A few years ago, I wrote about how to create RTL (right-to-left) tiddlers in TiddlyWiki. Creating RTL tiddlers is almost a necessity if you want to create tiddlers in a right-to-left language such as Hebrew or Arabic. TiddlyWiki5, the new version of TiddlyWiki, broke the old solution, but a similar one can be made. In order to be able to add RTL tiddlers to your TiddlyWiki, follow these steps:
Continue reading RTL Tiddlers in TiddlyWiki 5
Tag: TiddlyWiki
LaTeX for TiddlyWiki – A MathJax Plugin
Update: The MathJax Plugin for TiddlyWiki has a new home: https://github.com/guyru/tiddlywiki-mathjax
Some time ago, I came across MathJax, a nifty, JavaScript-based engine for displaying TeX and LaTeX equations. It works by “translating” the equation to MathML or HTML+CSS, so it works on all modern browsers. The result isn’t a raster image, like in most LaTeX solutions (e.g., MediaWiki), so it scales with the text around it. Furthermore, it’s quite easy to integrate, as it doesn’t require any real installation, and you could always use MathJax’s own CDN, which makes things even simpler.
Continue reading LaTeX for TiddlyWiki – A MathJax Plugin
Using Monospaced Font in the TiddlyWiki Editor
By default, TiddlyWiki uses its default fonts (Arial or Helvetica) for its tiddler editor. While these fonts are more than fine as the default font for the text in tiddlers, I found them much less convenient when editing tiddlers. Furthermore, they’re even a bad choice when one has code snippets in his tiddlers.
The following code snippet solves the problem by resetting the font used in the editor to a monospaced font. Just add the following snippet:
/*{{{*/
.editor {
font-family: DejaVu Sans Mono, Courier New, monospace;
}
/*}}}*/
To your StyleSheet tiddler (or create it if it doesn’t exist yet). Now, the next time you edit a tiddler, you will do it using a monospaced font.
Overlooking the Simple Solution
A few days ago, I’ve decided to start logging my rowing sessions. I disliked the idea of keeping the log on paper, so I’ve looked into a computerized solution. I ruled out Concept2’s online log book because I wanted something private that wouldn’t require me to register on yet another website (and sometimes internet access at my rowing club is broken). Soon, I’ve decided to manage the log using TiddlyWiki, a client-side HTML+JS wiki, which I wrote about in the past. It has some nice features:
1. It fits in a single self-contained file that is perfect to put on a USB stick.
2. It has built-in search features.
3. It allows great flexibility in how to log my sessions – there is no predefined format that I need to struggle to fit my sessions into.
The TiddlyWiki solution seemed great, and I’ve started using it. But as the title says, I merely overlooked a much simpler, yet equally powerful, solution – a simple text file. Porting my rowing log to a simple, old-fashioned text file provided me with all the relevant features of TiddlyWiki, such as search, flexibility, and working from a USB stick, while using less space and being editable using a basic text editor (or the powerful vim). Using reStructured Text, I got a nice readable journal that can later be processed into even nicer-looking HTML files.
We all want to believe that we know how to match the right tool to a task. But maybe, because we tend to adopt newer technologies and utilities all the time (because for a lot of tasks they do provide better tools), we end up overlooking simpler, “old-fashioned” solutions. If I take a moment now to look around, I can come up with several other places where new stuff is used instead of simpler solutions. Take a look around you, and I’m sure that you will be able to find some too.
RTL Tiddlers in TiddlyWiki
Update – For TiddlyWiki 5, see RTL Tiddlers in TiddlyWiki 5.
I’ve been using TiddlyWiki for a while now, and it has become a very useful tool for me. Today, I decided to organize my various recipes (somehow cooking, and especially making desserts, has turned into a hobby of mine), and as you can expect, I’ve decided to use TiddlyWiki for the task.
There was a slight problem, as some of the recipes are in Hebrew, and it seems TiddlyWiki doesn’t have built-in support for RTL (right-to-left) tiddlers. However, such support can be added via custom stylesheets and the tiddlers’ tags. The idea for this method was taken from this TiddlyWiki.
Create a new tiddler called “StyleSheet” (without the quotes). This is a special tiddler (a shadow tiddler) that lets you add additional CSS code for your wiki. Insert the following code into the newly created tiddler:
/*{{{*/
div[tags~="RTL"].tiddler {
direction: rtl;
}
div[tags~="RTL"].tiddler .subtitle {
direction: ltr;
}
div[tags~="RTL"].tiddler .tagged {
direction: ltr;
float: left;
}
/*}}}*/
Now, for every tiddler you want to be in RTL direction, just add RTL to its list of tags. After you do that, the tiddler will appear correctly. Here is an example of what RTL looks like after the fix:
