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TiddlyWiki Community Wiki

[edit] Main Page: How To link

I have removed the How To link from the front page portal. As I understand it, that page is (or will be) a collection of useful snippets from the mailing lists. But in order to be useful for end users, those tips need to be refactored into separate articles. -- FND 06:39, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Main page formatting

The main page is a mixture of MediaWiki format text, HTML and embedded CSS. Can we:

1. Move the CSS to a stylesheet
2. Replace the HTML with MediaWiki format text

My motivation for this is twofold: to make it "cleaner" and easer to edit, and so that off-line TiddlyWiki versions of tw.org can be created (using the MediaWikiFormatter and MediaWikiAdaptor plugins).

-- MartinBudden 15:17, 16 August 2007 (BST)

Thanks for taking an interest, Martin.

The front page is up for a major overhaul anyway; I will keep your concerns in mind then. However:

1. I quite like the idea of having page-specific styles on that actual page, instead of moving them into the global style sheet (i.e. MediaWiki:Common.css). I thought it was semantically more correct, plus it makes maintenance much easier...
2. Since wiki markup is quite limited when it comes to creating a proper layout, it would be very hard to create an appealing front page without some raw HTML/CSS magic...

-- FND 15:41, 16 August 2007 (BST)

I agree with Martin. Html magic maybe but css magic can be moved to a style sheet I would say.

-- SimonBaird 10:04, 20 August 2007 (BST)

FND, having CSS styles on the page itself makes development easier, but once they have been finalized they should be moved into a style sheet.

On the issue of HTML, you'll be surprised at the power of MediaWiki markup. I assert that it is possible to create an attractive front page using just MediaWiki markup.

Finally, you haven't addressed the point about being able to export the content from tiddlywiki.org to a TiddlyWiki. There has been quite a bit of discussion about whether the main TiddlyWiki documentation should be in a TiddlyWiki or in a MediaWiki. One of the reasons that we decided that a MediaWiki would be OK was that it could be exported to a TiddlyWiki. Thus there is some onus on the writers of the documentation to ensure that it is in a format that can be exported to a TiddlyWiki. The Main Page fails in that respect (but could quite easily be fixed so that it is exportable to a TiddlyWiki).

MartinBudden 10:44, 20 August 2007 (BST)

Apologies for my late response; the RecentChanges RSS feed seems to be unreliable...

I'd be happy to see a wiki markup only front page - but in my experience, those usually turn out messy at best (nested tables galore), which makes them hard to maintain.

As for exporting the contents to a TiddlyWiki, well ... that would be great, of course, and I'm trying to keep non-wiki markup out of regular pages.

However, templates and categories might prove to be a problem!? (Not sure whether the adaptor covers those - though, since TW supports parametric transclusion as well, it should be possible.)

Either way, this is certainly something to put on the agenda for next month's get-together...

PS: Concerning the use of MediaWiki for this project, I'm not sure there would have been any other viable option.

-- FND 10:05, 28 August 2007 (BST)

[edit] Raw HTML

Btw, when I had copied the page from MediaWiki, for some reason - a combination of a precautionary principle - and template-related messages from the original, I had removed the following note:

Tip for wiki admins: If you trust your users you can allow full HTML by setting $wgRawHtml = true; in LocalSettings.php.

On further reflections, I wonder whether this might be something to consider here, if this setting is not in effect already; among other things it could allow us to use iframe tags to display TiddlyWiki sites inside this MediaWiki environment

Robert Pollard 10:25, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid we can't do that. Since this is a public wiki, we can't trust all users. That setting only works for restricted-access wikis, e.g. in a corporate environment (see the manual).

-- FND 10:35, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Freely Available TiddlyWikis

I see that there is place on this wiki for plugins, themes, extensions, and such. How about a place for empty, but full-featured TiddlyWikis for specific purposes? For instance, I am using a TiddlyWiki (v2.3) that has been outfitted with Lindsay Donaghe's ContactInfoPlugin. For new-comers to TiddlyWiki, it might be easier for them to download an already setup TiddlyWiki with ContactInfoPlugin than try to set it up themselves. The TiddlyWiki could be preconfigured with a GettingStarted tiddler that explains in detail what they could do.

-- DSM

[edit] CAPTCHA

I'm afraid to say that the CAPTCHA used in account creation is absolutely useless. It would be rather trivial to program a script which can solve a simple math sum. Not only that, but there is absolutely no audio equivalent. Why not rather use the services of reCAPTCHA, a completely free service? Not only that, but we would be helping to digitize books from the Internet Archive. --Aeolien 17:30, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your concern. I'm aware that the simple math CAPTCHA is no obstacle for serious spammers - however, it does keep out the most primitive ones. So far we're not having any problems in this regard.

Nevertheless, I'll put the ReCAPTCHA extension on my to-do list.

(By the way: Since the math CAPTCHA is nothing but text, it should be fully accessible even to screen readers - so an audio equivalent should not be necessary.)

-- FND 20:27, 23 April 2008 (UTC)