Tiddlywiki with Roam Research like functionality | Hacker News Reader

Tiddlywiki with Roam Research like functionality

rr-tw5.github.io

116 pointsthunderbong42 comments

I couldn't go back (with Back button) once I visited the page https://rr-tw5.github.io/#DAILY%20NOTES. Honestly I really hate this style that many sites are using :(

THIS. Last time I pointed this out on another site I got downvoted. There really is no excuse to break the down button and if the abuse becomes widespread I can imagine browser devs will react the same way they did with popups.

As soon as browse nav was busted I totally lost interest in any benefits this app has. If nothing else it’s shoddy development.

You probably got downvoted because it was against the sidewide guides.

I sometimes/often wish there was tags on submissions so that one could avoid even clicking on stories that had this "feature". It would also be great if I could get a feed without, e.g US politics in it.

Same here. Additionally, it doesn’t work on mobile as the menu blocks the content.

That's the initial page that clicking on the submitted link redirects to. The back button seems to work in a standard way for navigation with the webpage itself (as it's just a single html file; it's Tiddlywiki after all); it seems that the back button is broken only across the initial navigation from an external site to this webpage. That's ok with me personally (just have to long press/long click the back button on Chrome/Firefox, and on Safari even the initial navigation works fine), given everything else that this page is doing. (Besides, in practice if you were to use this you would be opening the downloaded index.html file in a separate tab/window anyway, not navigating to it from other webpages.)

Hmm, seems to work for me here. And that's after I clicked around a bit too. Then multiple back button clicks returns me back to here. (Safari)

Same for me. Firefox on Windows.

I noticed that the back button continued to work with Firefox on Linux, but the keyboard shortcut (Alt+left arrow) did not work.

I turn off javascript using noScript when this happens.

My default for noScript is to trust sites because browsing the web with javaScript off is both painful and not a privacy improvement.

Moving sites to untrusted blocks annoying pop-ups. And every time I provision a new computer, Wikipedia reminds me to install noScript.

TiddlyWiki runs entirely in the local browser, without any server-side logic – sharing it with the world is an atypical use-case to me, aside from plugin demos. https://classic.tiddlywiki.com

Holding down the back button usually does the trick.

There is also a good alternative called TiddlyRoam, that icludes graph view of your connected notes.

https://tiddlyroam.org/#quickstart

Do people find this graph view useful ? I have never seen the practical usefulness of this. I usually just click through the links or use search to navigate to what I need.

I've been using org-roam for my research for a couple of months now, which has a lot of overlap.

The org-roam-server visualisation are really useful for me, since it makes it easier to see what areas have sparsity in them and should be expanded upon. Plus it gives me something more tangible to look at to understand how my research is expanding, there's a bigger sense of "building something". https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam-server

Ok, I guess the difference here is that my note-taking is write-heavy and I go read/lookup something only when I have a real use case for it - which is different from traditional research, which is the primary focus of these tools.

Have you tried obsidian? It seems to address some points that you are looking for (graph, linked notes, etc).

tiddlywiki to me is scary concept compared to plaintext, it always frightens me that data becomes corrupted or not recoverable from from that html/js blob.

But it is also very cool concept, it could be much powerful than it is, think smalltalk like VM inside HTML file.

you can use the node based tiddlywiki and it saves the tiddlers in seperate text files. with the markdown plugin it saves to markdown. With obsidian you can use the markdown as well, or with kiln you can export to gemini or the small web

will it work like external storage, or like backup/export on save ?

It autosaves to the filesystem whenever you make edits. Until you hit save, though, it saves them to a separate Draft file.

Well, in a sense it is plaintext as your data are kept in simple divs within the html file - just open it in notepad and all your data is there!

That's why I use it with git. Not only do I get the ability to revert a catastrophic fuckup, I also get the ability to securely sync across all of my computers.

The only thing missing to make it perfect would be a mobile client, but that's not huge deal for how I use it.

The thing I don't like though is that, because it's all in a single giant html file, it is prone to getting huge. Mine is pretty big, and every time I open it (in Firefox or TiddlyDesktop) there's a noticeable delay.

I'll have to look into breaking the monolith up into smaller files to avoid that.

There is a mobile client that works excellently called Quine 2. Ive been using it for a couple of years with a mobile accessed Tiddlywiki personal wiki and it works pretty good. I keep the file on iCloud and can open it from desktop and mobile.

Thanks for the suggestion, that app works great!

I managed to set it up with my repo using an app called Working Copy, so now I have the full workflow going on all my devices

Looks broken on Firefox Mobile, only the panel is visible.

You have to click on the double up arrows (^^) at the end of the bottom bar to get to the page. The sidebar (in desktop) covers the screen on mobile as well

I'm still looking for a good note taking solution for work.

I prefer something with a degree of spatial orientation, i.e persistent physical location/hierarchy. With the right organization it seems like tiddlywiki can do that.

Shared note taking tools absolutely need hierarchy. You can't expect your colleagues to know the way your brain sort things. In my opinion tools like roam research will never work for organizations. Especially for that reason.

I think it's mostly that my head needs hierarchy. I need help, to keep the order :)

I don't know what you do for work, but I am working on a note-taking solution[1] that is built around a note-card format and a (somewhat unique) multi-parent hierarchy system, while also allowing bi-directional links as in Tiddly or Roam, which can provide for a lot of flexibility.

Full disclosure though: the way collaboration works is optimized to allow for very granular sharing of cards, which is great when you want to share here and there with a wide variety of people (some cards you want to share with friends, some with family, some with your co-workers, some with your clients, etc). But if your goal is to collaborate with co-workers on a shared knowledge base, there are other tools that are probably better suited which we point people towards if that is their use case, like Notion/Craft/etc. Our focus is individual use first and then trying to seamlessly blend collab into that experience.

With that said, we do have a few teams using the platform so YMMV.

[1] https://supernotes.app

I’m using Agenda (Mac app) and still learning how to make the best use of it but I really like that it’s built around projects, daily agendas and notes tied to meetings.

The UX is imperfect but the structure is proving useful to me. It’s habit now that if anything needs to be recorded from a meeting, it’s in Agenda, and tied to the meeting, so I lose less context.

A challenge related to remote work, for me, is that if I’m not careful a day’s meetings can blend into each other. I’ve definitely had meetings “escape” me - I was on the call but a week later I can’t recall much and my notes on a paper aren’t as useful as they should be.

Try Obsidian.md possibly?