Unnecessary (accidental) complexity is NEVER justified. Essential complexity is something we have to live with.
Simplicity is obtained when all accidental complexity is removed. I have no problem with complex tools; I use source code IDEs like Intellij, Visual Code, and Eclipse almost everyday. Undoubtedly much of my problems with TiddlyWiki is that I don't have a good mental model of how it works. But the documentation is awful, so that does not help. For example, I was trying to figure out how to create a list of all tiddlers with a tag equal to the name of the current page. Where do I find that information? I type "list" in the search field, and I get 323 matches. The first one that looks reasonable is "list Operator", so I click on that and get something like this: purpose select titles via a list field input <https://tiddlywiki.com/#Filter%20Syntax> ignored ! input a selection of titles <https://tiddlywiki.com/#Title%20Selection> parameter <https://tiddlywiki.com/#Filter%20Parameter> R = a reference <https://tiddlywiki.com/#TextReference> to a field <https://tiddlywiki.com/#TiddlerFields> or property <https://tiddlywiki.com/#DataTiddlers> of a particular tiddler output the titles stored as a title list <https://tiddlywiki.com/#Title%20List> at R ! output those input titles that are not mentioned at R R can reference either a field or a property. See TextReference <https://tiddlywiki.com/#TextReference> for the syntax. - If neither is specified, the list field is used by default. So [list[T]] outputs the titles listed in the list of tiddler T. - If R consists of only a field or a property, the tiddler part of the reference defaults to the current tiddler <https://tiddlywiki.com/#Current%20Tiddler>. So [list[!!tags]] outputs the titles listed in the tags field of the current tiddler. Examples <https://tiddlywiki.com/#list%20Operator%20(Examples)> Ooookay... I don't know if that helps or not. Let's click the "Examples" link: These examples make use of the Days of the Week <https://tiddlywiki.com/#Days%20of%20the%20Week> tiddler. [list[HelloThere]]Try it [list[Days of the Week!!short]]Try it At this point, I still don't know what to type in my tiddler. It looks like it should be something like "[list[<foo>]]" where foo somehow indicates "all tiddlers with a tag equal to the title of the current page", but there's not clue how to figure out what "foo" should really be. Sometime later I find the tiddler, "ListWidget". Clicking that is promising, this one actually looks like it might be the right thing. One of the examples is: <$list filter="[tag[ListWidget]sort[title]"/> This actually works, but it requires me to type the name of the current tiddler as the tag name. Surely there's a way to get the title of the current tiddler to automatically populate?? Somewhere I read that the title of the current Tiddler was in a field that could be referenced like "!!title". Try that, and no dice. So, I reason, there must be a link to the filter syntax on this page, and sure enough, here it is! "tiddler filter"! I click that and get a huge list of filters, but never fear, there are short descriptions and links to describe each. I randomly click around on several trying to figure out which one works for my usecase, but can't seem to find one suitable. Or maybe I'm not giving it the right parameters. Who knows!? I eventually (hours later) find an example in another user's TiddlyWiki. (For the record, I'm using filter="[all[current]tagging[]sort[title]]". It works. I don't know if it is the best filter to use for my example, but hey, at this point I will accept anything that moves me forward.) I don't know if I would have ever figured out that particular combination of filters, but hey, whatever. Now my task was easy, and it was probably a super, super common usecase: I want to create a page hierarchy and be able to view that hierarchy. Shouldn't there be an article or tutorial somewhere on common ways to structure Tiddlers? Sorry for the long rant, but I'm rather upset that I've wasted two days on this tool. On Saturday, January 12, 2019 at 10:23:06 PM UTC-5, TonyM wrote: > > I empathise, and have thought the same way, but I am starting to see how > tiddlywiki raises our expectations to exceed what it currently achives. > Most often a work around exists, or the community starts to digest changes > to come. The key is the community, conversations and change. Its not that > tw is not mature, its that it continues to evolve even although in many > respects it already surpasses the competition in capabilities (if not > simplicity). > > In my view Far too often today, simplicity is the result of the startup > culture, which wants to profit from minimalist solutions, to fund the > development of more comprehencive solutions by charging and taxing their > very same clients. *Unnesasary compexity *is desirable but not at the > cost of capability, unnessasariily simple things fragment what we need to > use into too many parts. > > -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki. 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