Lets talk about tables. Lately there has been a focus on tables of tiddlers and there fields (not static wikitext tables) and some great plugins has been developed. Lets talk about the what, the why and the future of tables in tiddlywiki
What tables when we look at tiddler-tabels, i.e. tables that list tiddlers, not wikitext tables, I find it a bit confusing with the many options. I see three great plug-ins at the moment. - fields2table <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/TiddlyWiki/fields2table%7Csort:date/tiddlywiki/Pizophc7aFk/Ek0Ho2JHAQAJ>by Mat: simple and quick to use, in-table edits. I like this because it is simple an fast to use and the inline editing is realy useful. The way you specify what fields to use as columns without editing the tiddler in edit mode is also nice. - Tiddlytables <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/tiddlywiki/tiddlytable%7Csort:date/tiddlywiki/VFf0ZJW_Noo/Mv22wtg4BAAJ>by Alan Aldrich : very extensive, lots of options and nice GUI, beautiful tables. However for me this is overkill as I only have 5 tables. - Dynamic <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/tiddlywiki/tiddlytable%7Csort:date/tiddlywiki/c4xVcquRsAc/nMOll3cZAgAJ>tables as part of Shiraz by Mohammad: this has all the best from tiddlytable (that it is derived from), but keeps it more simple. beautiful tables, many cosmetic customisations, sort by column click (very useful) and it also has inline editing. There is a trade of here between easy of use and features. Starting from fields2tabel it is simple fast and easy to edit, bam here is your table. Dynamic table a bit more to understand a bit of a barrier to get going but much more beautiful and realy handy with column sorting. Tiddlytable has, for my usecase way to much going on and to much learning, but looks realy powerful so if I had a greater need for tables this might be good. Why tables For some tiddlers like my index of books to read, I use a handful of fields in them. For those kind of tiddlers, tables are very handy to sort by different criteria (year, genre etc.) and it gives a good overview. However I am not sure if it breaks with the TW-philosophy of the tiddler as the smallest unit and tags as the main organiser. Like TW has changed the way I think/interact with knowledge, I think these tables have done it too. when using tables I have a mindset of spreadsheets/DB. I tend to seek to find and overview, to fill missing fields, where the "wiki mindset" gives me a mindset of seeking connections and mental maps. I am not saying tables a bad but I think they change the room for doing an situating knowledge. Or is it just reinventing spreadsheets? that's worth pondering on. Future use and development The main organising mechanism in TW is filtered list of different kinds (list-link, toc, tags). Tables is in essence also just a filtered list that is showing more data. You can (and I have in the past) use the list macro, to make a list showing many fields of its entries. As an example I have a list of users in my company that shows there name, what special software they have and version no. What these tables plugin do different, is making it *easier to make "list with fields* showing", *fast to sort* ( and shift) by different criteria, and *fast to edit field values* in bulk. This is very useful. So this is my proposal. Imaging that you make a standard TW list, and at the top left corner (or elsewhere) there is a small toggle button. table view on/of. with this you get a table view of your list with all fields present for the filtered tiddlers. You can do some edits and turn list view back on, or you can leave the table view on if it is more appropriate for what you are doing. Or you could use it to get an overview, make a quick sort by the relevant field and turn back to list again. I think this could be a good way to hop between wiki mindset and database mindset (as commented above) and give the flexibility to use the best of two worlds. what do you think. would it be something worth perusing? unfortunately I would not be the right person to implement his idea. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tiddlywiki+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/af5f176a-9d96-46d5-9393-ddb0d88dbec9%40googlegroups.com.
