BACK and FORWARD buttons for TiddlyWiki

[Nicholas Spies]

Hi,

I am new to both TiddlyWiki and JavaScript. I am curious whether someone has already written some sort of routine that would make navigating BACK and FORWARD in the navigation history of TiddlyWiki, so it would act, in this regard, just like a web browser.

Studying JavaScript only for a matter of a week or so, I would still hazard that this would either mean creating or tapping into the path one traverses in navigating TiddlyWiki and creating a means to track where one "is" on in this list (built-in or made for the purpose) and then buttons to go Back and Forward (if, indeed there is a "forward") in this equivalent of a browser history list.

If I knew how, I would write it myself...but since I cannot, any pointers to either someone's solution to this, a built-in mechanism for doing it with TiddlyWiki out of the box, or pointers as to how to go about making such buttons.

Thanks in advance,

Nick Spies

[Nicholas Spies]

This is in regard to TW5

[Tobias Beer]

Hi Nicholas,

Have a closer look at the controlpanel / settings.

In addition, a single-tiddler-mode would possibly be desireable.

Best wishes, Tobias. 

[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Nick

> I am curious whether someone has already written some sort of routine that would make navigating BACK and FORWARD in the navigation history of TiddlyWiki, so it would act, in this regard, just like a web browser.

TiddlyWiki5 provides a configuration option which makes the browser back and forward buttons move through the history of navigation between tiddlers.

Visit the ControlPanel tab "Settings" and look for the following settings:

* Navigation Address Bar - set to "Include the target tiddler and the current story sequence"

* Navigation History - set to "Update history"

Best wishes

Jeremy.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWikiDev" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tiddlywikide...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to tiddly...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywikidev.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

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

[Nicholas Spies]

Dear Jeremy,

I followed Tobias' suggestion to the same helpful conclusion, which I thank you for, too.

However, I wasn't clear in my question: I most often use the free-standing TiddlyWiki application, and even upon  occasion the terminal-based program that stores each tiddly as a separate file. In both these cases the infrastructure of a browser is not available, so I should have stated that it might be a good idea to have the option to add and Forward and/or Back button(s), either to each tiddler or in the area to the right that contains the + button for making new tiddlers.

This might be a lot to ask, as, as you point out, it already is available when TittdlyWiki is run within a browser. However, it still might be worth thinking about implementing, because it would be one more step on the way to making TiddlyWiki an application with fewer external dependencies. After all, the browser paradigm for  navigation is now used by everything from applications to operating systems.

However, another reason the buttons might be redundant is the "Recent" option on the right. Although this certainly provides the functionality of a Back button, this requires a little more thought and is therefore is little bit slower than just hitting a button to return to where you came form (or forward, if there is such in the history that is implied by all of this. Since speed of the essence when writing (the less encumbrances the better), I don't think "Recent" moots the simplicity of the Back/Forward paradigm.

Also Tobias mentioned that it might be wise to be in single-tiddler mode, which would not apply if a history mechanism were built into each tiddler file. This should also apply to things like style, which seem not to be associated with a particular tiddler so much as the environment within which it is run. E.g. The colors assigned to tabs revert to the single, standard color when opened in another environment, unless I am severely mistaken.

Thanks for your response!

Nick

[Tobias Beer]

Hi Nicholas,

 

In addition, a single-tiddler-mode would possibly be desireable.

See: http://tb5.tiddlyspot.com/#Single%20Page%20Mode 

Best wishes, Tobias.

[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Nicholas

> it might be a good idea to have the option to add and Forward and/or Back button(s), either to each tiddler or in the area to the right that contains the + button for making new tiddlers.

Ah, yes, it would certainly be possible to add back and forward buttons to the sidebar.

In the case of TiddlyDesktop, I'm currently engaged in an extensive update which will include support for toolbars that could include these back and forward buttons.

Best wishes

Jeremy.

[Nicholas Spies]

Dear Jeremy,

Well, that's a bit of good news!

Apropos of a minor and and a major couple of other things that you might consider, if they aren't already in the pipeline.

The minor thing is: To the right of the "river" (i.e. on the right side), it would be nice to have the tools not scroll, along with the headers at the top and left of the scrolling list of tiddlers. I find that I have to do a lot more scrolling to get to the tools on the right (whatever their proper name) than I would like.

The major thing is to consider making a version of TiddlyWiki that would act as an email client. I have, by hand, put a considerable number of emails of a long correspondence into TW and find that it is possible to do all sorts of things with it that you simply cannot do with any usual email program.

Even though I use gmail, which has a pretty good UI, at least for filing emails, it pales by comparison with TW. In fact, Goggle would be doing all Firefox users a giant favor to integrate gmail with TW, which I should think would not be an insuperable task (and they would certainly have the resources to do so).

On the other hand, it may well be impossible to have the open source TW mixed up with the Google empire at all, and the modifications to make this sort of magic happen may have to be in the plugin or add-on or whatever it is that enables TW to run within Firefox, which would talk to the gmail (or Verizon's or Juno's or whoever's on-line email) API and get a similar result on different email systems in TW.

My approach, really a first stab, is to simply to label the tiddlies that are each discrete email message with the Subject of the email. Duplicates are numbered in date/time order, the Then From: and To and Date (I have neglected Time) are realized as tags, and each tag (e.g. From= name> To= >name, (although, at least on a Mac, «name  and »name for From and To might be better so as to have them grouped together in a list of tags, and always have them together in the message tiddly, rather than being on either side of the date) and then the Date, in ISO YYYY.MM.DD numeric format (and Time, if realized as tags and there is no reason not to). It may make more sense to just store the entire email header and display its contents by parsing according to the user's desires, and also be able to look at the original. The body of the message of course is in the contents field.

I have run into my own ignorance (as often happens) in that in-line pictures and, even worse, attached web pages, which TW is capable of displaying, I have had to be handled manually, and as links to separate tiddlies. Then there is the question of how to display "conversations" in a meaningful stream, ideally exportable at least into fold-able HTML or even as LaTex files with which to make PDF records of correspondences. (It should be noted that gmail handles in-line dragged/dropped pictures fairly gracefully).

I know words are cheap and coding priorities doubtless must deal with bugs and essential features first, before jumping into some wild-eyed project that may well not be difficult for knowledgeable TW cum JavaScript programmers to implement in a series of plug-ins or other means.

Email is now a nightmare, at least every email system I have dealt with. TiddlyWiki could go a long way to fixing this, and would be a lot quicker if it were programmed to handle emails automatically as they arrived.

Thanks for the heads up!

Nick Spies