Hi Neil, I very much appreciate both your points and your stance... as they reflect mine pretty well.
There are plenty of note taking tools out there, just as there are many > tools for web authoring, data collection, and the various other things that We should identify what it is that makes a user choose TW over any of the > other tools, and focus on those aspects in development efforts, since those > are the things valued by people who choose TW over anything else. > To me, the answer to that question is pretty simple: the USP of TiddlyWiki is that it can be *either* or *all* of that... in one! That you can *weave* things the way you want them to be, in a reusable, modular manner, mind you. > I would strongly argue that one thing that is definitely not TW's strength > is user friendliness. > That begs to be argued. If you are talking about mum, then ok. If you are talking about the problems mum has, like "Why does Word do that?" and "Can't I just do that in Word (or Excel)?", then nope. Because those "user friendly" apps might just be the entire opposite of what they project, unduly hiding complexity behind a more or less simplistic ui while leaving the complexities inaccessible. With the right abstractions and the way the information contained in it is accessible, TiddlyWiki is a highly user friendly environment provided you are the kind of user that begs for the kind of flexibility and extensibility that you will not find in your average desktop application. > I don't think it ever will be its selling point, and trying maximise user > friendliness is likely to be a misplaced effort, and could end up diluting > TW's strong points. > With all due respect, VIM is probably also quite powerful, but to a point where you have to be a total techie. So, user friendliness is a BIG topic... and an area in which to compete and compare with other wikis. What I mean is: the overall project should never lose touch with the goals and use-cases of end users like mum! For someone who needs user friendly note taking, something like Evernote, > OneNote, a Word document or pen and paper are always going to win out. > That is not necessarily true. When implementing similar features and ui, TiddlyWiki can and does work just the same. There just has to be one bothering to provide that type of application on top of the TiddlyWiki core... and those are the kinds of integrated visions often expressed in this forum. > A) the ability to have ownership of the data and the means to access that > data > definitely B) the ability to use a powerful, customisable and extensible platform to > organise information in new and interesting / useful ways. > definitely as well > Personally, I came to TW for A, and stick with it for both A and B. > me too ...and I like the fact of how there possibly are a number of people out there who first thought "arghhh, how complicated"... but after learning a few bits they possibly realized the very strengths of TiddlyWiki and joined the crew of explorers. we have to acknowledge that the key audience is those people who care about > those things, and not the people who can find other tools to do the same > job in a more user friendly way. > Yes and no. Here's why: the more those power-user type of people (on the brink of being developers or actually being developpers) share their work, the more this stuff is accessible to, well, mum... or lil' sis. Yes, that takes time and effort... but I think it also makes for a core feature of this "product", the way things are shared in the community. > That doesn't mean that TW shouldn't be made more user friendly, just that > it should primarily be made more friendly to those users, and not to > everyone. > I believe Jeremy's focus is precisely that as well and I think it is the right choice. Leave the quests for eternal end-user friendly apps to those who manage to achieve such tools ...on the basis of a powerful framework. The focus of the TiddlyWiki core should definitely be to provide the latter. On the other hand, being able to explore all those applications and extensions users created based on TiddlyWiki is a key multiplier to the development of both the core and the community... leaving it to the master in chief where to set the focus as for the future of the core. Best wishes, Tobias. -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
