Hi Luke,
I know, waiting for response, if you have a decision to make is a pain. ...
So I'll post my personal opinions and some links, that may be of interest.
Anyhow, Jeremy will be the best source to answer your questions in more
detail, so take my info with a grain of salt.
.. As always, it depends ... on your project and you ;)
If you are a developer, imo it will make things easier, since you can use a
development environment to build and automatically test your own stuff. So
this will speed up the workflow a lot and gives you much more flexibility.
If you want to use TiddlyWiki as an editor for your conent, you depend on
tools, that are built in TW itself, or tools / workflows, that the
community developed. See the Communit [1] tiddler for more info (I'm sure
you know this one already). Getting tools and good documentation is a
process, that needs time.
On Sunday, April 13, 2014 4:59:04 PM UTC+2, Luke Seubert wrote:
>
> I would like to start a significant TiddlyWiki project using TW5. I have a
> decent amount of experience with TW Classic.
>
This will help you with your workflow but the TW syntax itself got some
powerfull new features and therefore is different.
Especially if you want to tweak the layout, I'm sure some braking changes
can happen to upcoming betas.
I'll come back to the layout later, in more detail.
> Do the developers anticipate any major changes in the design from
> 5.0.8-beta going forward that would undermine such work?
>
If you have a look at the Roadmap [2] you'll see, that in my opinion there
are some open issues that have potential for "breaking changes" ....
I want to point out:
Fixing hangovers from TiddlyWikiClassic
>
> - TiddlyWiki file format (to avoid illegal attribute names)
> - Tiddler object format (to provide true polymorphism of field values)
>
> Since these 2 points will affect the file format, it *may be* needed to
do an import of the whole content to update / use the new structure.
*Or* you'll have to rebuild your TW if you use the development version.
Using the dev version imo will be much less trouble.
I am reluctant to start using TW5 if later changes would render my
> tiddlers, their links, or the formats incompatible and in need of major
> revision work.
>
I think the TW syntax itself, is very stable already. So if you use the
built-in features and widgets, there shouldn't be big surprises anymore.
Again a quote from Roadmaps
Perfecting WikiText
>
> - Global macros
> - [img[url]] for remote image embedding, and [ext[url]] for explicit
> external links
> - Further WikiText features
>
> I think global macros are essential for a bigger project, since they will
allow you to create your own personalized "shourtcuts" for content. Without
global macros, it can be a lot of repitition work, if you have to include
this stuff into every tiddler. There are workarounds. But imo too many
moving targets atm. .... If you are able to create javascript macros, this
is a non issue for you. Javascript macros are global by design.
I think image and external links are a bit overdue allready. But there seem
to be well enough workarounds, so that's why there isn't enough pressure to
implement them. Hopefully beta 10 will get them. @Jeremy
Further WikiText features ... I think the biggest change here will be
"multi line tables" which imo won't break existing content. It will just
extend the possibilities.
> If TW5 is not yet stable enough to support a new project without requiring
> significant subsequent revisions, roughly when do the developers expect
> TW5-beta to reach such a stability milestone?
>
IMO it depends on what are "significant subsequent revisions" for you ...
hours, days, ...
How many content tiddlers do you expect to be in your TW?
Jeremy should jump in here :)
> I don't mind updating the code of TW5 to new versions, but I don't want to
> have to overhaul the content I created with it.
>
If you have a look at the "Productivity features" in the RoadMap tiddler,
you'll see that functions, that help you with refactoring content are
planned too. But I'm pretty sure some of them will pop up in "V 1.x stable"
and not in beta. And some of them should be plugins anyway.
Since you didn't specify your project and environment I'll close with some
examples:
* If you want to use TW as a full blown content management system as a
"pure user" imo it's very early.
* most convenience tools are still missing.
* If you want to produce a "single file TW" and host it somewhere, with no
backend involved, you can start now.
* If you are _no_ developer, but comfortable with a terminal and the
command line, imo it would be possible to support you with relatively easy
to use tools, that you can build your own editions from single tiddlers.
... So imo you can start now.
* If you are no developer and willing to invest some time to explore TW
behind the curtain, imo you can start now.
* See some of the TW Community links. Some users built really great
stuff within TW only.
(but here breaking changes will hurt a bit more, even if Jeremy tries
to make transition painless.)
* If you need a multi user environment, where different users have write
access ... you need to be a developer.
* Because of the backend.
* If you are a developer yourself, or if you have access to one. IMO you
can start now.
--------------
About the TW default layout:
I'm in the process to create some more pull requests that may effect the
basic layout and CSS.
The goal is, to make the TW theme more tweakable and hopefully the CSS
simpler, without changing the general basic layout.
see: [3][4] for 2 small merged changes.
So if you want to create your own propriatery theme, I'm pretty sure there
will be breaking changes. If you develop in the open, I'm sure improvements
will be highly appreciated and pull requests too :)
Jeremy also said in one of the last hangouts, that he wants to make the
menu bars more flexible. .. So there may be layout changes in future batas.
I'm very interested to create my own themes, without loosing the
compatibility. I did create my own themes for TWclassic / TiddlySpace [5]
and tried to make them as compatible as possible. At the moment, there are
>300 users using them, customized or plain. But for TW5 I want to make it
better.
So I'll try hard to get my changes merged, after discussing them with
Jeremy. ...
--------
* Shameless plug: If you need a developer you can contact me ;)
I hope that helps!
have fun!
mario
PS: I'll post some more TW5 related links shortly.
[1] http://tiddlywiki.com/static/Community.html
[2] http://tiddlywiki.com/static/RoadMap.html
[3] https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/pull/546
[4] https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/pull/520
[5] http://pmario.tiddlyspace.com/#Projects
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