Drupal + Tiddlywiki

Hi Robert,

you were saying...

" you'd have to load the entire contents into your browser, if I'm not mistaken. This makes it worthless for big sites..."

Yes but I dont think you'd want to load a whole drupal site in a tiddlywiki, that would definitely be overdoing it, instead I'd expect to have tiddlywiki based pages for specific purposes. or have tiddlywiki concepts leveraged more generally across Drupal.

also, as you point out

... "This also won't work very well in Drupal, in the end, because the whole Drupal page, not just the middle content, is dependent on what is being loaded. The blocks that appear, the theme, the menus; these all react to what content gets loaded and adjust themselves accordingly. That would be hard to emulate in Tiddly..."

Which could be an issue, but consider if we created a new node type (a tiddlynode) and specified for tiddly nodes, blocks simply get inserted as Tiddly Default Menu or sidebar items (if you look at the tiddlywiki, there are default tiddlys that cant be changed. Like the main menu. It seems that it would be possible to transform a block into a default tiddly item/block. And so long as the tiddly is treated as a distinct node then the blocks/content wont need to react/change unless we exit that node. so once brought in on display of the tiddly node being accessed the page is self contained and can be browsed tiddlywiki style until a link to a different node/page is clicked. One interesting point that raises is that the tags in a tiddlywiki literally only belong to items inside its specific node I dont see this as a problem but in fact a nice feature, because it localises the applicability of the tags while in that node. (Maybe theyd have to be known as tiddlytags to be distinct from global tags, though they could still be added to the global pool, hence the tab bar in a tiddly might have another tab for alltags not just tiddly tags.

Anyway, Heres a section from the code for PHPTiddlywiki:

(let me know if Im wrong, but all these variables can be sucked from the drupal database and could be extended to populate any number of blocks or even blocks within tabs (even cooler), the only difference for the user is that when clicking on a link in a drupal derived block item they are likely going to be taken to a new node elsewhere on the drupal site rather than the current Tiddly node they are on - again the tiddlywiki allows external links.

// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Menu and sidebar functions
// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

var currentTab; // The id of the currently selected tab

// Refresh everything
function refreshAll()
{
refreshHeader();
refreshMenu();
refreshSidebar();
}

// Refresh all parts of the header
function refreshHeader()
{
// Get the site title and subtitle
var theTitle = getTiddlerText("SiteTitle");
if(!theTitle) theTitle = "SiteTitle";
var theSubtitle = getTiddlerText("SiteSubtitle");
if(!theSubtitle) theSubtitle = "SiteSubtitle";
// Set the page title
document.title = theTitle + " - " + theSubtitle;
// Do the title
var place = document.getElementById("siteTitle");
while(place.firstChild != null)
place.removeChild(place.firstChild);
place.appendChild(document.createTextNode(theTitle));
// Do the subtitle
var place = document.getElementById("siteSubtitle");
while(place.firstChild != null)
place.removeChild(place.firstChild);
wikify(theSubtitle,place,null,null);
}

// Refresh all parts of the main menu
function refreshMenu()
{
var place = document.getElementById("mainMenu");
while(place.firstChild != null)
place.removeChild(place.firstChild);
var menu = getTiddlerText("MainMenu");
if(!menu) menu = "MainMenu";
wikify(menu,place,null,null);
}

// Refresh all parts of the sidebar
function refreshSidebar()
{
switch(currentTab)
{
case "tabTimeline":
refreshTabTimeline();
break;
case "tabAll":
refreshTabAll();
break;
case "tabTags":
refreshTabTags();
break;
default:
refreshTabTimeline();
break;
}
}

creating a simple standalone nodetype for a tiddlywiki may be the best way to get a feel for things before leveraging the tiddlywiki concepts more broadly across drupal. For me Id like to see the "My Workspace" module remodelled as a Tiddlywiki first. (with collaborative books as a close second ) Because the "My Workspace" (or even just the "My Account") is meant to be a user centric view, which would fit well with what the tiddlywiki provides. The tiddliwiki concept would really make the workplace useful, fun and a central place for members to launch everything from.

Access and editing of content would be a snitch in a tiddlywiki node. (What Im thinking is that we would have an additional link when editing a tiddly for "advanced settings" so that usually editing would simply be making an update to the content body item of a node (so long as allowed), and only if they needed to would they hit advanced settings which could either take them to the full edit page to change author/publishing mode/images/attachments etc etc. This starts to cross the line where I think that once we see a simple tiddlywiki node in action, we will be much better placed to see the value of its concepts more broadly and integrally applied across drupal.

Ok Ive said too much already :-) sorry for being so longwinded