Today I'd like to talk about TiddlyWiki, a fairly amazing piece of javascript powered software embedded in a single 2.5MB html file1 that you can work with locally or host statically. It bills itself as "a unique non-linear notebook for capturing, organizing and sharing complex information" and while that's accurate it doesn't really scratch the surface of what you can do within the system. I first played with the original version during the early 2000s when wikis started gaining popularity, but only started using the current version 5 after hearing about it on 🎙The Changelog Episode 196. Since then I've been using it's built-in journal functionality at work to log the tasks and service requests I complete on a daily basis. Text lookup is incredibly fast so it makes it very easy to see exactly when I worked on specific devices via both asset tags and service request numbers.
Most recently I've started a new TiddlyWiki instance for collecting my Tiny Dungeon related information as a game mastering aid. While I have a lot of this information on pdf already collecting the rules and assorted lore in a hyperlinked manner is still very useful. Particularly when the information is being drawn from several different pdfs or other other sources. And now that it looks like I'll be running my own ongoing campaign with my sons I can include that information as well.
As part of my Tiny Dungeon tiddlywiki I've started experimenting a little bit more with the built-in programability and transclusion capabilities. This is the part of TiddlyWiki that I've least taken advantage of until now, but undoubtedly it's single greatest feature.2 Transclusion is the process of referencing one wiki entry (or tiddler in TiddlyWik parlance) "A" from another tiddler "B" such that the content of "A" appears to be a part of "B". I put this functionality to use by creating a series of tiddlers for adventurer Traits that I tagged as "trait" and then referenced via macro from within a "Traits" tiddler. Every new trait that I create and tag appropriately is automatically linked from the Traits page in alphabetical order now and that's just a small example of the power of TiddlyWiki. I'm really looking forward to further exploring and mastering this deeper functionality this year.
Or alternatively you can use nodejs to serve a TiddlyWiki directory of flat files.
Although to be honest the documentation and examples in tiddlywiki form at tiddlywiki.com are pretty killer.