This plugin contains tools to help work with documents that are structured as a hierarchical outline of tiddlers. The structural relationships within the document are expressed as lists: for example, headings have a list specifying the content to be shown under the heading.
TiddlyWiki is built on the philosophy that text is easier to re-use and work with if it is sliced up into separate chunks that can be independently manipulated, and then woven back together to make up stories and narratives for publication.
The components within the text slicer plugin include:
* ''the slicer'', a tool that slices up an existing monolithic document according to the headings, lists and paragraphs. It is available as a toolbar button for the browser, or as a command for use under Node.js
* ''document preview column'', a new sidebar on the left that shows the full text of any documents in the wiki and allows individual tiddlers to be opened with a click
* ''exporters'' for exporting the individual documents as HTML files (and for previewing them)
! Slicing Monolithic Documents
The tool can slice any tiddler that can be rendered as HTML, including both WikiText and HTML itself.
Documents created with Microsoft Word will need to be first converted to HTML. The library [[mammoth.js|https://github.com/mwilliamson/mammoth.js]] is recommended for this purpose.
!! Browser
In the browser, you can slice a monolithic document tiddler using the slicer toolbar button.
!! Node.js
The `--slice` command allows a tiddler to be sliced under Node.js:
```
tiddlywiki mywiki --slice SourceDocument --build index
```
! Working with the Document Preview Column
The document preview column appears at the left side of the screen. The content of headings can be collapsed and expanded to help navigation. Clicking on a tiddler opens the corresponding tiddler in the main story river.
Clicking ''Show toolbar'' causes each tiddler be preceded by a toolbar showing the underlying title. It can be edited directly to rename the tiddler. References to the tiddler in the ''tags'' and ''list'' are automatically updated to reflect the change, but note that links to the tiddler will not be automatically changed.
* Set [[story left position|$:/themes/tiddlywiki/vanilla/metrics/storyleft]] to ''400px'' (or more)
* It is recommended to also set the [[sidebar layout|$:/themes/tiddlywiki/vanilla/options/sidebarlayout]] to ''fluid-fixed''.
! Exporting Documents
Documents can be saved under Node.js, or previewed in the browser.
!! Browser
To preview a document, locate it in the preview column and click the button labelled "View document". The document will open in plain text in a new window. The window will be automatically updated as you work on the document.
Slicing generates the following component tiddlers.
Tiddler titles are generated automatically in most cases (but can subsequently be changed manually). The automatically generated title is made up of concatenating the following elements:
* root text (e.g. ''para'')
* a dash ''-''
* the first few words of the text of the item (up to 40 characters), separated with dashes ''-''
* if necessary, a dash ''-'' and a numerical index to make the title unique
For example, ''para-how-to-use-pentagonal-tiles 23''.
