[discussion] Using Tags and Fields

[kuzi]

Hello! I am a new user of TiddlyWiki and still getting used to things so sorry in advance if this is a silly question.

I have realized that TiddlyWiki would be a great way to store notes and such on books or articles I read. Creating a new Tiddler for each book, and tagging it as "book" seems to make sense. But when would I want to use a field over a tag for something like "author", or "published date"?

It seems like "published date" makes more sense as a field, and "author" as a tag, but maybe there really isn't much difference either way? I'm wondering how others are handling this.

[Mat]

It is somewhat simpler to find tiddlers via their tags than via their fields, so that's probably a simple guide.

There are different approaches to tagging. They can be used for categorizing things but they can also be used for arbitrary labeling. But a lot of arbirary labels would "pollute" the tiddlers since tags are visible. If a "value" (i.e a tag or a custom field value) is something that occurs in many tiddlers, it should perhaps be a tag. I agree publish dates sound like typical field values and authors, if they are important to you, would make sense as tags especially if you wish to group your books by author.

Note that you can make field values visible by transcluding them, e.g by typing {{!!publish-date}} and it'll show in the text area.

<:-)

[kuzi]

Thanks for the information, this was similar to the conclusion I was coming to.

Additionally, great tip on showing the field values. I didn't know that, but will definitely use that.

[TW Tones]

Kuzi,

If you do store dates I recommend using the fill tiddlywiki serial number. I recently made an autonomous field, a field who's definition is in a single tiddler 

See this thread https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tiddlywiki/RP3RYc6Opxc

For your larger question my own recommendation is to do the best you can now and prepare for the future.

• Create a field called object-type and give it a value of book. 
• Learn how to set this field to book this perhaps with a button or dropdown
• Learn how to list items based on a field eg; in filters has[object-type] or object-type[book]
• Now create a view Template, and include a list or reveal widget that displays when 
• <$list filter="[all[current]object-type[book]]" variable=nul>

   Everything including fields you want to display on a book {{!!author}} <$view filed=published-date format="date" template="YYY-0MM-0DD"/>
</$list>

• Then you can start to get smarter

• Add into you viewTemplate display the ability to enter/edit the author field
• Use  pickaday below to allow you to set the published date

My approach would be to have a tiddler for each book with all information stored in its own field as needed, leaving the text field for free notes like your personal review, and leave tags free for you to create ad hoch relationships between books and other information in your wiki. Tags are also helpful to groups items whos title could change in the future however the relink plugin can protect you from this as well (details below)

This may seem like more work but it sets you up for future development of your books database and fuller utilisation of tiddlywiki,

plugintiddler: $:/plugins/kixam/datepicker

reference: https://github.com/dbushell/Pikaday

repository: http://kixam.github.io/TW5-datePicker/

Source https://flibbles.github.io/tw5-relink/

keywords: rename relink update references backlinks field content

plugintiddler: $:/plugins/flibbles/relink

Regards

TW Tones

[kuzi]

TW Tones,

Thanks for the information included in your message! This is exactly the type of thing I'd like to look into, so that I can further develop my TiddlyWiki and get the most use out of it. This is a bit of information to take in at first, but I think I should be able to figure it out.

[bimlas]

kuzi,

If you would like to use tags and fields side-by-side, you may be interested in Locator plugin (https://bimlas.gitlab.io/tw5-locator/) which you can use to search for any field values(including tags), see https://bimlas.gitlab.io/tw5-locator/#Narrow%20list%20of%20search%20results%2C%20search%20for%20field%20values for an example.