[tw] Blog capabilities of TiddlyWiki

[Herb Nazhe]

Hi everyone,
I am a new user of TiddlyWiki and I would like to know if the blog
functionality of TiddlyWiki may optionally allow the creation of multiple
TiddlyWiki files. I know, this is contrary to the one-file concept upon
which TiddlyWiki is founded, but I think that there may be major benefits
in implementing this as an option (if it has not been implemented already).
The use case I have in mind is that of a proper blog, published on the web.
I was thinking that in this case it would be extremely unwieldy to have all
the media files included within one file. A (still vague) idea occurred to
me, which is a hybrid approach actually: could we possibly have TiddlyWiki
manage a blog by including only the text contents within the TiddlyWiki
file, and using external links for loading the images? This way a user
visiting the website won't have to download a massive file containing all
the bulky media related to the blog webpages. Has this already been tried?
If so, could you please provide some examples/links? I am very interested
in this.

Keep up the good work with this AWESOME project! My heartfelt thanks to
Jeremy and everyone else. I really appreciate the effort you have been
putting into this wonderful piece of software.

Cheers,

--Dufriz

[Herb Nazhe]

As an addition to my previous post: when I said "the creation of multiple
files" what I had in mind was the possibility of breaking down the
TiddlyWiki file into several inter-related sub-files, each one for a major
section of the blog (in case the blog has a very articulated and complex
structure). This is, again, in the interest of keeping the size of the
files smaller, because they have to be downloaded over the internet.
Naturally, the interaction and coordination between the different files
containing the blog sections should be managed automatically by the main
TiddlyWiki file, without the end-user having to worry at all about this.
Cheers.

[RichardWilliamSmith]

Hi Herb,

Tiddlywiki can be used to generate a static website where each page is in
its own file. This is advantageous for the reasons you state and several
others. There are basic instructions
available http://tiddlywiki.com/static/Generating%2520Static%2520Sites%2520with%2520TiddlyWiki.html
but I am in the middle of preparing a more detailed tutorial so, if you're
interested, watch this space.

Regards,
Richard

Post by Herb Nazhe
As an addition to my previous post: when I said "the creation of multiple
files" what I had in mind was the possibility of breaking down the
TiddlyWiki file into several inter-related sub-files, each one for a major
section of the blog (in case the blog has a very articulated and complex
structure). This is, again, in the interest of keeping the size of the
files smaller, because they have to be downloaded over the internet.
Naturally, the interaction and coordination between the different files
containing the blog sections should be managed automatically by the main
TiddlyWiki file, without the end-user having to worry at all about this.
Cheers.

[RichardWilliamSmith]

I should add that the issue of 'externalising' images to reduce the page
size is a separate, but related issue, and there are pretty good solutions
for managing that too.

On Saturday, August 12, 2017 at 8:48:54 AM UTC+10, RichardWilliamSmith

Post by RichardWilliamSmith
Hi Herb,
Tiddlywiki can be used to generate a static website where each page is in
its own file. This is advantageous for the reasons you state and several
others. There are basic instructions available
http://tiddlywiki.com/static/Generating%2520Static%2520Sites%2520with%2520TiddlyWiki.html
but I am in the middle of preparing a more detailed tutorial so, if you're
interested, watch this space.
Regards,
Richard

Post by Herb Nazhe
As an addition to my previous post: when I said "the creation of multiple
files" what I had in mind was the possibility of breaking down the
TiddlyWiki file into several inter-related sub-files, each one for a major
section of the blog (in case the blog has a very articulated and complex
structure). This is, again, in the interest of keeping the size of the
files smaller, because they have to be downloaded over the internet.
Naturally, the interaction and coordination between the different files
containing the blog sections should be managed automatically by the main
TiddlyWiki file, without the end-user having to worry at all about this.
Cheers.

[TonyM]

Richard,

TiddlyWiki seems quite capable of displaying external media but it seems to
me a second class citizen compared to drag drop and import. Have you heard
of a mechanism to Drag and Drop but only create external links? Allowing a
relative link such as .\images would allow the tiddlywiki to be moved with
its media to a host.

I would also like to do this with Hyperlinks or tiddler plugin sources,
drag and drop the link only, not the content.

Just thinking

Tony


On Saturday, August 12, 2017 at 8:52:00 AM UTC+10, RichardWilliamSmith

Post by RichardWilliamSmith
I should add that the issue of 'externalising' images to reduce the page
size is a separate, but related issue, and there are pretty good solutions
for managing that too.
On Saturday, August 12, 2017 at 8:48:54 AM UTC+10, RichardWilliamSmith

Post by RichardWilliamSmith
Hi Herb,
Tiddlywiki can be used to generate a static website where each page is in
its own file. This is advantageous for the reasons you state and several
others. There are basic instructions available
http://tiddlywiki.com/static/Generating%2520Static%2520Sites%2520with%2520TiddlyWiki.html
but I am in the middle of preparing a more detailed tutorial so, if you're
interested, watch this space.
Regards,
Richard

Post by Herb Nazhe
As an addition to my previous post: when I said "the creation of
multiple files" what I had in mind was the possibility of breaking down the
TiddlyWiki file into several inter-related sub-files, each one for a major
section of the blog (in case the blog has a very articulated and complex
structure). This is, again, in the interest of keeping the size of the
files smaller, because they have to be downloaded over the internet.
Naturally, the interaction and coordination between the different files
containing the blog sections should be managed automatically by the main
TiddlyWiki file, without the end-user having to worry at all about this.
Cheers.

[TonyM]

Additional thought,

On the Import page that appears after drag and drop allow a button to
import external links only. Create tiddlers with the external links.

Just dreaming

Tony

Post by TonyM
Richard,
TiddlyWiki seems quite capable of displaying external media but it seems
to me a second class citizen compared to drag drop and import. Have you
heard of a mechanism to Drag and Drop but only create external links?
Allowing a relative link such as .\images would allow the tiddlywiki to be
moved with its media to a host.
I would also like to do this with Hyperlinks or tiddler plugin sources,
drag and drop the link only, not the content.
Just thinking
Tony
On Saturday, August 12, 2017 at 8:52:00 AM UTC+10, RichardWilliamSmith

Post by RichardWilliamSmith
I should add that the issue of 'externalising' images to reduce the page
size is a separate, but related issue, and there are pretty good solutions
for managing that too.
On Saturday, August 12, 2017 at 8:48:54 AM UTC+10, RichardWilliamSmith

Post by RichardWilliamSmith
Hi Herb,
Tiddlywiki can be used to generate a static website where each page is
in its own file. This is advantageous for the reasons you state and several
others. There are basic instructions available
http://tiddlywiki.com/static/Generating%2520Static%2520Sites%2520with%2520TiddlyWiki.html
but I am in the middle of preparing a more detailed tutorial so, if you're
interested, watch this space.
Regards,
Richard

Post by Herb Nazhe
As an addition to my previous post: when I said "the creation of
multiple files" what I had in mind was the possibility of breaking down the
TiddlyWiki file into several inter-related sub-files, each one for a major
section of the blog (in case the blog has a very articulated and complex
structure). This is, again, in the interest of keeping the size of the
files smaller, because they have to be downloaded over the internet.
Naturally, the interaction and coordination between the different files
containing the blog sections should be managed automatically by the main
TiddlyWiki file, without the end-user having to worry at all about this.
Cheers.

[Herb Nazhe]

Have you heard of a mechanism to Drag and Drop but only create external
links? Allowing a relative link such as .\images would allow the tiddlywiki
to be moved with its media to a host.

That is what I was hoping for. Any implementations yet/soon-to-come?

[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Tony

Drag and Drop but only create external links? Allowing a relative link such as .\images would allow the tiddlywiki to be moved with its media to a host.

That trouble is that browsers do not reveal to JS code the original path of the dragged file. We only get the file name portion. Browsers do this for security reasons, and there’s no workaround.

Best wishes

Jeremy

['Mark S.' via TiddlyWiki]

But what if the dropped link was from an external web source? Does the
browser still hide the address? Shouldn't it be able to access that url?
And if the base url was the same for your TW and the dropped object,
wouldn't it be possible to construct the relative path ? I'm thinking that
in the context of Arlen's tiddlyserver you might be able to create the
appropriate canonical uri tiddler with a portable relative address.

Thanks!

Post by Jeremy Ruston
Hi Tony

Drag and Drop but only create external links? Allowing a relative link

such as .\images would allow the tiddlywiki to be moved with its media to a
host.
That trouble is that browsers do not reveal to JS code the original path
of the dragged file. We only get the file name portion. Browsers do this
for security reasons, and there’s no workaround.
Best wishes
Jeremy

[@TiddlyTweeter]

OBSERVATION 1 -- *Easier translation/conversion to portability*--of
absolute paths to relative--could be a godsend for TW.

For at least 2 reasons. First, universalism of platform (offline / online).
Second, emerging issue if you want to go httpS: ... relative paths don't
throw an issue on that like absolute paths do if you got miss-matched
protocols. That is quite an issue with TW right now. We are way behind on
going https: publicly, I think.

Best wishes
Josiah

['Mark S.' via TiddlyWiki]

What I do is have a variation of Tobias ximg macros. I have a drop-down
list that let's me set the base path of all the <ximg> macros depending on
platform. In addition, if a tiddler is tagged with D:2017, then the
sub-path of the path name will be /2017. This will allow me eventually to
archive or hive off tiddlers by their indicated usage.

Mark

Post by @TiddlyTweeter
OBSERVATION 1 -- *Easier translation/conversion to portability*--of
absolute paths to relative--could be a godsend for TW.
For at least 2 reasons. First, universalism of platform (offline /
online). Second, emerging issue if you want to go httpS: ... relative paths
don't throw an issue on that like absolute paths do if you got miss-matched
protocols. That is quite an issue with TW right now. We are way behind on
going https: publicly, I think.
Best wishes
Josiah

[TonyM]

Jeremy

That explains the mysterious omission of such a feature. A key use case for
me is when I have a folder of images and PDF's I want to display in a
tiddlywiki yet I want to avoid loading the tiddly wiki up and making it too
big. If I could choose a specific library ..\images Place my files in that
and drag and drop to the tiddly wiki it would save a lot of time. Perhaps I
do need to provide the relative or absolute path ..\image at the time of
the drag and drop (For all that I am about to "import") to use in the
creation of the tiddlers, perhaps also an optional check box specifying
that I want external links (not importing) on the Import tiddler would make
this a low impact change.

Clearly Drag and Drop does have access to the filename of each item dragged
and dropped, all we need to do is parse this list as external files/links
with the manual provision of the source path.

Another thought is the import feature, permitting import of external links
to selected files, and allow a multi-select, I would have thought the
browser has to know the full path to do this import?, but I expect I may be
wrong on that.

Background (optional reading)

For example I am building an edition of TW5 that I call USD's, Universal
Storage Device, A bit like "USB".

On a low cost USB drive I have a tiddlywiki that acts as the WebSite for
the USB Drive, I can access this using a OTG Host cable from my smart
phone, or tablet. also by placing the USB in a USB port of a computer or on
a WiFi access Point. I have a few of these already, One in my car has all
the car manuals and service details including the original advertising
details. When using a mobile device it is important to keep the size of the
Wiki low for performance. I plan to have many of these USD's so If I had a
quick way of dragging and dropping or importing external file links it
would be helpful. For example I already have 30+ folders containing various
content for specific devices such as routers, disk-stations, TVs, Blue Ray
Players even the stove and fridge. The thing is with TiddlyWiki, a Cheap
USB drive a OTG cable I can USB enable, even website enable anything I want
to. I can even glue the USB drive to those things. I have even contemplated
putting low cost USB drives on boxes in storage, photographing the items
placed in the box, and making these visible in the "USD" TW. While
maintaining a synced copy elsewhere for searching.

Another Use Case
Allowing selective display of Images from a large photo library, or music
tracks, curated and placed in a slideshow within a TiddlyWiki that can use
tagging and all those features to manage the media. A tiddly-wiki can kind
of act as a "PlayList". No these are not transferable, but we do not need
to use every feature of tiddlywiki every time.

Please accept my thanks for this beautiful software tool TiddlyWiki, it's
open nature makes it resemble "Plasticine" that can be shaped into anything
we want. Please never take my apparent criticisms of TiddlyWiki as anything
other than because I love it so much and want the best for this gem. And
often It is pointed out to me how there is a way already.

Regards
Tony

Post by Jeremy Ruston
Hi Tony

Drag and Drop but only create external links? Allowing a relative link

such as .\images would allow the tiddlywiki to be moved with its media to a
host.
That trouble is that browsers do not reveal to JS code the original path
of the dragged file. We only get the file name portion. Browsers do this
for security reasons, and there’s no workaround.
Best wishes
Jeremy

[Eric Shulman]

Post by TonyM
Another thought is the import feature, permitting import of external links
to selected files, and allow a multi-select, I would have thought the
browser has to know the full path to do this import?, but I expect I may be
wrong on that.

When the browser shows the "open files" dialog, it allows you to navigate
your filesystem and select files... but it does not return the full path to
the selected files. Instead, it just returns the "filename.ext" and the
file *contents* for each file selected. This is what allows TW to import
from files, while still not having knowledge about the directory structure
(e.g, path info) for your file system, so it can't be used to "probe" your
computer to look for vulnerabilities.

-e

['Mark S.' via TiddlyWiki]

But ... as I asked earlier. Is this true if dragging and dropping from an
external web site? I suspect not, since knowing the url to a web site is
what browsers do all the time. So, it should be possible to drag and drop
and then construct a tiddler based on the file type and file name. AND, if
that server was the same as the server the TW was on, it should be possible
to even to construct a relative path. Then you would have an easy way to
add new things to a TW. And since the path is stored in a relative
configuration, it would also work as a stand-alone TW with external files.
So you could use tiddlyserver to collect data (something that is clunky
now) but then use the TW offline (when away from the desktop and/or on
mobile devices).

Thanks,
Mark

Post by Eric Shulman

Post by TonyM
Another thought is the import feature, permitting import of external
links to selected files, and allow a multi-select, I would have thought the
browser has to know the full path to do this import?, but I expect I may be
wrong on that.

When the browser shows the "open files" dialog, it allows you to navigate
your filesystem and select files... but it does not return the full path to
the selected files. Instead, it just returns the "filename.ext" and the
file *contents* for each file selected. This is what allows TW to import
from files, while still not having knowledge about the directory structure
(e.g, path info) for your file system, so it can't be used to "probe" your
computer to look for vulnerabilities.
-e

[TonyM]

Eric,

Yes Understood. Nicely put. But I sill see the following workflow possible,


- Create Images folder below Tiddly wiki
- Drag and Drop images to tiddly wiki
- Check Import as external files/Or Reference
- Enter the relative or absolute path (do the Job the browser will not)
- Import

Or

- We could co-opt the import file feature to prompt in a similar way,
with multi-select enabled.
- Still asking for the path (relative or absolute)

We could even set another tiddler to contain the relative or absolute path
which we edit if we move or even combine the media files into a new single
directory or host location we simply edit that and it is reflected in all
the relevant items in a given import batch = folder source.

My skills do not yet permit me to code this so I need to ask the community.

Tony

Post by Eric Shulman

Post by TonyM
Another thought is the import feature, permitting import of external
links to selected files, and allow a multi-select, I would have thought the
browser has to know the full path to do this import?, but I expect I may be
wrong on that.

When the browser shows the "open files" dialog, it allows you to navigate
your filesystem and select files... but it does not return the full path to
the selected files. Instead, it just returns the "filename.ext" and the
file *contents* for each file selected. This is what allows TW to import
from files, while still not having knowledge about the directory structure
(e.g, path info) for your file system, so it can't be used to "probe" your
computer to look for vulnerabilities.
-e

[RichardWilliamSmith]

Hi Tony,

I built an interface that lets you externalise content. The use case
primarily imagined is of accruing content over time (mostly images) and
then periodically purging it to an external location. The tool then lets
you redefine the 'root' path to the image folder, in the canonical uri
field of every image tiddler, at once. This means that you can develop with
your images in a folder locally (probably served from a simple server) and
then easily switch to a matching set "in the cloud" as long as the relative
position of all the files is the same.

Post by TonyM
Richard,
TiddlyWiki seems quite capable of displaying external media but it seems
to me a second class citizen compared to drag drop and import. Have you
heard of a mechanism to Drag and Drop but only create external links?
Allowing a relative link such as .\images would allow the tiddlywiki to be
moved with its media to a host.
I would also like to do this with Hyperlinks or tiddler plugin sources,
drag and drop the link only, not the content.
Just thinking
Tony
On Saturday, August 12, 2017 at 8:52:00 AM UTC+10, RichardWilliamSmith

Post by RichardWilliamSmith
I should add that the issue of 'externalising' images to reduce the page
size is a separate, but related issue, and there are pretty good solutions
for managing that too.
On Saturday, August 12, 2017 at 8:48:54 AM UTC+10, RichardWilliamSmith

Post by RichardWilliamSmith
Hi Herb,
Tiddlywiki can be used to generate a static website where each page is
in its own file. This is advantageous for the reasons you state and several
others. There are basic instructions available
http://tiddlywiki.com/static/Generating%2520Static%2520Sites%2520with%2520TiddlyWiki.html
but I am in the middle of preparing a more detailed tutorial so, if you're
interested, watch this space.
Regards,
Richard

Post by Herb Nazhe
As an addition to my previous post: when I said "the creation of
multiple files" what I had in mind was the possibility of breaking down the
TiddlyWiki file into several inter-related sub-files, each one for a major
section of the blog (in case the blog has a very articulated and complex
structure). This is, again, in the interest of keeping the size of the
files smaller, because they have to be downloaded over the internet.
Naturally, the interaction and coordination between the different files
containing the blog sections should be managed automatically by the main
TiddlyWiki file, without the end-user having to worry at all about this.
Cheers.

[TonyM]

Sounds Like a Good Strategy Richard.

Do share if you can.

Tony


On Saturday, August 12, 2017 at 9:13:57 PM UTC+10, RichardWilliamSmith

Post by RichardWilliamSmith
Hi Tony,
I built an interface that lets you externalise content. The use case
primarily imagined is of accruing content over time (mostly images) and
then periodically purging it to an external location. The tool then lets
you redefine the 'root' path to the image folder, in the canonical uri
field of every image tiddler, at once. This means that you can develop with
your images in a folder locally (probably served from a simple server) and
then easily switch to a matching set "in the cloud" as long as the relative
position of all the files is the same.

Post by TonyM
Richard,
TiddlyWiki seems quite capable of displaying external media but it seems
to me a second class citizen compared to drag drop and import. Have you
heard of a mechanism to Drag and Drop but only create external links?
Allowing a relative link such as .\images would allow the tiddlywiki to be
moved with its media to a host.
I would also like to do this with Hyperlinks or tiddler plugin sources,
drag and drop the link only, not the content.
Just thinking
Tony
On Saturday, August 12, 2017 at 8:52:00 AM UTC+10, RichardWilliamSmith

Post by RichardWilliamSmith
I should add that the issue of 'externalising' images to reduce the page
size is a separate, but related issue, and there are pretty good solutions
for managing that too.
On Saturday, August 12, 2017 at 8:48:54 AM UTC+10, RichardWilliamSmith

Post by RichardWilliamSmith
Hi Herb,
Tiddlywiki can be used to generate a static website where each page is
in its own file. This is advantageous for the reasons you state and several
others. There are basic instructions available
http://tiddlywiki.com/static/Generating%2520Static%2520Sites%2520with%2520TiddlyWiki.html
but I am in the middle of preparing a more detailed tutorial so, if you're
interested, watch this space.
Regards,
Richard

Post by Herb Nazhe
As an addition to my previous post: when I said "the creation of
multiple files" what I had in mind was the possibility of breaking down the
TiddlyWiki file into several inter-related sub-files, each one for a major
section of the blog (in case the blog has a very articulated and complex
structure). This is, again, in the interest of keeping the size of the
files smaller, because they have to be downloaded over the internet.
Naturally, the interaction and coordination between the different files
containing the blog sections should be managed automatically by the main
TiddlyWiki file, without the end-user having to worry at all about this.
Cheers.

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Cari tutti,

A bit out-of-left-field, but somehow relevant, is Riz's experiments from a
few months back.

https://ibnishak.github.io/t-blog/

the discussion of it is here
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/tiddlywiki/gh32_049Duc/FEHzrMkgBQAJ>.

They are worth a look. They are Node.js generated, not singular TW. I do
think they show that a modern, variously CSS styled, flexible blogging
framework can be done by TW very well. A LOT of the issue is using CSS
better IMO. Riz is good at that.

Best wishes
Josiah

[Herb Nazhe]

Post by RichardWilliamSmith
Tiddlywiki can be used to generate a static website where each page is in
its own file.

Excellent. One questions: can the files be generated directly on the remote
server (by a remotely located Tiddly generator)? Or will we have to create
them locally and then FTP them up?

[RichardWilliamSmith]

Hi Herb,

Oddly, this is exactly the aspect to which I now turn my attention. There
are two methods to be compared - the first is to build the static site and
deploy the output. The second is to deploy the raw content and then run the
build tool "in the cloud" using a 'continuous integration' method.

Either way the deploy tool du jour is 'git'; primarily a version control
system that mirrors our changing content to a 'repository' at, for example,
github.com. We 'push' changes to this online repo when we want to update
our site. In the first scenario, our pushed code is the output and we're
done. In the second, we require a further build step to be carried out.
This is achieved via what is called a 'git hook' that will run a tool to
build the output and deploy it as instructed.

Travis CI is one such continuous integration tool and it should be possible
to set it up to run tiddlywiki and build the site but my preferred host is
Netlify.com and I think their integrated tools ought to be able to do the
same thing. Too many options, as always.

Anyway, you'll have a tutorial within a week, I promise.

Richard

Post by Herb Nazhe

Post by RichardWilliamSmith
Tiddlywiki can be used to generate a static website where each page is in
its own file.

Excellent. One questions: can the files be generated directly on the
remote server (by a remotely located Tiddly generator)? Or will we have to
create them locally and then FTP them up?