Jon I really get your feeling. And I agree. I am not a developer nor ever will be.
IMO TW5 is a stellar product. But I DO think its often ending up looking like a programmers playground. Even the more public list is an endless series of techno questions. And the first contact with TW is a technical reference manual. But, 2, I DO NOT think that is the intention at all. Nobody planned it that way. Its much more to do with resources &, perhaps, paucity in marketing outlooks that can fill out its purposes. Its ongoing, so one can hope. Josiah On Sunday, 26 June 2016 06:39:13 UTC+2, Jon wrote: > > >> My own preferred resolution is to migrate TiddlyDesktop to a new >> architecture where it acts as a local webserver, allowing any browser to be >> used with TiddlyWiki. >> > > I very much appreciate all the work being done on TW5, TiddlyDesktop and > various related projects. I'm just a hack, not a bona fide developer, and > not involved in the development of TW itself. So I don't really have > standing to opine here, but perhaps I could be forgiven for a couple of > comments from my own perspective. I think there are several different > potential objectives for TW as well as different kinds of potential users > that the TW community should think carefully about in planning the future. > > When I first encountered TW, I was hooked by the ability to easily create > personal wikis for all the different kinds of information I deal with and > use them from anywhere I could get my hands on any browser, accessing a > single file via a USB stick or a cloud service like Dropbox. A great deal > of customization was possible by simply editing a CSS stylesheet, modifying > a couple of simple templates and perusing the wealth of available plugins. > I then quickly realized that with a modest understanding of Javascript, I > could essentially create personal Web apps for myself and my students. > > Sharing these couldn't have been simpler: one file. (I'm not talking about > multi-user; that's a different question.) Then, it was one file plus an > add-on for Firefox or Chrome. Then, it was one file plus an add-on, but by > the way you have to use Firefox. Now it sounds like it's on its way to > being shareable only with users that are willing to download, and install a > whole application, TiddlyDesktop. (I realize this is all the fault of the > browser developers, not TW developers, but it's still a problem.) Now, > maybe it'll be, we can share the file as long as you're willing to set up a > personal Web server... > > Meanwhile, TWC evolves to TW5, which can do pretty much what TWC can, and > I guess a lot more safely, but is a LOT more complex. Other than a few > check-off customizations, anything beyond out-of-the-box use as a > note-taking program requires wading through a maze of templates, > $-something tiddlers, widgets, filters... > > So, one way to see TW is as a tool to create personal wikis and Web apps > for computer gurus. This works for me to some extent - I may be just a > hack, but I enjoy this stuff, and that makes it worth it to install apps to > keep them going, re-learn everything the TW5 way and perhaps even to wade > into something like node.js if that's what's necessary to run TWs via a > future TiddlyDesktop server. But the complexity required keeps increasing, > and the gain in functionality is pretty much zero. (I've yet to find > anything I can do with TW5 or via TiddlyDesktop that I couldn't do with > TWC, not to say those things don't exist.) > > Beyond the developer, how does TW play for the naive computer user? It's > already not a simple one-file solution. And, with TW5, the average person > pretty much can't customize anything but themes and background colors and > is likely to be befuddled by the huge lists of mysterious tiddlers in the > sidebar. S/he's not likely to install a Web server to run it, if s/he even > has admin access to his/her own computer. > > Are there possible ways for TW to work for both audiences (and those > in-between), or are we content to have it be basically a developer's toy > (albeit a really cool one)? I don't know enough to know if a creative > solution to the problems of browser security is even possible. Thinking > pie-in-the-sky, I'd wonder about the feasibility of something like an app > built on the Dropbox API or perhaps the Google Drive platform that a user > could readily connect to his/her account and then gain access to > full-powered single-file TWs. > > That's my $0.02. Thanks for listening. > Jon > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWikiDev" 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/tiddlywikidev. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywikidev/8fbdcf2f-9808-43c2-9bbb-67cf9ffb9ca5%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
