Syntactic idea for when variable is a tiddler title to access field values

[twMat]

This does not work:

[ ...sortby{<myvariable>!!myfield}]

...because syntax does not permit a variable call inside the curly braces. Instead one has to split out the whole listwidget into a separate macro. But this is just not... elegant. It is a syntactic detail dictating the whole code disposition. It affects readability.

Considering that this is a common situation, couldn't this be solved more elegantly?

One idea would be to extend the variable call syntax: It is common that the variable operand is a tiddler title, so could it perhaps be extended to be a full text reference, i.e to refer to a fields content? <<myvariable!!myfield>>

Then the above filter would read [ ...sortby<myvariable!!myfield>]

Or maybe the new variable <<__var__>> syntax: [ ...sortby<__myvariable!!myfield__>]

Side note
I just realized that calling a variable has a lot of similarities to transclusions in the sense that you are, so to say, extracting what is inside it. So <variablecall> and {textref} seem to have potential to be merged syntactically... (TWX?)

[pmario]

So and {textref} seem to have potential to be merged syntactically... (TWX?)

I don't think so. <> is the indication for the parser to create a tree, that can access a variable.
{} is the indicator to create a transclusion.

Without this information, it wouldn't be possible to be 100% sure what to do. So additional info would be needed. Exactly the info we just removed.

[pmario]

Other operators allow us to specify a field. eg: [ ...sortby:myfield[from-tiddler]] or [ ...sortby:myfield<from-tiddler-the-variable-points-to>] or [ ...sortby:myfield{from-tiddler-the-tiddler-points-to}]

I think, that's consistent and covers all cases

[twMat]

[ ...sortby:myfield<from-tiddler-the-variable-points-to>]

Ha! Indeed that does it. Thanks!

[pmario]

imo https://tiddlywiki.com/#enlist%20Operator%20(Examples) has the same problem. I'll add more operators here if I find some