Thanks-you, @keela, for chiming-in; so good to hear from another fellow-traveller on this path-less-travelled. Were it not for that "ugly ditch" of which you speak, i suspect we'd have a lot more company -which will likely be the case, i suspect, if this Tiddly-Streams solution ever comes to the attention of some like-minded mainstream influencer(s).
In fact: having bridged that "ugly ditch," it is just the "last mile problem" that remains to be solved, for Tiddly-Streams to be a real category-killer, IMHO. I don't know (being a civilian in this world of code-slingers) what it would involve, but it seems to me that if Tiddly-Streams had a solid .md<->tid converter, that would make for interop with so many other publishing tools (many of which can easily convert to LaTex), that would then make this the most versatile tool available for anyone who slings ideas for a living -bar none! That being said: this is still more of a toolkit, not such a polished solution as some others, which have had the benefit of significant investment capital. Still: in terms of usability & utility right out of the box, Tiddly-Streams beats the pants off Roam or Obsidian or Node, or so many of other solutions that are getting way more attention of late, for delivering just a subset of what we have here. IMHO! /walt On Wednesday, June 30, 2021 at 11:33:00 AM UTC+1 [email protected] wrote: > It's been a bit since I've had time to chime in on the group here, but I > wanted to drop my two cents in as well. I use Streams significantly. In > fact, it's the plugin that has made TiddlyWiki a superior tool for me in my > research and writing. My work has me doing a great deal of historical > research and then writing long form output. > > Walt notes the architect/gardner distinction. I actually think Streams in > TW5 is one of the best crossover tools I've seen to bridge the space > between those things. In my lane of knowledge work, I have to start in one > and transition to the other. There is usually an ugly ditch between the two > when it comes to tools that are good for one or the other. I've used a lot > of different tools at this point, but nothing comes close (for me at least) > to allowing the idea generation phase to seamlessly transition into long > form writing. The friction for me right now is found in "last mile" > portions of my workflow as I'm trying to get it out of TiddlyWiki into > industry standard publication formats. > > @Saq, I've said this before, but you've developed one of the most helpful > tools I've used in years. It not only works seamlessly until the final > steps, but it also does so in a clean, minimalist way that doesn't > interrupt the creative process. It's not cluttered up with extra boxes or > constantly requiring some form of context switching to get thoughts down in > draft form. > > My use case: > > - *I collect notes from works I'm reading* (books, journal articles, > etc.) into source streams. These are titled with a bibtex key using the > bibtex plugin. > - *I use Streams for drafting my writing.* This is what is most > important to me. I develop the outline for my long form writing (think > academic articles or book length) by creating a root stream and building > out the outline. The beauty of Streams is that it allows me to build that > initial outline out into an entire draft of my article, from simple > headings all the way to full body text. It grows easily. Nodes can be full > paragraphs, so I begin writing my article inside the outline itself. This > allows the flexibility to easily move paragraphs and whole sections around > as I'm writing in draft mode. In addition, since I tie my notes to a > tiddler titled with a bibtex key, I can link to my notes by citing the > bibtex key for a source in my draft. This becomes helpful later, when I > want to move this work to LaTeX or elsewhere for publication. > - *The need to flatten and export for publication. *Of course, when > the draft is complete, I need an easy way to export my written article > into > a format that I'm able to publish. This is currently the most fragile part > of the process. Though, that is likely my lack of understanding when it > comes to coding or writing my own solution. > > On flattening & exporting: > I've played with some of the approaches above, and they work. In specific > Jan's mod is a helpful step in the right direction. However, some of Walt's > initial points in this thread really resonate with me. Ideally, I think I > would like to keep the initial draft of my work as an outline and create a > copy that is flattened for export. To Saq's point above, a wikitext tiddler > is superior to a markdown tiddler. I wouldn't want to lose my initial > streams set by flattening in a way that replaces it. I'd rather keep it as > a stream and export a flattened tiddler. If I'm not mistaken, the default > behavior of most flattening techniques I've seen is to flatten the actual > collection of tiddlers instead of outputting a copy. I'd love to have a > setting to make a copy instead. Perhaps that is something that could be > added to Jan's dialogue box of settings alongside the ability to choose > bullets or paragraph format. > > Furthermore, thinking toward export, Walt's suggestion of parsing into > Markdown would be really helpful for me. Even more helpful would be LaTeX, > but that's probably too niche for most people. In a perfect world, I would > draft up a full article in Streams, then have an easy "one-button" export > process that (1) flattens the text into a single tiddler* as a copy of > the original* and (2) parses the results into either markdown or > (preferably) LaTeX for easy copy and paste export into my publishing tool. > Bonus points if I could choose to export as markdown or LaTeX! > > Grateful for the work of this community, and the conversation that is > always going on around here about how to make better tools for thought. > > >>> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. 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