Tinderbox 5 is out

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Posted by Chris Thompson
Dec 11, 2009 at 01:09 AM

Just a heads-up that Tinderbox 5 was released today:
http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/updates/Tinderbox5.html

It finally supports multi-column outlines (it’s always had significant support for attributes, but could not display them easily in outline views). Lots of other long-awaited changes as well: RTF-everywhere, Unicode everywhere, integration with Snow Leopard text services, in-place editing of most views, significant usability improvements.

I’ve been harsh on this software on the past in terms of its usability, but this new release fixes most of what bugged me about it. The learning curve is still high, but that’s the case with most niche, powerful tools.

(Incidentally, InfoQube also recently got a visual map view. These two tools cover a lot of shared ground, e.g. support for true aliasing, hoisting, and attributes, but go about it in very different ways.)

—Chris

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Dec 11, 2009 at 02:05 PM

Chris,

Thanks for the heads up. I bought a Tinderbox license last spring, dabbled with the program through the summer, then decided to make it my personal note-taker of choice (for home us, not business, where I’m on a PC) a couple of months ago. I’ve just downloaded the new version, and it does feel like a more solid program—cleaner and quicker. Still quirky, but in a good way. Yes, the learning curve is steep… if you want to harness all Tbx’s power. But you can use the most basic functions which really don’t require too much learning, and do a lot with this application.

My biggest complaint (so far) is that exporting notes to other formats is too much of a process, one that requires HTML programing for anything beyond the most basic exports. This is where I’ve found the learning curve to be steepest, and in a function that is essential.

Steve Z.

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