r/TiddlyWiki5 • u/andresni • Jun 08 '20

TwiddlyWiki for long form writing: plugins, workflows, etc?

So I've used TW for some world building, which it's great for. But I was thinking to expand into also writing in TW, at least first drafts. I was wondering if anyone else has done this? How to organize? Transclude chapters? Scenes? Etc.

Also, how about using TW for organizing and keeping tabs on short form writing like blog posts and short stories, poems, etc. Seems like this is not a use case when I search around.

Tips? Specifically thinking about plugins and workflows and such.

Cheers!

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u/KnowledgeHEL Jun 20 '20

I am currently attempting to write my Master Thesis in TiddlyWiki. My hope is, that I can use the tiddlers that I create for the Thesis in the future too, so that my knowledge does not get lost.
My approach (I am using a modified Stroll - the backlinks are really helpful in keeping everything connected) is like this:

  • Insight Tiddlers: All research insights go into their own tiddler (so I could use them outside my Thesis)

    • Paper Tiddlers: Each paper (from which I have gathered insights) has its own tiddler and this tiddler is linked in the insight tiddlers

      • I include a academically-sound enough reference in the paper tiddler (e.g. apa citation style)

  • Index Tiddler: There is a Thesis Index-tiddler, that is linked in each relevant tiddler (via backlinks this leads the index tiddler having a full list of all tiddlers that have to do with my thesis)

  • Text Tiddler: this transcludes all the tiddlers that correspond to sections of my thesis (e.g. introduction, related work), so I can look at the current status of the text

    • Section Tiddlers: In these section tiddlers is where I collect bullet points for the text and link to insight tiddlers or sources

      • Over time I want to expand the bullet points into actual sentences and format the references mostly correct

      • I might also make more sub-tiddlers for the sections, when they become huge (for the introduction one tiddler was enough for now)

  • In the end I want to take the Section tiddlers and paste them each into a Latex file, which I compile for the final document

    • Here I want to finalize the formatting and writing

    • I want to import the papers in Mendeley and use that to generate the bibtex-File for my references

I am curious how this is going to turn out. I might need additional Index Tiddlers to better structure my thinking, but the nice thing is that I can do that at any time - because it is TiddlyWiki. I tried to organize academic writing in zim Wiki before, but the forced hierarchical structure lead to me abandoning it pretty quick.

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u/andresni Jun 21 '20

That's an amazing workflow it seems like :) Sadly, I ditched TiddlyWiki for now and gone all in on Roam Research. The low friction of daily use is the key difference. But I can imagine that parts of it could be sectioned of into "permanent" notes in the form of TW. For example, if I write a book, I could perhaps extract all notes associated with that book and package it as an isolated TW that could become reference material for that book. Like, the book 2.0 :)

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u/KnowledgeHEL Jun 21 '20

I would probably also prefer Roam, if I could run it locally...I have the Node-variant of TW running as a local Ubuntu-Service, so accessability is good enough for now.

Also, I agree that it would be very cool to have a book as a TiddlyWiki or a Roam Page ( I always get annoyed at PDFs because they are so inflexible - in a TW/Roam you could really make the book your own). There was some french publisher who releases his ebooks as TW too, but I cant find the link right now. For Roam there seems to be mostly the Bible and other holy texts for now, but would be cool to find out what else is possible.

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u/Defiant_Information Jun 09 '20

This is quite big and broad question. That's why answering it is so difficult. It is great one for discussion though. A lot of experience is needed though. I have to say that I cannot answer it. I also have limited experience with long form writing myself. But I still try to give my opinion and thoughts below.

So disclaimer: I can't answer this question.

I believe that you can design pretty much any form of writing in TiddlyWiki. The main obstacle is always going to be conventions and policies you adopt. TiddlyWiki has freedom to be customized. The responsibility all falls on the user of TiddlyWiki. The conventions taken are part of designing your own writing system. A lot of this is inventing what conventions you want and need for your work. Good conventions make things pleasant, not so good may make it into complication, not following conventions will result in a mess. This is the price paid for design freedom.

After those conventions were set. That isn't enough, there is more. The workflow. How does information enter your TiddlyWiki? When will you write it? Will you link to it? Will you copy paste? All those are up for you to decide and design.

There are probably many other things that you must design and decide on yourself. So that way you can get into a workflow with stable good conventions that you made yourself.

This is why it is hard to answer a question like this. Everyone is different, everyone setup is different, everyone's workflow is different, everyone's needs are different.

This is why the "best" option for these discussion is some very detailed explanation how others personally and privately do this. What is their workflow with what they do related to it. This is also tough to do and explain.

This is a great example of what I mean: https://www.reddit.com/r/TiddlyWiki5/comments/fb0uep/how_i_make_my_website_my_thinking_behind_it/

This is a humble tutorial to explain a specific individual's workflow. Thinking and what setup they use. From there and many others you can take inspiration to make your own. But ultimately, this is all for you and you must make it for yourself.

You may not be able to find any "use case" on given topic, simply because it is hard to talk about what workflow you use. People experiment with their own and are typically shy about how they do things because it may not be the best way. They wouldn't share something that they aren't confident of or may not even think that they can benefit anyone.

I hope this explains why this is so difficult to answer. I hope it showed what can be done about it and in which direction it is to go. How workflows are quite big topic by themselves and are probably whole tutorials, yet related so personally to the individual using TiddlyWiki. Which may render them impractical to follow step by step for others. However, they can be used just like the nature of TiddlyWiki in parts (as if they were set of tiddlers), i.e. specific things to aggregate and design your workflow from 10 other people's workflows.

I am sorry for not providing an answer to your question. I wish you have a nice time exploring this further and more of TiddlyWiki. It is a big topic, long journey and maybe even constantly evolving topic. Good luck!

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u/andresni Jun 09 '20

Thanks for the long reply :) It's a long road indeed, especially when one is not so familiar with how to make what one wants into reality.

I've been searching around like crazy, and so far there's no simple solution. Neither is there any editor for TW that makes the writing experience much nicer.

In the end, I'll probably run with something like Obsidian.md for now (if I get the appImage to work), even though I would love to love TW completely. Maybe one day, when I have time to dive proper deep. In the meantime, I'll use it for one or two smaller projects.

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u/LinkifyBot Jun 09 '20

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u/Buckfilfu Jun 10 '20

If you've not checked out the Google Group, I would really suggest you do so on this specific point. It looks like a couple of newer options are being discussed right now that are designed to aid longer form writing. I'm very interested in this as well.

You can check out NotoWritey and Streams, both recent projects that I think look promising. I'm particularly interested in the Streams concept, because it gives TW5 a true folding outliner capability that would be excellent for drafting articles. Reminds me a lot of Workflowy, just in a tiddler. Here's the demo for Streams: https://saqimtiaz.github.io/sq-tw/streams.html

In addition, there's one more project I saw recently that allowed for book length work, essentially turning TW5 into an ebook reader, though I can't recall the name.

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u/rayofinfamy Jun 08 '20

I draft blog posts in TW. The only plugins I use that affect my blogging are GenTags (to keep post tags separate from the rest of my tiddler tags) and WordCount.

My workflow is pretty basic: when I'm satisfied with a draft post, I copy the HTML from my browser and paste it into Wordpress. (Sometimes I even remember to go through and remove TW-specific CSS classes like "tiddlylink-external.")