RTL Tiddlers in TiddlyWiki 5

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 is can be made. In order to be able to add RTL tiddlers to your TiddlyWiki follow these steps:
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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’s 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.

TiddlyWiki with the MathJaxPlugin
A tiddler with LaTeX equations.

Continue reading LaTeX for TiddlyWiki – A MathJax Plugin

Using Monospaced Font in the TidddlyWiki Editor

By default, TiddlyWiki uses its default fonts (Arial or Helvetica) for it’s tiddlers editor. While these fonts are more than fine as default font for the text in tiddlers, I found it much less convinient when editing tiddler’s. Furthermore, it’s 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 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’ll edit a tiddler you will do it using a monospaced font.

Over Looking the Simple Solution

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 which 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 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 – no predefined format which 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 looked over much simpler, yet as powerful, solution – a simple text file. Porting my rowing log to a simple, old-fashioned, text file provided me all the relevant features of TiddlyWiki, such as search, flexibility and working from usb-stick, while using less space and editable using a basic text-editor (or the powerful vim). Using reStructured Text, I got a nice readable journal that can be later processed into even nicer looking html files.

We all want to believe that we know to match the right tool for 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 over looking 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 became a very useful tool for me. Today, I’ve decided to organize my various recipes (somehow cooking and especially making deserts has turned into an hobby of mine), and as you can expect I’ve decided to use TiddlyWiki for the tasks.

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 is 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 it, the tiddler will appear correctly. Here is an example of what in RTL looks like after the fix:

A screenshot of an RTL tiddler
A screenshot of an RTL tiddler