On Dec 31, 9:31 am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi All > I wrote my dissertation in Wordperfect... both times since a virus > wiped it out the first time :(
I nearly cried about a month ago when transferring participant interviews from my digital recorder to my laptop and one of them just ... vanished. I don't think I've lost a data file in 15 years. I don't know why it didn't make it to the laptop, but my error was erasing the digital recorder before I checked the files. I'm now considering how best to create two recordings during interviews, just in case. My other disappointment this semester was hearing my faculty advisor say to our class that a dissertation that included references that only came from online sources (meaning online scholarly databases, and as opposed to the dusty bound volumes on the fourth floor of the library) would be considered "lazy." She's been very supportive of my ideas so far and has been stretching herself to use more new media in her online classes, so the "lazy" comment surprised me. As for workflow, I've gotten TW a step closer to the ease of Journler's drop box. I've created a folder on my desktop called TiddlyWiki Drop Box, which is now where I save PDFs and other files for research. I decided that a direct link to the file would be less useful because it includes the full path name, so my first step for my new files is to create aliases for all of them. I then move the original files to my Journler drop box so they will be indexed there as well, and the alias follows the file to its new location. That leaves only aliases in my TW drop folder. I do all my work on my laptop at home or on the campus, so TW and the files are always together. Then using the FileDropPlugin, I drop the aliases on a TW open in Firefox, and tiddlers are created for each automatically. I have them automatically tagged with Research and New so that I can easily pull them out of TW. I've changed the settings for FileDropPlugin so that the link is displayed in the tiddler. I open my tiddlers tagged New, click on the link, and the PDF opens in Preview. So far I've been manually copying the citation, abstract, and references to the tiddler, and then Skim through the PDF for any key points, which I also copy to the tiddler, or summarize. Tags are starting to be an interesting way to link authors across multiple works and to all the works that cite them. I'm tempted to try using the author's last name and year of publication as a wikiword and let TW create the cross references for me, but I haven't tried that yet. My next workflow challenge will be attempting to do some of the writing (at least in draft form) in TW. Your suggestions should come in very handy, Richard. I actually think TW may improve my writing process because I will be chunking it into smaller tasks. Right now Word tends to increase my anxiety because I'm paying too much attention to the page count and formatting as I go along. TW will let me forget about most of that and concentrate on content. Word's stylesheets will take care of the formatting later. Now if I can just make the TW interface fade away and take over my entire screen (see http://www.ommwriter.com/) I would be very happy indeed. Pandora and iTunes can provide the tranquil audio if I really want it. My advisor has been pushing me to create a "multimedia dissertation." There's only been one before on our campus, and it only was an online repository to an archive of participant interviews on video, but the diss itself was the traditional paper format. TW conjures up the possibilities of a "single-file, self-editing, reusable non-linear personal web dissertation" in all its hyperlinked and media-embedded glory. But then, that would be "lazy," wouldn't it? :-) Thanks all! David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki?hl=en.
