TiddlyWiki resurgent

Posted by MadaboutDana
Oct 13, 2017 at 03:03 PM

Ah, before appreciating the amazing Quine, you’ve got to appreciate TiddlyWiki.

TiddlyWiki is just a single HTML file. As you save “tiddlers” (notes), they are saved directly into the HTML file itself, so you only ever have one single file. That is the true beauty of TiddlyWiki - no separate notes, no complex of files, just a single, ever-growing HTML file. All the programming that makes it so powerful is built into that single file. And all the notes you take are also saved into that single file.

The problem is, most browsers won’t save edited HTML files directly to disk, for a variety of security-related reasons (well, they will, but only when saving web pages; this is a file loaded from disk, remember, not a web page from a server). The way around that is to use Tiddlyfox, which allows FireFox to save files (like the single TiddlyWiki file) to disk without any problems (a little notice appears to let you know your file has been saved).

Quine on iOS performs the same magic, i.e. allows you to save an edited HTML file to disk, which you can’t do from Safari. Now, I’m having difficulty making it work with iCloud (it creates an iCloud folder on my iOS devices, but the latter doesn’t seem to sync with my various Macs, or even with iCloud online. Probably an early version glitch). But it works very well with Dropbox, which means you also benefit from Dropbox’s versioning and backups (always a good thing when you’re taking notes in a single file). Quine’s sole function is to act as a container for TiddlyWiki. Once it’s created an \Apps\Quine folder in Dropbox, you can put any number of TiddlyWiki files in there and sync them with your iOS devices. I only use a single file at the moment, but that may change.

The only downside of syncing TiddlyWiki using Dropbox (via Quine) is that you have to explicitly sync the file one way and the other. So it’s important to remember which machine you were last using to edit your TiddlyWiki file! Quine helps you, by telling you that a particular file either needs to be uploaded (to Dropbox) or downloaded (from Dropbox), so it’s clearly keeping track of updates, but it sometimes takes it a few seconds to “register” which version of TiddlyWiki (local or remote) is the most up-to-date one.

But experiment with TiddlyWiki first, before playing with Quine. Only once you’ve discovered the true glory of TiddlyWiki will you find you want it with you everywhere…

The Quine share extension also allows you to save images and other files to your TiddlyWiki, in which case I assume it probably creates a subfolder (this is a good way of using external resources with TiddlyWiki).

There are versions of TiddlyWiki that work from servers; the tiddlywiki.com website has plenty of interesting links to hacks people have come up with. But I love the ultra-simple single file concept.

All the best,
Bill