Vision of a Twee-powered TiddlyWiki (Hypertext storyengine) - four in one...

[Måns]

Hi TwWizards

Hi TwWizards
Twee is for writing hypertext stories with either the GUI application
Twine, or the command-line version, twee.
Macros in Twee are very similar to TiddlyWiki macros - and it -
optionally - writes finished stories to the TiddlyWikiformat.

Last night I had an idea of combining the workflow +
macros in Twee in a single TiddlyWiki.
My idea is to assemble everything in a single TiddlyWiki document.
1) The documentation
2) StoryWriting
3) Preview by themeswitch
4) Publishing of new stories.
ad 1)
The theme for the documentation I have made is here: http://tinyurl.com/y8og3ko
ad 2)
I would simulate the Twine program, with a Storywriting-Template
(Themeswitch in a menu) and incorporate a customized version of
Ybabels Ideia http://ideia.tiddlyspot.com/
It should render/wikify the content of each tiddler and show the
tagged connections between them. (It already does the last part)
Of course (probably the most difficult?!) would be to install all
twees macros and plugins into the TiddlyWiki - so all writing is done
in the TiddlyWiki.
ad 3)
The existing themes for Twee could be available from the same
themeswitch in a menu.
The SwitchThemePlugin (TiddlyTools) lets you change everything with
one click - (new maninmenu, pagetemplate, stylesheet etc etc...)
ad 4)
TiddlyTools (Eric Shulman) has made an exellent exportTiddlersPlugin,
which might be costumized for this purpose? - ie - one
ExportButton for the SugarcaneLayout, another for Jonah - etc . The
exportfunction should be fairly automatic including only those
tiddlers needed for the story.

X-tra. If the exportfunction could assemble a story(dump) from the
buffer,
online (not needing to save the document first)- then you could have
users writing their stories online - without ever downloading any
software.

YS Måns Mårtensson

(This idea described on the Twee Google Group: http://tinyurl.com/ydtj56n)

[Chris Klimas]

To help explain things a little further, I developed two templates
based on the TiddlyWiki source code for displaying hypertext stories.
One is called Sugarcane, the other Jonah. These only have the relevant
parts of the TW API included, are designed to be used in a read-only
mode, and have some extra macros to help authors. It sounds like it
would be relatively easy to use exportTiddlersPlugin to transform a
regular TiddlyWiki into Sugarcane or Jonah format.

The other part of the setup is a GUI desktop app named Twine that
manipulates linked nodes and can save output to Sugarcane, Jonah, or
regular TiddlyWiki format. It displays a story file as a map, so you
can see the structure of the story graphically. It's not really a
general-purpose tool, though it could be used as such in theory. I
think Måns is talking about the possibility of porting the app, which
is written in Python and uses a cross-platform GUI library, to a pure
JavaScript solution using TiddlyWiki macros. On that score, I don't
know how feasible this idea is. It strikes me as requiring a lot of
work, though, and given that Twine's already cross-platform I don't
see a ton of benefit in it.

That said -- Twine is open source (as are Sugarcane and Jonah) and I'd
be happy to offer whatever advice/guidance I can to anyone interested
in porting it.

chris

[Måns]

Hi Chris

My idea of porting Twine to TiddlyWiki is a bit pretentious I know...
(especially because I'm no programmer myself)
You have made a very elegant and nice (crossplatform!!) gui in python,
which works very well as it is now.

My point is that TiddlyWiki seems to be able to do *almost* all the
things you're Twine does already.
And I'm very "into" using TiddlyWiki for as many things as possible...
I have designed/tranlated/modified all sorts of writing tools and
notetakingvariants of tiddlywiki for students and collegues and the
idea of having a TiddlyWiki which is dedicated to hypertextwriting
(which it already is - to some extent) is a very compelling one...
(Ybabel (Yoann) has made a plugin Ideia, which needs just a little
work to be very usefull - and here's an oppertunity to "show-off")

I must digg deeper into the "inner workings" of Twine/Twee and how to
build these hypertextstories, with code: <<options>> history
(backwards - forward) etc - to make my own TiddlyWiki-version. Again
the whole idea of doing this is to end up with a tool, simple enough -
and as "transparent" as possible, making it accessible for someone new
to TiddlyWiki to interact with...

What strikes me as an advantage using TW is the fact that TiddlyWiki
offers an oppertunity to make the documentation, the writing and the
publishing of hypertextstories - very interactive, because every phase
of it could be done in one place - in one TiddlyWiki document (a
single html) - just shifting "interface" by themeswitches...

Thank you very much for answering my post - and if it has made any
inspirational thought pass the mind of a gifted javasciptprogrammer
out in the TwVerse (or a HyperscriptStoryWriter) - I would be happy to
put some work into the devellopment of a Twine for TiddlyWiki...

Ps:
When Twine is ready for translation - I'm ready to make a Danish
tranlation, which I and my students could use - as soon as possible.
(My TiddlyWikiTwineVision isn't the most important one - it's the
writing of hypertextstories in my own language which has first
priority ...)

YS Måns Mårtensson