
-- generate TW documents, TW 'export files', or XML files (for RSS
feeds)
-- advanced selection/filtering options by date/time, tags, text
match, etc.

http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#ImportTiddlersPlugin
-- multi-select listbox of tiddlers to import
-- quick select by all/new/changes/differences
-- handles 'collisions' with existing tiddlers: skip/rename/merge/
replace
-- "tag-on-import"
-- generates [[ImportedTiddlers]] cumulative history

http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#LoadTiddlersPlugin
-- a non-interactive version of ImportTiddlersPlugin, can be used to
automatically pull tiddlers from other files (like IncludePlugin).
See http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#InstallPackages for an example. Open
any package description and click on "begin installation"...

http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#TemporaryTiddlersPlugin
-- when used with LoadTiddlersPlugin, this plugin can reproduce
'transient' tiddler effect, so that loaded tiddlers are not saved
locally and are re-imported each time.

HTH,
-e
Eric Shulman
TiddlyTools / ELS Design Studios

[Udo Borkowski]

Hi Bob,

Is there an easy way to move tiddlers between files?

I think you should go for any variant of the "ImportTiddler" feature. Especially you may want to have a look at the http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#ImportTiddlersPlugin and http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#LoadTiddlersPlugin (also mentioned in Eric's post). They allow you to import tiddlers from one TiddlyWiki (e.g. the Master TW) into another (e.g. the Archive), based on the existence of a tag ( e.g the "archive" tag). After that you could delete the copy of the archived Tiddler in the Master TW. I think Eric also has a plugin so do something like a "batch delete", e.g. delete all tiddlers with a certain tag, but I cannot recall the exact name.

This is not as comfortable as you had in mind but the issue with your proposal is that it modifies two TiddlyWikis at the same time. I somehow hesitate to do this since I cannot currently overlook if this may not lead to some subtle problems. Nevertheless your proposal sounds very reasonable and I may consider it some time in the future.

[Bob Paige]

Udo/Erec,

Thanks for all the references. I will look into these.

Question related to ImportTiddlers: is it possible to import
macros/plugins with ImportTiddler? I tried it myself and they appear
but are not executed as I would expect.

The reason I am wondering about this behavior is that I have a number
of TiddlyWikis (different subjects) that all use the same
plugins/macros. If I could put these in a shared TiddlyWiki it would
help reduce the size of the wikis and also contribute to improved
performance.

--
Bobman

[Eric Shulman]

> Question related to ImportTiddlers: is it possible to import
> macros/plugins with ImportTiddler? I tried it myself and they appear
> but are not executed as I would expect.

Since plugins can modify core functions ("hijacking"), they only
executed when the document is first being loaded. This ensures that
importing a plugin doesn't break your current TW session by modifying
core internals after TW has completed its initial load. While some
plugins *might* be OK to load on-the-fly, there is no way to know with
any certainty which plugins can be safely re-loaded in the middle of a
TW session.

-e

[Udo Borkowski]

>> Question related to ImportTiddlers: is it possible to import
>> macros/plugins with ImportTiddler? I tried it myself and they appear
>> but are not executed as I would expect.
>

>Since plugins can modify core functions ("hijacking"), they only
>executed when the document is first being loaded. 

Eric: what about displaying a little dialog saying something like

     "You imported some macro/plugin tiddlers. To use these macros/plugins you need to reload the TiddlyWiki file in your browser"

whenever you detect an import included a tiddler with a "systemConfig" tag.

Udo

----------
Udo Borkowski
http://www.abego-software.de