[TW5] TW for Scholars: current situation
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Alberto Molina
Feb 6, 2015, 6:30:33 AM2/6/15
to tiddl...@googlegroups.com
Hi,
For those interested, I want to explain why TW for Scholars [1] is not updated since August.
Scholars is the product of several attempts, like [2], to create an academic notetaking tool, learning step by step how to do it. I wanted something with forms and buttons to fill fields and create custom titles automatically. And it wouldn't have been possible without Matabele's widgets. But Scholars was just a proof of concept, and it faced two big problems: first, it was not a plugin; second, the plugins it relied on stoped working with tw 5.1 in September.
When the ActionSetFieldWidget was implemented, at the end of November, I started working to substitute Matabele's widgets with core widgets and to bundle Scholars as a plugin. The idea was to split the features in different plugins: one for the basic mechanisms, and others for specific purposes. The plugin, called BottomTabs [3], was announced here in December.
BottomTabs v.0.1 was buggy, messy, hard to customize, and the extra plugin for academic readings was incomplete. In order to enhance the code, I had to take drastic decisions leading to incompatible changes. Then, I renamed the plugin to MagicTabs [4].
MagicTabs is a set of plugins in active development. The basic plugin is usable enough, but needs some testing and debugging, and more incompatible changes are still possible. The plugin for academic notetaking needs to be entirely rewritten, as that will not be easy. When its done, TW for Scholars will consist of the MagicTabs basic plugin + an extra plugin for scholars + a dedicated theme/layout.
In few words, TW for Scholars is far from dead, but it needs more work.
Best wishes,
Alberto
Tobias Beer
Feb 6, 2015, 6:59:33 AM2/6/15
to
Hi Alberto,
It's entirely great that you are actually working on providing the features of TiddlyWiki for Scholars as general-purpose plugins. Anyone who would try to do after you understands how much time and thought processing and fiddly-work is involved in all that.
I think, as Felix is doing as well, it is only reasonable to declare MagicTabs as being in beta stage, for a while... developing it to the point where you are confident that it forms the right union with your scholarly wiki but is very usable by itself... perhaps having made a trial of it yourself in some other context that you publish. At least, I keep on reusing my own stuff here and there in different contexts and it makes me realize how I might improve on it or what problems others could encounter in trying that on their own.
On the other hand, and I'm not sure here, perhaps documenting and explaining what MagicTabs precisely does, so that one can basically construct the thing oneself, might actually help you in coming to terms yourself. Right now, to some extend with TiddlyMap as well, it's plugin land and we're kinda relying on the fact that — under-the hood — the thing is designed to do what we expect... which actually isn't always the case (which doesn't mean that something's not working right but that expectations and reality often differ, sometimes significantly).
I think it's quite important to expose and discuss the different components, aspects, mechanics, and to explain how they work together... with that in some demo / dev / release wiki it's much easier for everyone to give feedback and help contribute ...which hopefully doesn't always sound like "But can't it do that, too?" ^^
For example, if one wanted to do VertiTabs based on your MagicTabs, and display related stuff to the left of a tiddler or in some TWc-style per-tiddler "MainMenu", that would be much more straight forward with an insight into how MagicTabs works. And I believe the basics are quite straight forward. Things beome difficult if you want to provide default mechanics, e.g. forms and localization, etc... the more you can keep those separate the better, e.g. some separate NewTiddlerForms plugin or some such.
Also, I guess the decision as to which components go where, plugin or scholars, isn't exactly an easy one.
Best wishes, Tobias.
Jeremy Ruston
Feb 6, 2015, 1:30:20 PM2/6/15
to TiddlyWiki
Hi Alberto
I just wanted to chime in with some encouragement. tw5.scholars was a great piece of work, and MagicTabs is exactly what it should become. Things like the type manager show how you're creating a meta-tool for helping people to create their own custom tools, much more easily than with TiddlyWiki on its own. It's ambitious, but I think extends TW in useful ways. It's the kind of thing we need to help TW reach a larger audience.
So, good luck, and I'll be following with interest,
Best wishes
Jeremy
On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 11:59 AM, Tobias Beer <beert...@gmail.com> wrote:
Alberto,Don't worry about that. It's entirely great that you are actually working on providing the features of TiddlyWiki for Scholars as general-purpose plugins. Anyone who would try to do after you understands how much time and thought processing and fiddly-work is involved in all that.
I think, as Felix is doing as well, it is only reasonable to declare MagicTabs as being in beta stage, for a while... developing it to the point where you are confident that it forms the right union with your scholarly wiki but is very usable by itself... perhaps having made a trial of it yourself in some other context that you publish. At least, I keep on reusing my own stuff here and there in different contexts and it makes me realize how I might improve on it or what problems others could encounter in trying that on their own.
On the other hand, and I'm not sure here, perhaps documenting and explaining what MagicTabs precisely does, so that one can basically construct the thing oneself, might actually help you in coming to terms yourself. Right now, to some extend with TiddlyMap as well, it's plugin land and we're kinda relying on the fact that — under-the hood — the thing is designed to do what we expect... which actually isn't always the case.
I think it's quite important to expose and discuss the different components, aspects, mechanics, and to explain how they work together... with that in some demo / dev / release wiki it's much easier for everyone to give feedback and help contribute ...which hopefully doesn't always sound like "But can't it do that, too?" ^^
Also, I guess the decision as to which components go where, plugin or scholars, isn't exactly an easy one.Best wishes, Tobias.
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