Hey @Soren: Great initiative -am delighted to hear of it! As one fighting his way up the learning curve (yet again <https://groups.google.com/g/tiddlywiki/c/nTBhU9HVJqU/m/nnniYheNzmQJ> -only *this* time for keeps! :-), i have to share a hard-won insight that i think can help the book (and the software), which is: separate the work into layers -minimum of 3- serving users at different levels of sophistication- and take real care to avoid mixing them up.
This is not a new insight; in fact -as you can see in this video of last TiddlyWiki hangout, around the 2 minute mark <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvLHjwYJfA4&t=120>- Dave Gifford organized his "TiddlyWiki for the rest of us" site navigation around this principle, i.e. : 1. * For beginners: reading TiddlyWikis on the Internet* 2. * For medium users: adding your own material to a TiddlyWiki file* 3. * For advanced users: Customize your TW experience* I realize there are no hard lines of division here, especially between levels 2&3, and while 90-odd% of us here might fairly be called an advanced-intermediate of some particular sort, i think we have *got* to respect the limits of one who is just trying to enjoy a read-only experience (including bread&butter functions like search, save, print), and keep level 2 and 3 functions a comfortable level-of-abstraction away. Looks like i've lapsed into talking about TW5 tech itself, not the book -and, in a sense, this is appropriate: i think a book written in TW5, whether it be something along lines of The-Book-Wiki by "kewapo" <https://github.com/kewapo/The-Book-Wiki> or something entirely new and different, would be the *perfect* vehicle for deployment of such a work, which could serve as both a book and a pattern-library for other books to follow. That's my €0.02 of input, Soren, FWIW. Would be happy to offer feedback, if/whenever it may be ready -no charge, but then it might be difficult to offer a comprehensive review of 70k words, including test-run of all those exercises, etc, w/r/t any particular publishing deadline. (that would be a job for the pros at O'Reilly or some such, i think). Best of luck w/ this; will be looking forward to more news on this front! /walt On Wednesday, December 30, 2020 at 11:34:13 PM UTC Soren Bjornstad wrote: > Hi all, > > As the end of the year approaches and I start planning personal goals for > next year, I thought I'd share an early update on a project I'm really > excited about and hope will be a boon for the TiddlyWiki community: a > TiddlyWiki textbook (written in TiddlyWiki, of course). > > Right now we have (mostly) good technical documentation for advanced > users, a thriving Google group, and plenty of introductions to TiddlyWiki, > but nothing that bridges the gap by helping new users who are serious about > learning the ins and outs of TiddlyWiki to build a complete understanding > of TiddlyWiki concepts. That's what I'm hoping to fix. > > One of the other things I'm excited about is my included prototype of a > mnemonic > medium > <https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z4rRX3qwSSJRsEkdXKwH2shamgHNeRthrMLiF> in > TiddlyWiki built on top of my TiddlyRemember plugin. This allows simple > prompts to be embedded in the text, then reviewed at regular intervals > controlled by a spaced-repetition algorithm, either with a simple > native-TiddlyWiki reviewer or in Anki <https://apps.ankiweb.net/> via > TiddlyRemember. With this medium, learning and retaining large amounts of > new terminology and syntax is much easier. > > [image: Screenshot from 2020-12-30 17-08-30.png] > > I've been working on this off and on for a few months and am hoping that > within the next month or two, I'll have a solid draft. At that point I > would like to send this out to a handful of people for an initial, rigorous > round of private review and feedback. I would like to involve several > expert users and several beginners (I'd love to see 2-3 in each category). > Here's what I'd hope to hear from these reviewers: > > Experts: > > - See any outright errors? I'm sure I made a few. > - Did I miss any concepts or features that you use all the time or > think are essential? > - For the resources at the end: What major resources or plugins would > be worth including that I don't know about or haven't included? > > Beginners: > > - Did everything I wrote make sense? > - How well did the mnemonic medium work? Were the prompts effective? > Did you understand how to use it? > - Did your TiddlyWiki skills improve? > - Were the exercises too hard? Too easy? Lacking enough information? > - Roughly how long did it take to work through the book? > > I would be looking for a commitment to read through the whole book, > ideally do most of the exercises, and offer substantive feedback. The book > is currently about 70,000 words and includes plenty of exercises, so > although I have no data on how long it will take to work through the book > at this point, I can't imagine it would be a one-evening task. As > compensation, I can offer early access to the book, your name in the > acknowledgements, a $25 Amazon gift card (maybe more if there are fewer > reviewers or I can cram it into my budget), and a huge thank-you to anyone > who's willing to help out. > > If you're interested in being involved when the time comes, please let me > know here or by emailing contact at sorenbjornstad.com. If your ability > to help out depends on the timeline, please let me know and I'll see what I > can do. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tiddlywiki+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/a3c06caf-937a-4d4c-b40b-9fdbcaf01483n%40googlegroups.com.
