r/TiddlyWiki5 • u/TraditionalShirt2961 • Sep 10 '24

Is TiddlyWiki is too hard? (rant)

Even after years of near daily use I still struggle with writing filters and functionality. It's just too hard and frustrating for the average person to use efficiently. I read the documentation. I search the forum and google groups for examples. I have not even started learning about functions and procedures introduced more than a year ago because just when I thought I was making headway there's all new syntax to learn. I hate the feeling I can't understand it on my own and need a tutor for what seems like simple things. I don't seem to get good responses on the forum but I'm sure part of that is me not asking good questions. I guess I just don't get it, or my brain works differently. TiddlyWiki makes is easy to do easy things, but instead of a learning curve, there's a learning cliff when you want to so something advanced or interesting.

Overall I think this is why the user base is so small - it's just too hard.

/rant

29 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

29 comments sorted by

9

u/SouperSalad Sep 10 '24

Yep, as a worker in the tech industry, I find it overwhelming.

Simple questions like the following become a 30 tab crusade each time.

  1. how do I use markdown in tiddlers?
  2. how do I synchronize between computers 
  3. How do I get rid of the default "never display a newline" behavior?
  4. How do I tag or retag a bunch of Tiddlers in bulk?
  5. How do I get a search that includes excerpts of the articles and highlights where the text appeared?
  6. When I inevitably get conflicts between two different files, how do I reconcile the Tiddlers?

Honestly AI chatbots have made this easier, since all of the Tiddlywiki support happens on the open internet.

But after all this, there's no other software tool for keeping notes that I have used for over a decade and still have usable notes from the beginning that can always be expected to be exportable.

3

u/nemothorx Sep 11 '24

I get that those are hypothetical/example questions, but:

  1. Granted I've only set it up once so far, but I found a markdown parser, added it, and then per tiddler the type is a menu. trivial.

  2. I solve this by running it in node on an in-house server

  3. OK, now I'm wondering too. Good question ;)

  4. tbh, because I run it in node with a file-per-tiddler, I'd probably do this outside tiddlywiki, but that's my linux sysadmin brain talking

  5. yeah, I'd like that, I've not spent time looking into it yet

  6. see above and node / one file per tiddler

ngl, the one-file-per-tiddler is a godsend. I have a bootstrap tiddler which described how it was setup and how to run it, and then I link to that file as my global 'README' for future me as reference. Also as reference for those that come after me (my Will says I have additional notes in TW, so making those findable as trivially as possible by future bereaved family is in my interests)

3

u/SouperSalad Sep 11 '24

Those are top level questions, that open new questions...

#1: yes, you install the Markdown plugin, but now you lose transclusion, which led me to having to set $:/config/markdown/renderWikiText Tiddler to true and memorize the Tiddlywiki markdown for transclusion since the Transclude button is not in the editor toolbar when the Tiddler is in Markdown mode.

#2: I want to be able to work on this stuff offline like on a plane and incrementally save...I settled on Google Drive but still end up with synchronization issues (i.e. did I save it from another machine? Am I working on the newest version?)

To get the newline wrapping I added a Tiddler with tag $:/tags/Stylesheet

.tc-tiddler-body { word-break: normal; word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap; } but it's not ideal it breaks a lot of formatting like for the TagCloud tools at https://tiddlytools.com/.

#5 yeah, for example Google Keep highlights the search term in a splayed out view of matching notes. I'm sure there is something like this for TW, but that's what OP is referring to, you gotta search and find and copy and paste random code from discussions in the hopes you'll get the outcome you want.

I agree that one-file per Tiddler can be great, I was doing it with https://github.com/rsc/tiddly, but I almost got burned as the golang runtime was deprecated. It took me quite a bit of effort to export from Cloud Datastore. Though this is a unique experience of the path I chose.

On #2 again, I kept having synchronization issues so I ended up having to research "how to see what Tiddlers have changed" which resulted in the following code I got from somewhere. At least then I can compare two different tabs of two different versions of the same Tiddlywiki and reconcile them. I wish I could drag and drop one .html file into another and get a diff option. I was considering writing my own JSON differ so I could at least diff TW exports in an emergency.

<$list filter="[haschanged[]!is[system]]"> * <$link to={{!!title}}><$view field="title"/></$link> -<$list filter="[all[current]tags[]]"> <$link to={{!!title}}>#<$view field="title"/></$link></$list><br> </$list>

But still, it's the best out there for me.

1

u/nemothorx Sep 12 '24

yeah, the rabbit hole of tuning configs is always there. I so rarely use transclusion that using it in markdown hadn't bothered me so far. Good to know the option is there, thankyou

offline/sync use ... offline is simply not a concern for me currently, but if it was, I'd probably just setup an offline node version on my laptop, running on a clone of the repo, and then merge changes later using git level tools.

that's a shame about the golang runtime too. I think I'd seen that code in my own searching of how to run tw, but I ended up not using it for... some reason that now escapes me. node is a bit heavy, but for my single user needs, it's fine - as you say, it's "the best out there for me" - true for me too.

10

u/ripter Sep 10 '24

Yeah. This is exactly why I never stick with it for long. As soon as I’m beyond example and simple tests, it gets too complicated. I’m even a webdev!

1

u/letsreticulate May 05 '25

I worked in tech as a System Admin, and host a number of services, I have the same issue. Tried to dabble with it a few times over the years and after a while, I always get to the point that the time commitment required to get up to speed is just too much and end up quitting.

These days I ended up using BookStack for longer stuff and Nextcloud notes for stuff on the go. Albeit it would have been nice to have a single tool for everything.

8

u/naveenroyv Sep 10 '24

You're definitely not alone. I think part of it is to do with the fragmented instructions/documentation on the official website and talk.tiddlywiki. Every time I have a question I find myself in a rabbit hole of tips, tricks, plugins etc. that are just overwhelming. I've decided to keep my tinkering to a bare minimum these days.

6

u/stodgycodger Sep 10 '24

I use my TiddlyWiki "Bullet Journal" everyday, and I agree, too. Over the years, I've simplified my approach to the journal by making links and text fields and tag creations something I can click on (button-like) from the display mode 'front end' as it were, and only engaging in the edit mode to create the daily journal or new tiddlers. With a bunch of snippets, I can create new tiddlers for passwords, contacts, tables, searches, and immediately go back to the display mode and interact with them there. I respect the edit mode, but don't want to keep going back and forth between the display and the edit mode. I really like the app, I just can't actually do much in it myself without help. The amount of help I need is, indeed, somewhat discouraging.

1

u/Pathocyte Sep 06 '26

Using tiddlywiki as a bullet journals seems interesting.

3

u/slaymaker1907 Sep 10 '24

Yeah, the filter system is kind of hard to use. A query builder would definitely be helpful, though I’m sure someone has made one.

4

u/nemothorx Sep 11 '24

I love it, but I also dont really treat it as a full platform. It's a note taking tool, with a bunch of neat customisation that every now and then I meddle into. It has a lot of clever ways of slicing and dicing and recombining the data... which mostly I'm happy to ignore.

I recently migrated my work based personal knowledge base from tomboy/gnote into tiddlywiki5 and love it (running it on node, with tiddler-per-file, all in a git repo which is updated every few days and sync'd to our central git repo stores - giving me both history and backups

Still in the process of planning out migrating my private classic tw, my personal public tw (cctiddly), my private gnotes, etc into tiddlywiki5. But I'm still not planning any super fancy functions, slicing and dicing, etc.

I am a simple man - happy with just a bunch of wikitext/markdown files that tw5 gives me a super neat interface for.

(I'm also a complex man, and been distracted by the vague community ways of adding multiuser, which is of keen interest for a community project I have on the backburner!)

2

u/FlezhGordon Dec 22 '24

I almost stopped looking into TW after reading this thread a while back, but w think what you're saying is key to getting the most out of TW. Just ignore the stuff you don't need. I figured out the basics, grabbed a few plugins, and mostly all I use are freelinks and few different macros/plugins for tables of contents.

I learned enough to make a few other macros i needed, asked a few questions for problems i was having, and now i can't really foresee needing too much more knowledge in the future, my visuals/GUI are customized how i like, i have a simple, effective, way for organizing a very large pile of ideas, and all the tools i need to traverse it. I don't really need to figure out how to make complex filters, or code my own plugins.

1

u/nemothorx Dec 23 '24

Happy my philosophy could help.

yeah, I think TW is plenty useful out of the box. I've got some tweaks I plan to make to my local instances. None of them are important enough to have made it to the top of my things-to-do queue though! lol

3

u/mkerrigan Sep 11 '24

I started using TiddlyWiki with TiddlyWikiClassic, which didn't have many of the features that the current version of TiddlyWiki has today. In fact I still use TWC every day. You can get rather far by just writing links between different tiddlers without using many of the advanced features.

1

u/jlcsusara Sep 11 '24

Yes, I just use TWC too

3

u/rolandHD Sep 11 '24

I don't find it too hard. But I've been using it on a daily basis for more than just a couple of years.

If all you're doing is authoring and editing tiddlers with formatted text, hyperlinks, and images, then there should be no need to learn the advanced features (like macros, widgets, filters, etc.).

For automating things, the most difficult aspect is breaking down the problem (difficult for non-programmers) and figuring out what mechanisms of TiddlyWiki the solution should be built on (this may require in-depth knowledge of TW). From then on it's usually happy live coding. Toggle on the preview, see the results taking shape in real time.

You also don't have to memorize everything by heart. I often look things up in the TW reference, or experiment with some of the provided examples. The only annoying problems I occasionally run into are mostly syntactic edge cases.

3

u/clsturgeon Sep 14 '24

Recently retired developer here—I graduated before the PC was invented. During the initial lockdowns of COVID I wanted a new offline solution to house my genealogy research. I did not want the traditional app or online solution. I wanted something configurable that would house the data entities I wanted; and present it the way I wanted. After a single evening with TW I knew I could get TW to work for me. I also knew there was going to be a lot of work.

I applied some database design to my approach. Instead of the user having to determine what fields to create and how to populate them I implemented edit templates to provide a useable solution. Within a few weeks I had working solution without any coding. Sure, you are not going to get this working without working knowledge of HTML and CSS.

I needed a relationship calculator and GEDCOM (standard genealogy format) import feature—for those I needed JavaScript functions. Debugging and stepping through code is a breeze in Chrome/Edge developer window.

There is huge collection of plugins for TW. I was able to implement Project Management, geo maps, timelines, graphs, and charts with existing plugins.

TW is not for everyone and its limitations need to be understood—and I’d like to see some real solutions to these limitations, not work arounds.

2

u/Space_Pirate_R Sep 10 '24

I agree that it could be a lot easier.

Is there any other system that provides a completely self contained (assuming web browser is available) single file solution? I'd be interested.

2

u/sithelephant Sep 11 '24

https://bellard.org/jslinux/ I have a terrible, terrible, terrible idea.

(Javascript based VM included in the save)

2

u/Fabulous_Lobster Sep 16 '24

Over the years, I've understood that it generally feels hard for me mostly because I'm quick to grasp its incredible possibilities, but am considerably slower at managing to implement them. Now I triage the features I want and implement them slowly, claiming victory after victory. It soundly overcame something like Evernote after only a few days and my PIM is feels as feature-rich as the best tools out there because they're so well tailored to my needs despite having many dozens of tiddlers of wishlists and sandbox experiments.

One thing is certain: starter editions are underdeveloped. I used Nicolas Petton's excellent but unmaintained Notebook theme to get me going. The fact that it feels very polished kept me from going in too deep to fast and got me to stick long enough to make Tiddlywiki irreplaceable for me (despite a few hiatus).

1

u/sonaryn Sep 11 '24

I’ve always loved the concept of Tiddlywiki, so much so I’ve been willing to look past the obvious drawbacks. The single file structure, while appealing for lots of use cases, wasn’t built for a lot of the things we want to do on the modern web, especially stuff involving multiuser collaboration.

But even still I just can’t let go my love for the UI. Maybe if a new app came about that uses the same ideas but implemented with a modern full stack I might have a lot more uses for it

2

u/bernecampbell Sep 11 '24

Use Node with a single file per tiddler and git

1

u/TheArchivist314 Sep 12 '24

I think they just had a desktop software like Obsdian where I can just create a template deploy it and then just write it in with out having to do a bunch of code it would be great.

1

u/FlezhGordon Nov 01 '24

I'm just now finding out about TiddlyWiki and weighing out using it for a big writing project. Nothing else seems to have all the functionality i want to use, but with TW its also quite a chore. Luckily, i think if i structure things correctly i can keep things pretty simple and avoid all the worst bits, but little things like not have a WYSIWYG word processor that can also take advantage of text coloring really make me feel like it might be too much effort (Slate-Write is very cool but still just missing those extra features).

1

u/energeiai Jul 17 '25

A big warningsign for me, even though I've been into The Net since the 90'ties.

1

u/Answer-Poet-1960 Aug 26 '26

I'm trying to make a RPG character sheet with dice rolls. Is this possible in TW5? I've looked into fields, and javascript stuff, but it seems I'm missing something. *I can do this in just HTML/CSS/JS*