Tiddlers on the Web

How. What. Why.

Why is there a TiddlyWeb?

To get tiddlers on the web, with good behavior.

Chris Dent cdent.tiddlyspace.com @anticdent

Quick Overview

  • Me
  • You?
  • Osmosoft
  • TiddlyWiki
  • TiddlyWeb
  • TiddlySpace

What should we talk about?

  • Technical Overiew (How)
  • Tiddler Intellectual Genesis (Why)
  • Demonstrations (What)

Would like to convince you to give tiddlers a try.

Nothing New Under the Sun

  • TiddlyWeb is of, by, for the web, informed by opinions and choices.
  • Those choices are what makes the difference.

TiddlySpace

  • Place to store some stuff
  • Authentication and Authorization
  • Namespaces
  • Hypertext
  • Metadata
  • Multiple Representations
  • Indexes
  • Social Affordances

Useful To You?

A platform for rapid, iterative development of web apps with a simple yet flexible storage system.

Stigmergy

...a mechanism for indirect coordination between agents or actions
  • Information resources on a public network act as stigmergic structures.
  • Individuals who need a reminder.
  • Groups that need a third party guide.
  • Nascent groups accreting around ideas.
  • Cybernetic system of feedback.
  • Heard this sort of thing before?

Information Publishing

  • Web may be: "cool, another chance to put publishing back in the hand of people".
  • Web not: "information revolution".
  • Web has potential to keep individuals publishing, but danger lurks.

Doug Engelbart

  • Father of modern computing
  • Augmenting Human Intellect
  • Foment innovation with C activities

Information comparison breeds innovation. TiddlyWeb created to expand tiddler comparison opportunities.

TiddlyWeb

  • HTTP API for storing and retrieving tiddlers
  • Interface for persisting tiddlers
  • Interface for representing tiddlers (HTML, JSON, Atom, TiddlyWiki, etc)
  • Renderer for turning tiddlers into HTML
  • Bags: namespace, authorization and/or topical domains for tiddlers
  • Recipes: assemble (and filter) bags to create tiddler collections
  • Self-hosted or pluggable authentication.

The Tiddler

  • Title
  • Bag
  • Modifier
  • Modified timestamp
  • List of tags
  • Dictionary of arbitrary key-value pairs
  • Optional type
  • Text
  • Revision ID

The Tiddler

A tiddler is a revisioned web resource with metadata.

  • In a TiddlyWiki
  • Wikitext as HTML
  • Straight HTML
  • Image
  • SPA
  • Agnostic

History

Hybrid of two visions of hypertext, the web, information management and writing.

  • Jeremy Ruston
  • Me!

TiddlyWiki

  • Released 2004
  • All in one file HTML + JavaScript wiki
  • Successful open source project with active community
  • Osmosoft bought by BT

Blue Oxen Associates

High-performance, augmented, asynchronous collaboration think tank.

  • 2002
  • Inspired (and advised) by Engelbart
  • PurpleWiki
  • Purple Numbers

Socialtext

  • 2004: Saw TiddlyWiki
  • 2006: REST API and Socialtext Unplugged
Best REST API I've developed for? Socialtext, hands down. It just does the right stuff and doesn't complain. -- @bayworx

Osmosoft

  • Early 2008: TiddlyWeb starts
  • Spring 2010: TiddlySpace starts

Making it all Matter

  • Tiddlers
  • Open Source
  • Open Web

The Tiddler

(Reprise)

A named anything on the web. A resource with improved affordances available as one or in collections.

Open Source Development

  • Reference HTTP API
    • Good about HTTP
    • Not quite REST
  • Tiddler >= TiddlyWiki
  • Limited penetration

TiddlyWeb Is

  • Python (2.x) WSGI application, available from PyPI
  • Works on Unix (Linux, BSD, OS X)
  • Has been made to work on Windows
  • Large (?) number of plugins in tiddlywebplugins namespace
  • Can be deployed big or small

TiddlySpace is Born

  • Driving development
  • Expanding features

Complex search, PuSH, webfinger, websockets, JSON-P, CORS ("complex" support coming soon), oAuth (not yet, your help needed!).

Redside Winning

  • Expeditious feedback, fix, deploy loop.
  • Diverse userbase.
  • Widespread contributions.
  • Infrastructure cheap to acquire.

Good For BT?

For ORC (Openreach Cauldron) Osmosoft was able to ignore the backend and focus on frontend concerns, getting a working prototype in front of users quickly for accurate and timely feedback. Quick iterations followed. All before needing to establish any infrastructure with Operate.

Demo Links

The story of DentBook

TiddlySpace social affordances.

Thanks!