I think GTDTW is an excellent implementation, but the largest drawback is that there is no server side component. If I have to keep it on a thumb drive I can’t share it, thereby eliminating most of the “wiki” functionality. But it inspired me to look for other options, such as MediaWiki, which I am toying with. I realize that conceptually you may not want your tasks in a public wiki, so the wiki on a stick capability is an understandable draw for many.

I just started the GTD process, and found GTDTW very soon after I started the process, so I’m using it exclusively to manage my life right now. I have a USB key (with thumbprint scanner built in, a bit of overkill, but cool nonetheless) with GTDTW and portable firefox on it. I’m going to be installing Essential PIM for keeping track of contacts, though right now, my contacts go into my ipod.

I also wish there was a server side component, and have toyed with expanding it using XMLHTTPRequest in javascript to call back and load the data sections in the file. All in all I really enjoy using GTDTW, and even use it to print out index cards for keeping on me (right now, just shopping lists, etc)

I use MediaWiki for…mmm…I think it’s 4 projects right now, and I think it’s extraordinary.

You can just throw it behind a HTTP realm for pwd security, or you can also force sign-ins for a skosh of spam protection. I imagine you do a bit of fu to make it registered/approved member only as well.

Although it’s not as pretty and gee-whiz as TiddlyWiki, the functionality, scalability, and ease of use of MediaWiki are pretty great. If they could base it on text files and add Markdown, I’d be the happiest boy in the world.

There is a version of TiddlyWiki avalable that has a PHP ServerSide back end.

PhpTiddlyWiki - http://www.patrickcurry.com/tiddly/

I’m really enjoying the GTD TiddlyWiki. I have been looking for a system for a while, I tried Backpack but couldn’t see paying for more pages when I knew that, somewhere out there, there had to be a wiki I would like without having to tweak it into submission and without a steep learning curve. So when I saw GTDTW on lifehacker.com, I decided to play with it.

I’m kinda digging the single local file thing for some purposes. I have one file for GTD stuff — project notes, shopping lists, to-do list, etc. Since 90% of my work is done at one desk, this works for me. I do want to take a look at the PHP implementation — thanks Rob! — but so far, local is fine.

I’m also using a TiddlyWiki as a way to organize all my information for a study program I’m taking — all my essays, resources, study questions, book reports, unfinished assignments, next steps, etc. Several people have turned in wiki versions of their “final journal” in this course, and I understand why — it’s one of the only ways to keep the massive amount of small assignments in any sort of practical, organized system. I feel like I could actually use my notes and assignments as reference material this way.

In a perfect world, I would be able to link to files on my hard drive and not just folders. But like I said, I’m still playing with it. I may also need to write an autosave routine — I accidentally wiped four hours of work in my study program when I browsed away from the window without saving. Added another sticky note to monitor: SAVE YOUR WORK, GENIUS.

no safari support ):

Merlin, can you rally the troops to send some Mac/Safari savvy person to help with fixing the problems with Safari?

Re unnecessary adverbs: take the ly detector.

two more serverside tiddlywikis: http://phiffer.org/tiddly/ http://aasted.org/wiki/

I’m finding the non-server aspect actually a great benefit: not having to have an internet connection in order to access ones tasks manager is rather essential for a commuter.

I have found a bug however: deleting or renaming the default tiddly wiki from the ‘DefaultTiddlers’ tiddler forces a static, un-editable (and soon out of date) one to appear on the next load. If you do a ‘search’ you can get to the correct version of the event, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to remove the static one.

I love the printout aspect but I can’t seem to find a way to make firefox print without the file information at the top of the page and the date at the bottom.

arjuna: File->Page Setup->Margins & Header/Footer

Have only been playing with GTDTW, but it gave me a few ideas for my own desktop wiki project. Can’t depend on having Firefox or IE6 as most of the computers at school only have IE5.5. Besides, making a wiki is an interesting learning experience. :P

Not having a server-side component is the draw for me. I keep a copy on my USB drive, load it up on any platform (where there’s Firefox ;)), and go. However, I do not use it for my day-to-day activities. I open the contexts and print them out onto their cards every so often, and make changes, insertions, and deletions on the card. When it begins to get messy is when I print out more. The printer can write much smaller and neater than I can, which is nice.

Previously I used one-action-per-card, but my stack quickly grew to be almost half an inch thick, which was no fun to page through for next tasks. Now I carry about 10 cards at a time, and several are blank for new notes. I do miss pulling tasks from the tickler and putting them directly in the stack, however.

Upgrading is almost the most fun part, because it’s so easy. :)

If you want to use Camino find:

else if(originalPath.indexOf("file:///") == 0) 
    localPath = unescape(originalPath.substr(7));

and append:

else if(originalPath.indexOf("file://") == 0)
    localPath = unescape(originalPath.substr(16));

Printing lists to index cards is the main reason I decided to find a wiki and mod it to play nice with 3x5. I was running GTD out of text lists based on Merlin’s template. When I started an hPDA I knew I wanted to print lists with rich formatting while retaining the text-iness of Markdown.

Now I run my GTD lists and even my research support materials through GTDTiddlyWiki. Besides printing, the most important features to me are the search, the ability to work with multiple lists within one applicaton window, and the fact that it’s all client-side.

Wow, TiddlyWiki just replaced Instiki as my run-anywhere-wiki-on-a-stick. Kudos to both the original developers and the GTDTW implementors, this is functional elegance at its best :)

Not clear how you print to 3x5 cards? Can someone explain? (Looks like print to 8.5x11 and then trim. Is that right?)

Just set you paper size to 3x5 portrait in your printer settings and print directly to the cards themselves. Took me a few minutes of pondering to figure that one out too :).

Has anyone figured out how to print to 3x5 using a Mac without the URL, date, etc.? In Firefox (File -> Page Setup) there is no option to disable the header/footer. Since GTDTW doesn’t work in Safari I don’t know what other options I have. This is almost perfect for me…

File > Page Setup… has a header/footer section. Just blank the two textboxes.

There is no header/footer section in the page set up for osx.

Internet Explorer prints without the date but the margins are always funny. Mozilla also prints the date.

For you mac heads out there it was suggested in the google group to print from safari but you can’t save any changes.

Ok maybe I’m stupid..I took the blank wiki and was trying to insert my own heading but it won’t display this no matter how hard I try…What am I doing wrong? I have already saved it on my thumbrive steps I take include clicking on the heading :GTDTiddlyWiki clicking edit changing the heading click done

I even tried saving it again with alt s with no luck…

I’ve just played around with it so far, but I did want to thank you for the tip on turning off the animations. To be totally honest, that is what was keeping me from getting to far with it. Now that that is off, it’s sooo much easier to use.

Having no server-side is a must for me since I need it for work and home.

I also tried printing to 3x5’s on OSX using Firefox, but couldn’t find a place to edit paper size. Same thing with Firefox on WinXP.

wassupdoc: do a search for SpecialTiddlers, you need to change the site heading via the SiteName tiddler.

It would be cool (although I’m unsure if it’s possible) to store the CSS on a special tiddler, allowing it to be modified directly from within the wiki.

So for those trying out mediawiki as a server side wiki, there is a patch out there that lets you make pages private: http://conseil-recherche-innovation.net/index.php/1974/04/10/31-restrict-pages-under-mediawiki

I’m using this now, and I really like it. TiddlyWiki is cool, but I like the flexibility of mediawiki, as well as the lack of need for WikiWords which IrritateTheLivingCrapOutOfMe.

Using GTDTiddlyWiki with Post-Its + Moleskine Notebook (sorry for the long post):

My existing GTD system is inspired by the hipster PDA concept, but in a bound notebook instead of with loose 3x5s. It consists of a Moleskine notebook, 3x5” Post-Its, and a bunch of lists in MS Word (necessary for formatting). I print my lists onto the postits and stick them into the Moleskine notebook, with trimmed down postit tabs for index dividers. The notebook is my primary reference, and I can mark up the postits with a pen as much as I want without wasting pages in the notebook. When pages become outdated, I’ll make the changes to the list on the computer, print it out, and replace the postit in the notebook. Once this system is setup, it’s very easy to update, and I usually do it as part of the weekly review, only a handful of lists will need updating.

I flip the notebook over and start writing from the back when I want to make notes/journal entries. In the front of the book are a few extra postits, and a scratch pad postit on the inside cover that I jot down quick notes (like a inbox for my notebook). There are a total of about 30 postits in the book right now, enough to hold my complete GTD system, but the notebook isn’t a whole lot thicker than with just blank pages.

The GTDTiddlyWiki is perfect for my system, because it makes updating, accessing, and printing lists even easier than it was before. All I need to do now is update the lists that need it, and leave the updated lists open when I choose print, and the lists are queued up to the printer. To make a printing template, just print a list on a piece of thick 8.5x11 card, and then stick the postit to the printed area, and run it through the printer for the rest of your lists. I print in landscape mode, and have never had a paper jam on my printer because of a postit coming off. My printer won’t print onto 3x5 index cards, though placing a postit on a 3x5 for printing would probably work too. You don’t have to adjust the printer formatting at all for this, leave the date and page address on there, it just goes onto the template page.

In addition, I have as my “DefaultTiddler” an @TODAY list. It’s a list of Next Actions that I plan to accomplish in the next day, and I compile it the night before as part of the “downhill start” that has been discussed on 43Folders. This I print it out on a postit and have sitting on my desk for easy offline reference.

Hopefully someone finds this information useful. I could be persuaded to take some pictures of the system if there’s enough interest. I couldn’t find anything on the web of people printing to postits, so maybe this will inspire some improvements to people’s existing GTD systems.

I knew printing would be difficult (and you thought browser vendors were inconsistent!) for some people’s systems, but who knew that Firefox/Mac doesn’t have a page setup option to remove headers and footers? The kludgy answer may be to enter about:config in FF’s URL bar and edit the settings directly.

More about printing in the GTDTW.

GTDTW GoogleGroup printing topic.

My favorite feature is the single html file created. I’m a WxWikiServer convert who uses a wiki for limited PIM stuff and a lot of my writing for school, and after a while Wx just got too inflated to merit keeping on a drive with limited space. I think I’m just going to switch over to vanilla TiddlyWiki for ease of use and portability.

I’ve also started playing around with various portable Linux distros like Puppy and DSL, and not having to futz around with specialized wiki files that only work on Windows is definitely a plus. HTML is truly cross-platform and practically infinitely end-user customizable.

Features I’d like to see:

Edit Tiddly’s CSS from inside the wiki itself. The default color scheme on regular TiddlyWiki is just plain heinous.

Play nicely with my handheld — perhaps import/export in Palm todo format?

Better print abilities — maybe a default no-header/no-footer.

Moving tiddlies — click and drag, or maybe a “move” macro combined with the arrow keys.

this tool is amazing. I’m sharing tiddlers with others at work for creation of quick portals.