> 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.
Just to tease out one aspect of the point about the technical content on the mailing list: you’ll notice that the most technical discussions are triggered by an enquiry about customising or extending TiddlyWiki. TiddlyWiki’s nature is that it is infinitely configurable and extendable, albeit one frequently falls into CSS or JavaScript to do so. Most products are not like that; something like Trello is only trivially configurable, and just doesn’t have the same depth. TiddlyWiki stimulates people’s appetite for tweaking and customisation, leading to those technical discussions. The fact remains that TiddlyWiki, like Trello, is very powerful and useful even without that deep customisation. But I agree that that can be obscured by the volume of technical discussion about those deep customisations. One frustration, therefore, is the way that we don’t always use the tiddlywikidev group when we should. It was established right back in the beginning of TiddlyWiki to ameliorate just this situation. Your second point is that the documentation is too technical and unapproachable. We all too frequently talk about how to improve the situation, and ideas and contributions are accordingly always welcome. Best wishes Jeremy > > 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] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywikidev > <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 > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywikidev/8fbdcf2f-9808-43c2-9bbb-67cf9ffb9ca5%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWikiDev" group. 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