Is an inside out TiddlyWiki possible?

772 views
Skip to first unread message

David Gifford

unread,
May 3, 2015, 9:57:03 PM5/3/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Hi all,

One goal that is always eluded me is the idea of having one TiddlyWiki file be a hub for all my notes, rather than spreading my notes out among several TiddlyWiki files. Tagging and hyperlinking will always be limited in application if one's ideas have to be spread out among different files. I have sensed I am not the only one who has seen TiddlyWiki as a potential route to a global personal information management tool. When node.js appeared I mistakenly thought it would be the solution to the filesize issue. But in practice it also slowed down with the inclusion of multiple images, etc.

On my Recursos.giffmex.org, to keep file size to a minimum and increase the speed at which files can be opened by site users, I am using a central TiddlyWiki file that links to numerous static HTML files. I am using the create static file from tiddler button found in the search area. This has been a helpful process for me, but it has a drawback. If I want to edit a static file, I must actually edit the tiddler in the originating file, then create a replacement static file, and replace the old static file with it.

This is caused me to wonder if there could be such a thing as an html file that could act like a tiddler only in the sense that it also has an edit template, so that it could be edited in the same way a tiddler is edited. That way the central TiddlyWiki could act as a hub with external links to small, easily editable HTML files that act as articles or entries.

With such a system, a TiddlyWiki file could conceivably be a much more extensible knowlege base, since each tiddler in the central file would be small, only a hyperlink to the html file, plus any tags and internal hyperlinks to related tiddlers. And the html files would be small, basically the size of the static files I create now, plus the edit template mechanism.

Of course, there would also be the need to quickly create such editable files from within the TW file.

I am guessing that this is all just wishful thinking, but it doesn't hurt to ask if this is in the realm of possibility, does it? Does this give any of you developers some bright ideas?

Blessings, Dave

David Gifford

unread,
May 3, 2015, 9:58:36 PM5/3/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
I meant to explain the title inside out. I basically meant that the notes themselves would be external to the TW file, rather than inside of it.

David Gifford

unread,
May 3, 2015, 10:08:31 PM5/3/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Ah, well, thinking it through, I realize it would not be that simple, since the html files couldn't be editable in the level of a tiddler without the entire wiki markup built into them, tables, etc. I imagine that might make them fairly large?...still...would love to hear your feedback...

Andreas Hahn

unread,
May 4, 2015, 4:23:48 AM5/4/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Hi David,

I can see the appeal of putting "everything" into a single TiddlyWiki
and indeed that is actually part of the vision of TiddlyWiki (if I am
not mistaken). Also I can see that in practice this is currently
impractical, mainly due to two reasons:

- images, pdf's and similiar "non-native TW"-files tend to blow up the
TW to the point where it becomes unusable
- in a TW EVERY tiddler is ALWAYS loaded, meaning that while you can
store a million tiddlers in a wiki, these million tiddlers are
completely loaded into memory and parsed out from the html, when you
open the wiki

So in theory your approach of spreading out a wiki may be workable, but
I feel that it don't plays well with the vision of having a single file
with everything in it. So while you are correct with your assumption
that the static files would contain a fair bit of javascript complexity,
it is in theory possible to make it a reality. Although, having said
that, you wouldn' be able to use transclusions across those static files
and the more features you add, the more similiar the "static file"
becomes to an actual external TW.

Here is what I think might be a solution to this dilemma:

There is no way around having images/pdf's external to the wiki.html
file, so ideally a TiddlyWiki should be a .zip file, with the wiki.html
being seperate from the external files. Then to open a wiki, there would
have to be a browser-extension that enables you to work with the wiki in
the normal way, while also loading in the images/pdf's from the zip file
as external files when necessary. Also with this setup you can imagine
having external tiddler stores in files that are lazily loaded into the
wiki.

The downside is that this would decrease the sharability of a wiki
drastically, as you have to have the browser-extension for the wiki to
work and you can no longer upload it to say tiddlyspot or another
server, without this server knowing about the zip-format.

/Andreas

Mark S.

unread,
May 4, 2015, 11:11:21 AM5/4/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Hi David,

Yes, a weakness of TW is that it doesn't scale well.

What is the advantage of linking to static files? I guess there's a little less overhead in terms of javascript, but now you have to use the search function to wade through the text. And you have to figure out a way to get new data back into the file. Why not just link to TW files?

It seems to me that your master file could be constructed so that it has tiddlers containing all the key words from the the sub-TW. So you could search for a term in your master TW, and it would quickly show you the links to TW's with matching terms. So your work flow would be

  Search --> Click to indexing tiddler --> Click to sub-tiddler --> Search again

You would have to maintain the index tiddlers from time to time. I imagine someone could come up with a macro or plugin to facilitate that, or you could just maintain it by hand since there are lots of words it wouldn't be worth searching by (e.g. "there", "are","lots","of","words") The list of words in.each indexing tiddler would not have to be visible -- you can hide them inside of comments leaving only the link to the corresponding TW file visible.

Mark

It just occurs to me, if it was possible to make a plugin or macro that could use the existing search term and combine

David Gifford

unread,
May 4, 2015, 6:33:23 PM5/4/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Thanks Andreas and Mark, for your feedback.

Andreas, you are right that my idea does not fit well with the normal usage of TW, one file with everything in it. That is why I called it an inside out TiddlyWiki. I think of this as a special use case for organizing massive amounts of notes, images and articles, rather than the way TW ought to be used normally.

I also realize I wouldn't be able to do transclusion in static files, and obviously I would lose the search functionality if the text of the notes is in external files. But those are limitations I have already accepted for my Spanish resources, and which I could also accept for a personal hub.

Why don't I just link to TWs from a central TW? Actually, that is what I currently do for my own use. I suppose I could do something like what you are saying, Mark, but with permalinks to tiddlers in other files. But for online sharing in Mexico, the simplicity and rapid viewing of small html files is a big plus, where most people view the Internet on mobile devices with less than optimal Internet speeds and many have limited technical skills, so that zip files and browser extensions would be a barrier. In Spanish I even do the subindexes as statics, so as to keep the central file to a minimum. But it would be nice to streamline the process and make it easier to edit those files later.

Dave



Mark S.

unread,
May 5, 2015, 10:44:42 AM5/5/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
It sounds like a job for Simplenote, or something similar. With a click, you can share a markdown formatted note as an HTML formatted  static page.

How are you sharing these small sub-pages now? Paste into Email? Separate server?

Mark

David Gifford

unread,
May 5, 2015, 11:26:55 AM5/5/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Hi Mark,

I am sharing them via my website on Dreamhost.

I will have to look at Simplenote again to see what you mean. I remember it not being the tool I wanted when looking at it a while back.

Dave
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/tiddlywiki/oVhlyEvPnGk/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to tiddlywiki+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to tiddl...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/d5078d26-3df5-4207-b104-d45f3436cbca%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Mark S.

unread,
May 5, 2015, 12:30:49 PM5/5/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
For personal use, there's nothing quite as flexible as TW. But it doesn't scale up without problems.

Something like Simiplenote makes it easy to quickly publish and update information meant for consumption by others. A published (static) page updates whenever the corresponding note in Simplenote is updated.

If you have your own website, you could have your own MediaWiki. That will scale-up and allow in-place editing to authorized individuals.

What it comes down to is that, one way or the other, if you use TW for managing your data, you will have to use a separate mechanism to publish low-overhead data. So the question is, what publication process will involve the least hassle for yourself?

Mark

Jeremy Ruston

unread,
May 5, 2015, 3:28:19 PM5/5/15
to TiddlyWiki, David Gifford
Hi Dave

Interesting ideas. My feedback may seem discouragingly negative; working in the browser is subject to brutal restrictions and limitations which hinder the plans of mice and men. But over the years we've found many cracks and oddities that have enabled us to stretch the platform beyond most expectations, and it's through these kind of discussions that these opportunities are discovered.

The first that you are asking whether it would be possible for the standalone HTML file configuration of TiddlyWiki to be adapted so that tiddlers are stored in separate files that are loaded as required.

The answer that it is possible, some of the time, in some configurations:

* This is the sort of application that the Node.js configuration of TiddlyWiki is designed for. If you can, it's by far the most liberating and immediate way to achieve the flexibility you are seeking
* The standalone configuration does (as you know) already support external tiddlers for images
* The fallback HTML5 saver wouldn't be practical for saving lots of individual files; users would need to be using TiddlyFox or TiddlyDesktop
* Whichever HTML file acts as the gateway has to know the filenames of the other files that it needs to access. The web lets us use xmlhttprequest to read files that we know the name of, but there is no way to enumerate the available files in a directory. We can get around this with TiddlyFox, TiddlyDesktop or conceivably via the APIs of a service like Dropbox

> This is caused me to wonder if there could be such a thing as an html file that could act like a tiddler only in the sense that it also has an edit template, so that it could be edited in the same way a tiddler is edited. That way the central TiddlyWiki could act as a hub with external links to small, easily editable HTML files that act as articles or entries.

This is the core of your idea: that individual tiddlers are not just stored in individual files, but in HTML files that act like a mini-TiddlyWiki that is capable of editing that one single tiddler.

One problem here is that there is no way for the standalone editor to signal to the main TiddlyWiki that the file has been updated.

Best wishes

Jeremy.


--
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 http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.



--
Jeremy Ruston
mailto:jeremy...@gmail.com

Jeremy Ruston

unread,
May 5, 2015, 3:34:54 PM5/5/15
to TiddlyWiki, Andreas Hahn
Hi Mark, Andreas

Minor corrections:

>  in a TW EVERY tiddler is ALWAYS loaded, meaning that while you can store a million tiddlers in a wiki, these million tiddlers are completely loaded into memory and parsed out from the html, when you open the wiki

TiddlyWiki already supports externally stored tiddlers via the _canonical_uri field. They work for images, PDF files.

> So in theory your approach of spreading out a wiki may be workable, but I feel that it don't plays well with the vision of having a single file with everything in it

The vision of TiddlyWiki is not just to be able to work as a single HTML file, but also extends to exploding that file into individual files. That part of the vision is currently only realised in the Node.js configuration.

> So while you are correct with your assumption that the static files would contain a fair bit of javascript complexity, it is in theory possible to make it a reality

With Dave's idea, a bunch of separate HTML files could share a single JavaScript file via script tags.

> Yes, a weakness of TW is that it doesn't scale well.

The main issue that we see at the moment is that embedding large images/PDFs doesn't work well. There are users out there with TiddlyWiki documents containing up to the tens of thousands of tiddlers. Of course, there's the Node.js configuration which scales even better (and with some additional work will scale as well as anything else out there).

Best wishes

Jeremy



--
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 http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

David Gifford

unread,
May 5, 2015, 4:17:48 PM5/5/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Hi Jeremy and others,

Just getting home for the day from teaching.

1. I didn't take your comments as negative in any way. And I have no personal investment in this discussion. I am just throwing out an idea to see if something sticks to it or not.

2. Simplenote, looking at it again, is pretty limiting compared to TiddlyWiki. Just for starters, I see no easy way to create hyperlinks in it. Let alone other formatting, things like tables, list filters, etc. So that is definitely nowhere near an option. It is only for the simplest of notes.

3. Jeremy, you mention Node.js as the solution I am looking for. When I tried out Node.js in January of last year, I recall it slowing down with images just like standalone TWs do. And that made me imagine that eventually, even a large number of text tiddlers could slow it down, too. That is why I didn't continue pursuing it, because it didn't seem to offer me that much of an advantage over the standalones regarding the filesize-and-image-slowdown issue. Has there been some change in Node.js to make it more responsive? Or some workaround? Also, even if Node.js became a solution for me, and I am open to that, it would be too complicated for my audience to consider.

4. There are some comments made above that don't sound like my original idea. So let me restate it in another way. My idea, at least for my website, is simply to have one standalone TW in which I add pretty links by hand to external html files that also open up with a browser, and that those html files be instantly and easily editable like a tiddler is, with wiki formatting etc. I currently have the first part, the standalone TW with the pretty links (see recursos.giffmex.org for an example). It's the quickly editable html files, and a way to quickly create them on the fly, that I don't have.

5. I admit to some confusion in my way of describing my ideas, because in part I am trying to think of something that would work for my website, and in part something that would work for me, for my notes. The website requires small files that open quickly and don't depend on anything too complicated for the user, like the need to acquire other software or learn node.js to view the files. For my own use I could be more flexible about methods, but the scale would be much larger.

6. I am guessing the way to go for my own use would be to have a central TW and a series of other TWs, where the tiddlers in the central TW have only the title of a term, the appropriate tags, and permalinks to tiddlers in other TWs which would contain text, etc. Or, assuming good news from Jeremy re: node.js, to use that.

Blessings

Dave

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/tiddlywiki/oVhlyEvPnGk/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to tiddlywiki+...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to tiddl...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki.

Mark S.

unread,
May 5, 2015, 5:17:22 PM5/5/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com, jeremy...@gmail.com, www.g...@googlemail.com
Hi Jeremy,

My understanding -- correct me if I'm wrong -- is that even if you use node.js it's going to serve up all the tiddlers on the client side. So it doesn't scale up any better than just a TW file by itself. The performance may not be bad on a desktop machine, but over a phone connection it's going to be noticeable if you have lots of tiddlers.

This is different from a true wiki, where only the tiddlers (or whatever they're called in the wiki world) you're looking at get sent over the net.

Thanks!
Mark


On Tuesday, May 5, 2015 at 12:34:54 PM UTC-7, Jeremy Ruston wrote:

The main issue that we see at the moment is that embedding large images/PDFs doesn't work well. There are users out there with TiddlyWiki documents containing up to the tens of thousands of tiddlers. Of course, there's the Node.js configuration which scales even better (and with some additional work will scale as well as anything else out there).

Jeremy Ruston
mailto:jeremy...@gmail.com

Jeremy Ruston

unread,
May 5, 2015, 5:24:17 PM5/5/15
to TiddlyWiki, Andreas Hahn
Hi Mark

My understanding -- correct me if I'm wrong -- is that even if you use node.js it's going to serve up all the tiddlers on the client side. So it doesn't scale up any better than just a TW file by itself. The performance may not be bad on a desktop machine, but over a phone connection it's going to be noticeable if you have lots of tiddlers.

External tiddlers can also be used with the Node.js edition for images/PDFs etc, avoiding them being included in the file in their entirity. There's more to do to make things smooth, but no intrinsic problem with scalability.
 
This is different from a true wiki, where only the tiddlers (or whatever they're called in the wiki world) you're looking at get sent over the net.

With a tiny tweak, TiddlyWiki under Node.js can also be used as an ordinary single page wiki where each tiddler is served as a static HTML file. Again, it's not polished, and more work needs to be done to support editing etc.

Best wishes

Jeremy.
 

Thanks!
Mark

On Tuesday, May 5, 2015 at 12:34:54 PM UTC-7, Jeremy Ruston wrote:

The main issue that we see at the moment is that embedding large images/PDFs doesn't work well. There are users out there with TiddlyWiki documents containing up to the tens of thousands of tiddlers. Of course, there's the Node.js configuration which scales even better (and with some additional work will scale as well as anything else out there).

Jeremy Ruston
mailto:jeremy...@gmail.com

--
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 http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Mark S.

unread,
May 5, 2015, 6:21:45 PM5/5/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Hi Dave,

It sounds like what you want is Webdav.

Since you have your server, you might be able to set up Webdav. Webdav is supposed to let you edit a web-page in place. It needs special settings on the server to make it happen (usually you specify certain directories for it). You may have to set a setting inside of firefox (and/or load a plugin -- It's a little unclear).  The special settings/browser would just be for you or whoever maintains the site. The users would just browse as usual. I used it years ago (before 2008).  You could start by checking with your WSP if it's available.

Mark.


On Tuesday, May 5, 2015 at 1:17:48 PM UTC-7, David Gifford wrote:
Hi Jeremy and others,4. There are some comments made above that don't sound like my original idea. So let me restate it in another way. My idea, at least for my website, is simply to have one standalone TW in which I add pretty links by hand to external html files that also open up with a browser, and that those html files be instantly and easily editable like a tiddler is, with wiki formatting etc. I currently have the first part, the standalone TW with the pretty links (see recursos.giffmex.org for an example). It's the quickly editable html files, and a way to quickly create them on the fly, that I don't have.

Matabele

unread,
May 6, 2015, 2:40:02 AM5/6/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Hi

You might find the ideas from this site of interest. Essentially, WordPress blogs are used for journalling, and clips are then moved into TiddlyWiki as raw ideas require massaging into information. 

I run my personal Wordpress journals in a docker.io container, but any LAMP setup will do the trick -- like this one for Windows: Windows Installer

regards

David Gifford

unread,
May 6, 2015, 5:05:10 PM5/6/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Thanks Matabele,

...for introducing me to Cyborganize, which focused on BrainStormWFO, a very nice tool. This set me to researching newer outlining tools. My favorite, hands down, of the various tools I saw was workflowy.com. I took some notes I had researched recently and in a very short amount of time I organized them perfectly! Faster than I could have done in TiddlyWiki. I love the interface and their way of doing things and displaying them. TiddlyWiki is way better for finished articles, for my website, and for productivity and work info. But I think I will probably start using Workflowy for organizing my academic and personal notes. I am a happy camper right now.

Dave

Matabele

unread,
May 6, 2015, 10:41:44 PM5/6/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Hi

Thanks for that -- nice piece of software! From there I found Slack -- which looks to be a superior collaboration tool -- syncs nicely across all devices. I'll give both a try -- promising. I've been using Evernote, Pushbullet and Gitbook (synced with btsync), for this kind of thing. Might make a case for a change -- although I don't see WorkFlowy as a replacement for Evernote -- rather an additional tool. I'll have to see how they can work together.

I really like the way the WorkFlowy outliner works -- good case for someone(?) to write a plugin for TW which duplicates this functionality. The TW could be used offline then synced whenever a device goes online -- the CouchDB hosted version of TW was a move in this direction -- or perhaps syncing with Dropbox or btsync would be a better approach.

regards

David Gifford

unread,
May 6, 2015, 11:15:49 PM5/6/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Thanks back, Matabele, for the mentions of these other tools. Gitbook looks interesting for publishing. Hmmm

Yeah, a workflowy plugin would be really cool! But for me the advantage of workflowy is the unlimited levels of lists. I can basically put every text note I ever take into it, with links to anything that is an image, a table or a longer document. For me the drawback is not being able to work offline. But apparently they are working on a tool for offline use.

Dave
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/tiddlywiki/oVhlyEvPnGk/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to tiddlywiki+...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to tiddl...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki.

Jed Carty

unread,
May 7, 2015, 12:26:38 AM5/7/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
WorkFlowy looks interesting. I have been trying to make something like that for TiddlyWiki so I can integrate it with my calendar plugin. I am hoping that making the category lists, calendar and menus play well together will result in something with similar features. I think that everything in WorkFlowy but the dragging and dropping is possible to do in TiddlyWiki without too much trouble. I have been working on my own productivity thing using tiddlywiki and a raspberry pi running node and syncthing to connect everything.

Matabele

unread,
May 7, 2015, 12:29:40 AM5/7/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Hi

Both the WorkFlowy app for iPhone and the app for Chrome can be used offline; and sync when the device goes online (or so the website claims -- I haven't tested this out yet.)

regards


On Thursday, May 7, 2015 at 5:15:49 AM UTC+2, David Gifford wrote:

Jeremy Ruston

unread,
May 7, 2015, 12:29:41 PM5/7/15
to TiddlyWiki
Hi Everyone

I admire Workflowy very much. For me, it's in the same category as Trello: they are both services that are essentially based on a single feature (in both cases, beautifully and thoughtfully implemented). And in both cases, TiddlyWiki aspires to allow users to be able to duplicate their functionality.

Another interesting product is Gingko:


It's like a non-wysiwyg outliner. I've been in conversation with the author over Twitter, who tells me that Gingko was partly inspired by TiddlyWiki.

I've recently been using Slack, another product mentioned above, in my day job. It's quite polished, with a great experience across devices. But it's amazingly crude in functional terms: pretty much just IRC with hyperlinks. I'd like to see them add features to enable the chat record to be edited and refactored to fillet out the useful reusable nuggets.

Best wishes

Jeremy.




--
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 http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

David Gifford

unread,
May 7, 2015, 2:01:36 PM5/7/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Very nice, Gingko app! And Trello reminds me of Google Wave a little bit...

Dave

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/tiddlywiki/oVhlyEvPnGk/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to tiddlywiki+...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to tiddl...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki.

Danielo Rodríguez

unread,
May 7, 2015, 2:24:56 PM5/7/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Hello,

All the mentioned apps are awesome and very useful. But I always end up using tiddlywiky. That's why is so important for me to provide sync and mobile apps. All of this applications claim their are unique, an probably they are, but tiddlywiky is unique and uniquely customizable.

Jeremy Ruston

unread,
May 7, 2015, 2:26:56 PM5/7/15
to TiddlyWiki
All the mentioned apps are awesome and very useful. But I always end up using tiddlywiky. That's why is so important for me to provide sync and mobile apps. All of this applications claim their are unique, an probably they are, but tiddlywiky is unique and uniquely customizable.

One thing that remains pretty much unique to TiddlyWiki is the end-user programmability: the way that it is more like Lego(s) than a single-purpose toy.

Best wishes

Jeremy.

 

--
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 http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Danielo Rodríguez

unread,
May 7, 2015, 2:30:50 PM5/7/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Hello,

Danielo Rodríguez

unread,
May 7, 2015, 2:30:51 PM5/7/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com

Florian Cauvin

unread,
May 7, 2015, 4:10:04 PM5/7/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
The advantage of TiddlyWiki over those apps is that it's free software and my content stays mine, I don't need to "trust" any third-party.
Wiki format is almost like plain text, so even in the unlikely case that TiddlyWiki disappears or evolve in a direction I don't like, I can always salvage my data.

David Gifford

unread,
May 7, 2015, 6:20:38 PM5/7/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Yes, that is one of the drawbacks to my adopting Workflowy. I am going to use it for my personal academic text notes but I will print to pdf or paste into Word as I finish topics and projects, just in case they decide to close their doors someday. I won't put anything on it I am afraid to lose. Those things stay in TiddlyWiki.

Dave

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/tiddlywiki/oVhlyEvPnGk/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to tiddlywiki+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to tiddl...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki.

Jeremy Ruston

unread,
May 7, 2015, 6:28:04 PM5/7/15
to TiddlyWiki
Hi David

Workflowy offers OPML export (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPML); we could fairly easily write an importer for TiddlyWiki that would allow outlines to be imported as tiddlers properly tagged for the TOC macro.

Best wishes

Jeremy.


--
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 http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

David Gifford

unread,
May 7, 2015, 7:27:57 PM5/7/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
cool! thanks for that good news, Jeremy.

David Gifford

unread,
May 7, 2015, 8:57:44 PM5/7/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Hi all

Just three quick comments:

1. This thread has wandered off course from a question about whether something is possible in TW5, to a discussion of other tools. The wandering happened quite naturally and appropriately as people mentioned alternate ways of doing what I asked about TW doing, but nonetheless, it would be good to get back on track, if there is anything more to say about the original topic.

2. I really enjoyed being exposed to the other tools. As you can see from my previous posts, I have adopted one of them for one of my projects. It was also fun to hear a couple of you mention your processes, combining this or that tool with another. Thanks for sharing that.

3. I continue to grow in my fascination for all that TiddlyWiki does, and continue to use it every day for multiple functions, and foresee increasing my use of TW, not decreasing it, in the future. I think Workflowy, a major topic in this thread, is faster at creating dynamic, zoomable hierarchical outlines and rough drafts of texts and presentations. And it scales so well that I intend to use it for organizing my own rough notes in English. Here is an example of something I did in mere minutes: https://workflowy.com/s/R7aL3IEJmg.

But Workflowy has major limitations. It is linear and hierarchical. While its UI is less cluttered than The Outliner of Giants, it still forces one to do almost everything in bullet points. And there doesn't seem to be a way of internally linking nodes to each other. And images and offline editing are not there yet, though they are planned future features. And of course all the cool tools and plugins and filters etc are nowhere to be found. So for anything with internal hyperlinks, images, list filters, CSS, tables, formatting beyond bold, italic and underline, etc, anything that needs to be shared and look polished, anything where I want control over the look and feel of it, TiddlyWiki will always be my "go to" tool. While I can't contribute to the TW community as much as I did in the past, I am not going anywhere!

Blessings,

Dave

Mark S.

unread,
May 7, 2015, 9:14:43 PM5/7/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com

There's another new project out there called laverna (https://laverna.cc/). It's open source, written in javascript, and stores it's data on your local machine in a real database (sqlite, I think). It looks a lot like Simplenote, but can store images. It's got a really nifty editor for Markdown. It can be synchronized with Dropbox, they say.

What is needed is an app with a front-end like TW but with a data back-end like laverna. TW mixes data and presentation, limiting it's ultimate scalability IMO. This effect is most noticeable on mobile devices.

Mark

Matabele

unread,
May 7, 2015, 11:51:31 PM5/7/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Hi


On Friday, May 8, 2015 at 3:14:43 AM UTC+2, Mark S. wrote:

What is needed is an app with a front-end like TW but with a data back-end like laverna. 

This has been my dream for TW5 -- TW with data stored in a local restful db which:
-- automatically syncs with a server based db whenever the device goes online
-- then automatically syncs to the local db of other devices

When two devices are simultaneously online, this could be used as a collaboration tool. Now that would be versatility -- a single tool for notes, outlining, journaling etc. and texting and collaboration, which works offline and syncs when online :-)

regards

Danielo Rodríguez

unread,
May 8, 2015, 8:10:45 AM5/8/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com


El viernes, 8 de mayo de 2015, 5:51:31 (UTC+2), Matabele escribió:
Hi

On Friday, May 8, 2015 at 3:14:43 AM UTC+2, Mark S. wrote:

What is needed is an app with a front-end like TW but with a data back-end like laverna. 

I also agree with that
 
This has been my dream for TW5 -- TW with data stored in a local restful db which:
-- automatically syncs with a server based db whenever the device goes online
-- then automatically syncs to the local db of other devices
That is doable, and there are, in fact, some tools that allows this partially.

 

When two devices are simultaneously online, this could be used as a collaboration tool. Now that would be versatility -- a single tool for notes, outlining, journaling etc. and texting and collaboration, which works offline and syncs when online :-)

This is too ambitious in my opinion. Think in giants like google. Even they have difficulties with such cool thing. 

Danielo Rodríguez

unread,
May 8, 2015, 8:12:43 AM5/8/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Hello David,

I think you may be interested on the workflow described in this comment:


I am interested in fact.

Matabele

unread,
May 8, 2015, 1:33:10 PM5/8/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Hi Danielo

Another idea that gets around many of the sync issues: a dropzone which links to another remote TiddlyWiki across the net.

I write a tiddler, then drag and drop it onto the linked dropzone -- and it appears in the story river of the remote TW.

I could have various dropzones linked to various remote (or local!) TW's -- and the remote TW can have dropzones linked to my TW.

regards

Dave

unread,
May 11, 2015, 1:06:43 PM5/11/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
 My holy grail would be tiddlers as text files in one folder with one or more TWs as front ends that could access them.  I've intended to dive deeper into the node.js (can't remember why it didn't work for me when I tried it a year ago or so) option.  

I think at some point I discovered that you can trigger bash scripts from TW that could theoretically search the file system (find, grep etc (I mainly use Linux)) but I don't know how you'd get the info back into the TW.  Using the bash script method you could even edit files in a separate system text editor if you wanted, and then you'd just have to reload the tiddler once that was done.

Danielo Rodríguez

unread,
May 12, 2015, 3:50:36 AM5/12/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com


El lunes, 11 de mayo de 2015, 19:06:43 (UTC+2), Dave escribió:
 My holy grail would be tiddlers as text files in one folder with one or more TWs as front ends that could access them.  I've intended to dive deeper into the node.js (can't remember why it didn't work for me when I tried it a year ago or so) option.  

I think at some point I discovered that you can trigger bash scripts from TW that could theoretically search the file system (find, grep etc (I mainly use Linux)) but I don't know how you'd get the info back into the TW.  Using the bash script method you could even edit files in a separate system text editor if you wanted, and then you'd just have to reload the tiddler once that was done.

Hello Dave,

The use case you are describing is possible, but requires a new filesystem sync adaptor. TheDive0 did some work on that area, but I'm not sure of their plugin features. I also played a bit with it, but I leave the idea some weeks ago because something else jumped into my interest.

Regards 

Dave

unread,
May 14, 2015, 8:38:24 PM5/14/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Thanks for that info Danielo, 

would you mind posting a link to that?
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages