TiddlyWiki: a local, single-page wiki | Hacker News Reader

TiddlyWiki: a local, single-page wiki

tiddlywiki.com

191 pointsjosephturnip55 comments

I built a TiddlyWiki site for an RV park circa 2008. It was easy to do and looked great. It was easy for the non-technical owners to update. But Google completely ignored it, and so the park was invisible to most tourists. It folded a few years back, and I partly blame myself, for picking TiddlyWiki.

'a non-linear personal web notebook' which you use to build a web site.

And it seemed to be great for that purpose. I might not be the only one to think so. A warning seems appropriate.

By now you can export static pages from it, which might help for such use cases: http://tiddlywiki.com/#Generating%20Static%20Sites%20with%20...

I was just thinking that it would be awesome if Tiddlywiki can be exported as a static page. Thanks for the link.

Every few years it seems like I do a complete survey of all the personal wiki solutions out there. TiddlyWiki always comes in a close second to vimwiki for my use. Tiddly is an impressive system and kudos to the developers.

I think my ideal would be an updated VooDooPad that uses markdown syntax with wiki style [[links]], with support for drag and drop attachments and expose pages as text files on the filesystem. VooDooPad is really close to this but seems to be abandoned and more complex that it needs to be. Actually, now that I think about it, Typora very close. If it had wiki links that opened the linked page in the same window (and added back and forward navigation) it would be perfect.

I've been using Quiver (http://happenapps.com/#quiver). It's for Mac but I think it does the job. Although links are not created wiki-style, they are kept when you export your notes to HTML and they don't break when you change the note's name.

Quiver is also propietary but it is possible to create other scripts to export the notes (https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver/wiki/Quiver-Data-Format).

In any case, I'm also looking for better personal wiki solutions. So far, there is no clear answer. At least for Mac.

I've been using Zim as a desktop wiki for projects ever since Ethan Schoonover (of Solarized fame) recommended it. Highly suggest checking it out! http://zim-wiki.org

Best ever. Alt-D shortcut lifesaver.

As an aside, I loved Solarized but have to mod it... the single mod is to make 'black' actually black. It is a beautiful colour scheme - I particularly like how comments are faded yet perfectly legible in it.

TiddlyWiki producted the best demonstration of a Getting Things Done methodology (organize things to be actionable, display things under a given context, organize things by blockers) I've ever seen.

http://mgsd.tiddlyspot.com/demo3.html

This provides so many more features & organization than what a traditional Todo app provides.

The UX was great, but I didn't like the local data-lock-in due to tiddlywiki. ( Also - the whole ticklers (notification) system was a bit clunky. )

Once in a while I get the motivation to reproduce this as a full-fledged web or mobile app.

Instead of saving to local, there's a PHP script that lets you save your edits to a file on a server. http://tiddlywiki.com/static/Saving%2520on%2520a%2520PHP%252...

That page points to a code.google.com (and as such unavailable) project... :(

Sorry about that. Someone seems to have put it on GitHub with some fixes:

https://github.com/makefu/tiddly_store

https://github.com/makefu/tw-upload-plugin

The "plugin" that you linked is for the older version of TiddlyWiki (it's called TiddlyWiki Classic now).

There is a plugin for the modern TiddlyWiki (IIRC it's full name is TiddlyWiki5) called GSD5 (GSD is for "Getting Stuff Done"): http://gsd5.tiddlyspot.com/ .

I've never used TW Classic and original mGSD, but GSD5 is "heavily inspired by mGSD" and on first glance they look alike a lot.

And, anyway, TiddlyWiki5 with GSD5 rocks.

Although responsive is nice, I find the update too stripped-down. I'm not a fan of the low-contrast (ios-style) movement in UX.. also it removes many links/buttons/features so that it looks more "simple". I'll take the ability to click on things in the original over the fancy transition effects.

TiddlyWiki is quiet flexible. I've rearranged a lot of stuff in my setup.

TiddlyWiki had a complete rewrite a few years ago (this is what you get on http://www.tiddlywiki.com ) and the new interface is top notch.

It is truly a remarkable piece of software, mostly because it is DESIGNED to be customizable to ones needs.

Back in 2006 I made this experiment using TiddlyWiki to explain a piece of code: http://akkartik.name/countPaths.html. It seemed like a good fit: code is a fundamentally non-linear medium and benefits from being expressed in a fundamentally non-linear substrate. I still think about this every so often, though lately I've been focusing more on communicating the big picture (http://akkartik.name/about)

I have kept every work note in the same file, saved to git, for a little over two years. Instant help from @Jermolene. Have found no fault with it.

I used TW as a research notebook for a while. The tagging + search worked pretty nicely for organization and the plugins for Latex were handy for adding math.

In fact you can just take a look here (might kill this link in a few days, fyi):

https://alexkrolick.github.io/research-notebook/index.html

EDIT: Here's a helpful "citation" macro for making notes on papers: https://alexkrolick.github.io/research-notebook/index.html#m...

I accidentally clicked on one of the checkboxes. Sorry about that. I think I undid that - I didn't realize the page was editable.

It's not globally editable, it saves your changes locally.

I use TiddlyWiki across my Windows, Android and Ubuntu devices. I use it as my universal operating environment. I use it to store my writing, my ideas, my catalogs and inventory, my projects. You name it, it can be customized to fit.

Is there an Android app that you use, or do you just use the web edit?

We are currently using Tiddlywiki as the documentation for our Learning Management System. Even the non-technical administrators can navigate where they need to and do the things they need to do. It is insanely easy to work with.

I'm-gonna let tiddlywiki finish, but dokuwiki is greatest personal wiki of the tiny subset of internet users that use it.

I use doku for my world building and other related notes for my fiction writing. Works great.

I don't think so. My experiences with Dokuwiki is not great. Its WYSIWYG editor isn't integrated properly, switching back to Markup doesn't work without a page save, so a lot of useless clicks. Furthermore I wasn't convinced about Dokuwikis mobile interface, not even speaking of the inability to use the editor then.

thanks for spreading the love :)

A while back, I started using docuwiki as a personal knowledge base. Started adding things such as memorable quotes, ideas, understanding about concepts etc. Its easy to structure information using hyperlinks and each page contains bulleted information about one topic.

I am not too concerned with internet availability/mobile accessibility. The idea is just to document stuff that I can access later.

Been using TiddlyWiki, first Class, now TW5, for over a decade. I keep my work and home project notebooks in them. Invaluable for going back and recalling what worked and what didn't work - or helping colleagues who stumble on the same problems I solved a while ago. I migrated to the node.js 'hosted' version a few months back and that has motivated me to start integrating these notebooks more. TiddlyWiki are just programable enough to satisfy the need or occasional yak shaving urge.

I am also a TiddlyWiki user. I use it as personal note taking + bookmarking + daily reading log. The best feature it has is a Wiki feature, not any TiddlyWiki feature: backlinks. I could make the backlinks show up in the footer of every page (tiddlers) and this reminds me connections I might have forgot. Tiddlywiki is also a great system for bookmarks. If I read something written by or about,say Roosevelt, I just add [[Roosevelt]] and I click on the link and just add a one line description like: Roosevelt was a [[US]] [[president|POTUS]] <year> and it will create a nice connection to the POTUS page and the US page. This is different from restrictive categories.

I keep software links, configuration, track-list for stuff I want to track (great new product/bookmark/book/service, just add [[TrackList]] when creating that page and can see it later in the footer of my TrackList page. Most Wikis can do this, however, in TiddlyWiki it is easy—no need to edit PHP files or plugins; it has a nice filter syntax that allow anything to be queried in a myriad ways tags, date, custom fields, title and so on, I just place that filter right there in the text and get the results.

It also supports other syntaxs such as Org-mode and Markdown if you use them; in retrospect I should have chosen Org-mode as an Emacs user, it would have been easier to get the data to other programs.

Couple of problems I face:

+ No converter to convert files to other Wikis or formats:

Not a TW problem, Pandoc and other tools cannot convert this to say, MediaWiki or DokuWiki. So as a non-programmer I am stuck with this as of now. But I am slowly trying to make work a Perl module[x] to convert the HTML to wiki form.

+ Static pages has awful URLS:

It double encodes the URLs and it is filled with "%2520". I wish they make a setting to replace that with hyphens or underscores.example page:[y]

If they could get this to work I think this has the chance of being the best static site generator. Easy to use and extremely customisable (or may be I am coloured by my non-programmer experience with static site generators).

+ Duplicate titles:

'Notetaking' is different from 'notetaking', so occasionally, I link to a non-existing pages for less frequently linked pages; there should be a setting for naming policy.

+ Data corruption:

I've seen few cases where people lost their data completely. TW warns about this in their page and advice people to use backup (I backup it to Dropbox). Example:[z]

[x] http://search.cpan.org/~diberri/HTML-WikiConverter-0.61/lib/... [y] http://tiddlywiki.com/static/Introduction%2520to%2520filter%... [z] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tiddlywiki/bgcRqKGQ2...

Community is friendly and helpful; I stole most of my customisation macros, code and notetaking ideas from the TiddlyWiki Google Group where helpful ideas and solutions are plenty. Nice bunch of people.

What is the org-mode plugin? I went looking but I could not find it.

How many notes do you think you have? Would it be a problem to have more than 10,000 notes there?

Started using http://vimwiki.github.io/ after seeing it on HN. I've been quite happy, although it only supports plain text. The first-class support of images/multimedia here looks really nice.

I want to give vimwiki a try, but I need to be able to also use the wiki (read, search, navigate, write) from mobile. That's the only thing keeping me from trying it. I think I could store the files in Dropbox and at least read them from mobile.

If you like vim, you might like my Miki: Makefile wiki. Works with restructured text and markdown. It's just a makefile. https://github.com/a3n/miki

It's one of the most useful tools I've come across in the past few years, I use it daily.

I discovered TiddlyWiki almost a year ago when I was looking for a way to replace my tabletop RPG notes system. I was blown away how with how useful it is for my workflow. Friends picked it up for the same purpose, and others. Kudos team.

Ha, that reminds me of my small local markdown based wiki thing: https://github.com/madc/Miki

Bit outdated by now tough..

https://giki.wiki - same thing

I used TiddlyWiki as an internal wiki / training manual for an offline business I ran several years ago. It was great and it was simple enough that non-tech employees were willing to use it.

Wow, TiddlyWiki is still alive! I think I have a 10 year old thumb drive lying around with an early version on it. After cycling through Evernote, text files, and Google Keep, I'm eager to see what the TiddlyWiki experience is like. I'll be super impressed if I can import my 10 year old docs. (Though I'm not sure that would be useful...)

And for those who might be interested, a proposed stckexchange area51: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/105326/tiddlywiki?...

https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5

http://tiddlywiki.com/dev/

I think we still don't have a free opensource version of a personal wiki that supports the following:

1. Easy copy and paste (or import) of Web pages (including embedded images) 2. Embedding and resizing images 3. No server requirement. 4. Cross platform 5. Extensible

helps me rid my brain of all the things I may want to look up later... at a spot I would guess I once left them ...neatly interwoven, automagically related through some smart templating

I use SimpleNote because it has perfect sync from computer to cloud to mobile (conflict-free and instant). Maybe someone can comment here about how they achieve that with TiddlyWiki.

For me, syncing my TiddlyWiki through Dropbox has worked great. Might be tricky though with limited internet connection as it could cause conflicts if you do parallel editing, but so far it hasn't been a problem for me.

First thing I see upon loading the site:

http://thumbsnap.com/i/VSPJ7GZI.png?0130

Could you try with any extensions disabled? We've had problems with some recently

It appears to be the Ghostery extension in my Chrome blocking requests to Google Analytics.

(If I disable it, it works fine).

Thanks nacs we've fixed the crash with Ghostery for the next release

https://changelog.com/podcast/196

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