This caught me by surprise.

Thanks, Jeffery. I was just on the Eastgate page three hours ago and it was still talking about version 7.5.

Steve Z

The default note is refreshingly not dark brown with white lettering. I like it already.

Yes, that is a nice change. I am trying to figure out just what "Hyperbolic" view does. Have you seen a demonstration anywhere?

Tinderbox continues to be an app that looks interesting, but overly confusing. Their site has never done a good job of selling the “why” of the app. As much as I’m curious, I just can’t consider buying it without knowing how I would use it and what benefit it might give me.

I agree with everything you say. Especially the part about how poorly Mark Bernstein markets Tinderbox. He should be doing use-case videos like Beck does.

Steve Z

Drewster wrote:

Tinderbox continues to be an app that looks interesting, but overly
confusing. Their site has never done a good job of selling the
“why” of the app. As much as I’m curious, I just
can’t consider buying it without knowing how I would use it and
what benefit it might give me.

Tinderbox is a tool room full of interesting, sometimes complex tools. Just as one wouldn't walk into a woodworkers shop, look at the tools, and ask "why", I think "why" is not the question to ask Tinderbox. It's just tools. Sometimes, in the Tinderbox forum, the hardest thing for contributors to answer is "what are you trying to accomplish?".

Eastgate is generous with trials. Mark Bernstein is very generous with guidance and advice. Don't consider buying it without taking advantage of the those things.

Drewster wrote:

Tinderbox continues to be an app that looks interesting, but overly
confusing. Their site has never done a good job of selling the
why; of the app. As much as I'm curious, I just
can't consider buying it without knowing how I would use it and
what benefit it might give me.

I wish there was more attention paid to the manual and some videos.

Jeffery Smith wrote:
I wish there was more attention paid to the manual and some videos.

Completely agree. There seems to be a "let them eat bytes" attitude underlying the lack interest in helping to educate users

Mark Bernstein has written several editions of his book, A Tinderbox Way, to help users work through common approaches to using Tinderbox. Over the past 18 years the Tinderbox forum has been an active community where users have spent a great deal of time helping one another with questions and suggestions for the projects that forum participants want to accomplish. Some users, especially Mark Anderson, have with Bernstein's guidance contribute in depth reference sites such as aTbRef explaining the details of using agents, action code, queries, and all the other features of Tinderbox. Anderson, and other participants like Jim Fallows, Pat Maddox, Andreas Grimm, Beck Tench, and dozens of others have devoted many hours to explaining their use of Tinderbox and helping others -- always with Bernstein's active participation.

Sorry, I think "'let them eat bytes' attitude" is unwarranted.

JDS wrote:

>Jeffery Smith wrote:
>I wish there was more attention paid to the manual and some videos.

Completely agree. There seems to be a "let them eat bytes" attitude
underlying the lack interest in helping to educate users

I agree, Paul, that it isn't a lack of engagement with Tinderbox users that is the trouble with Mark Bernstein's approach. But he seems reluctant to do a better job of marketing Tinderbox to potential users. I suspect it is intentional, so he doesn't have to spend too much time answering customer service questions to less serious users.

Do you remember when he used to organize Tinderbox Weekends where groups of users would gather in Boston or San Fransisco or London to share how they used Tinderbox? I had hoped to attend one when it came back to Boston, he stopped that practice. Maybe not enough people attended.

Steve Z

The Tinderbox Weekends were good -- I never was able to attend one nearby, but I own all the materials produced with them. I don't know why they stopped -- I would guess diminished interest from participants and not enough time. Like George at Zengobi, Mark is the only developer for Tinderbox. He writes on his blog about his involvement with the hypertext group in ACM, travels to many conferences and participates there, and he has his own writing.

But I'll say it again, asking Tinderbox "why" is like asking a sheet of paper "what next" or opening Mathematica and demanding "what do I do". If someone asks "I want to keep track of my lecture plans for this semester", Mark, or Brian Crane, or others will definitely offer suggestions and help and samples. My point is, guidance for toolsets such as Curio or Tinderbox requires some initial idea from the user about where they want to go.

(There have been starter files published many times -- but since Tinderbox evolved quite a bit over the past 8 versions, these files are often outdated.)

It's a two-way street. Yes, the developer has to put forth some effort to explain the software, but the user has to put forth some effort to learn how to use it, without expecting instant, friction-less comprehension. Anything complex, like Tinderbox, isn't going to disrobe its secrets in a one-hour session. Maybe start with these screencasts, available from the Tinderbox site:

https://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Screencasts.html

If you can't figure out how and whether to use Tinderbox after watching some of those screencasts, then you may not know exactly what you want.

Devonthink, Bookends and Scrivener are all complex and rick applications. But less people complain about their complexity because the developers gave exhaustive manuals for their applications.

That is not the case with Tinderbox.
Come on Paul, you should not present Tinderbox way as a teaching tool for Tinderbox. It is not. It teaches you little about Tinderbox. I have read it from end to end. It is only conceptual/theoretical hodgepodge on why notes are important, and why we need to use Tinderbox to manage our notes.

I agree with Paul about the forum. It is very helpful forum. Mark Anderson is extremely generous guy. But, the forum never gives the beginner a starting point. The answers almost always assume some basic understanding of the app.

The "getting started" guide that comes with the app is a great startup. That thing needs to grow to a full user manual for TB to be useful and practical for most people.

---
My personal conclusion after using Tinderbox for many years is this:
it is great, flexible and amazing. It has the great potential. But, it is a great time sink. You will spend more time tinkering with the app than working on your problems. you don't need any evidence for this: just look at Beck's videos...how much she wastes fixing this image or that map; adding prototypes or changing the color the note.....it is just waste of time.

A focused academic would finish writing a journal article by the time I spend playing with Tinderbox. Tinderbox will not get me that job. The publication will.

I've read the same book you have. All three editions. It explains common uses for Tinderbox. It is not a manual; no one said it was.

Dellu wrote:

Come on Paul, you should not present Tinderbox way as a teaching tool
for Tinderbox.

One thing is clear from this discussion and others elsewhere: Tinderbox isn't for everyone. It isn't even for most people. And there is nothing wrong with that. What may seem a waste of time to one person is part of the exploration and learning process for another.

What I've always tried to convey about Tinderbox is that it can be remarkably useful even if you only scrape the surface of its capabilities. I think Beck's videos demonstrate this very clearly. I hope my videos have demonstrated this as well.

You can usually find a dedicated application to do the stuff you can do in Tinderbox (at least to some extent), but you get stuck in that application's method. That can be good. But if you like more flexibility, Tinderbox can give this to you. And there are things you can do in Tinderbox that would be hard to replicate in another app.

My very first Tinderbox article shows two very different applications for the Tinderbox:

https://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/2010/01/03/an-introduction-to-tinderbox/

1. Management of a single project
2. An active information "garage"

You could probably do these two disparate jobs with Curio, but there are very few other apps that can handle it. (Note: this old post uses a version of Tinderbox far removed from the current version.)

The way I used Tinderbox in this other article would be hard to reproduce in any other application, I think:

https://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/tinderbox-chronicles-part-3/

I guess my point here is to add my support to Paul, which is you need to bring your own needs and imagination to Tinderbox, otherwise you will be stymied by it. It is entirely understandable that many people don't want to spend their time this way. For those that don't mind experimenting, Tinderbox can be a remarkably rewarding application.

Steve Z

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

One thing is clear from this discussion and others elsewhere: Tinderbox
isn't for everyone. It isn't even for most people.

I think the point being made is that it could be.

I used TB for a couple of years and really liked it. Forum support was good, the aTBref also helped and Mark Anderson's small tutorials and often template files were also extremely helpful. The problem for me was that if you used it intermittently you forgot how to do things. This necesitated a log of how you built your TB what actions you were running. The more ambitious your TB the more friction this created.

The idea of adding any meta you like to any notes you create and connect them in multiple ways and views is a superb idea. My reason for dropping TB is that it was an all or nothing investment. Either you used it for everything and kept your knowledge on using, scripting, configuring active and fresh, or you ended up dreading opening a document you created a couple of months ago as you forgot how to do something simple. I often found it took me two days to solve a problem, right in the middle of a busy period. Someties I just couldn't solve it and so moved on to other tools.

The final difficulty was my move to iOS for over 50% of my work. But, this doesn't affect TB alone but other apps like Curio that don't do iOS.

I disagree that Tinderbox could be for most people without making it something completely different than it is. Having a thorough User's Manual would help, but it wouldn't change the fact that unless you're using the app all the time you'd have to figure out how to do things all over again. I have that problem with apps that are far less complex than Tinderbox.

Perhaps a stripped down version of Tinderbox (not the ill-conceived Twig app) would create a wider audience. Simple map and outline views with notes, prototypes and links, but no agents. Easier to execute exports.

Of course, Tinderbox can be used that way now (except for the exports, which I continue to find convoluted).

Simon wrote:

Stephen Zeoli wrote:
One thing is clear from this discussion and others elsewhere: Tinderbox
>isn't for everyone. It isn't even for most people.

I think the point being made is that it could be.

I used TB for a couple of years and really liked it. Forum support was
good, the aTBref also helped and Mark Anderson's small tutorials and
often template files were also extremely helpful. The problem for me was
that if you used it intermittently you forgot how to do things. This
necesitated a log of how you built your TB what actions you were
running. The more ambitious your TB the more friction this created.

The idea of adding any meta you like to any notes you create and connect
them in multiple ways and views is a superb idea. My reason for dropping
TB is that it was an all or nothing investment. Either you used it for
everything and kept your knowledge on using, scripting, configuring
active and fresh, or you ended up dreading opening a document you
created a couple of months ago as you forgot how to do something simple.
I often found it took me two days to solve a problem, right in the
middle of a busy period. Someties I just couldn't solve it and so moved
on to other tools.

The final difficulty was my move to iOS for over 50% of my work. But,
this doesn't affect TB alone but other apps like Curio that don't do
iOS.

Argh, why did this have to drop on Friday? :-) I paid for my upgrade immediately after seeing this thread this morning but suspect I won't get my registration code until Monday. I am endlessly fascinated by CRIMP software like Tinderbox, although I am not able to use it at work. But I dream of what I could have done with it all had I had it when I was back in graduate school, a mere mumblety-mumble years ago...

All of my attempts to incorporate Tinderbox into my workflow begin as making notes without diving into the Getting Started Manual (which could use some work by a technical writer). My frustration with that manual is that it refers to facets of the program referred to in the manual, but the same terminology is not used in the program. I think I immediately bog down in the attributes part, right at the beginning of the manual, So, for example, if the manual were to refer to the "attributes pane", one could go to help and type "attributes pane", and the pane would be opened or at least point to something in the menu system. Power users would know what the attributes pane is, but power users are not reading the first 5 pages of the "getting started" manual...I am.

That said, it could be argued that when you buy a pack of 3x5 cards, there are no instructions on how to use them. So, we create our own system of index cards for research without reason to complain. The very first version of Info Select. I loved that program. When it turned into a folding text sort of hierarchy, I found it much less helpful, and stopped using it.

I've just been dabbling with the new update and the new hyperbolic view is fantastic. It's a bit similar to the main ( normal ) view in The Brain, and I've been waiting for years on TBX to have a similar view. IMO it increases Tinderbox's usefulness tenfold when it comes to making sense of complex maps with a lot of links.
Best update in years...

... about Tinderbox's complexity. I think it made big strides in user-friendliness and documentation these last years. I remember starting out in version 5 ( or 6 ? ) and it was a whole lot more infuriating and with a terrible manual that was all over the place. Simple things seemed incomprehensibly difficult, and I pretty much gave up on it after a first attempt. It was until I found Stephen Zeoli's blog and his early tutorials that I had an "Aha !" moment and the more basic aspects of TBX started making sense. I'm still struggling with the more complex aspects and the scripting, but I've been putting it to good use since then.

I still think that the entry cost ( in terms of brainpower, not finances ) is quite high, and the temptation to use it for things that could be accomplished by simpler more focused applications is a mistake that can lead to frustration. I tried once to set it up as a GTD kind of system ( and it can certainly handle such use), but it just felt like using a jackhammer to put a nail in the wall. Setting up and maintaining the system took more time than executing the tasks. Using a specialized GTD app ended up being faster and more productive.

TBX shines for the more complex, abstract tasks like " I have all these notes and thoughts and I'm not sure where I'm going with them " and putting some order into chaos. The curve is not linear : you almost need to same amount of effort to do simple things as it is to do complex things. Of all the apps I use ( including many cited here like Devonthink, Scrivener, Curio ) it is by far the most complex one, and I only resort to it when I can't accomplish what I need by simpler application.

Hyperbolic view is a case of this sort of graph

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_tree

I believe it still somewhat experimental, meaning users will have cases that might not work well in hyperbolic view, and so feedback to Eastgate with examples will help shape the view as it morphs. I would guess pretty confidently that a significant portion of the features in different Tinderbox views, plus adjustments in action code, ability to "watch" documents in DEVONthink or Finder or Evernote, etc., result from customer-suggested additions or tweaks.

Eastgate added AppleScript support to Tinderbox 8 -- we can write scripts to create and update notes, now -- because of user requests.

Skywatcher wrote:

I've just been dabbling with the new update and the new hyperbolic view
is fantastic. It's a bit similar to the main ( normal ) view in The
Brain, and I've been waiting for years on TBX to have a similar view.

Dellu wrote:

just look at Beck's videos...how much she wastes fixing this image or
that map; adding prototypes or changing the color the note.....it is
just waste of time.

A focused academic would finish writing a journal article by the time I
spend playing with Tinderbox. Tinderbox will not get me that job. The
publication will.

This sort of comment does little to create a convivial or community-oriented space, which I presume is of benefit to both of us even if we don't agree on what is or isn't a waste of time. I don't mind that we disagree — and even imagine that we could learn a lot from each other since we see some things quite differently — but I'm less likely to consider your point of view when it is communicated in a way that feels insulting.

I concur with Beck.

Beck wrote:

Dellu wrote:
>just look at Beck's videos...how much she wastes fixing this image or
>that map; adding prototypes or changing the color the note.....it is
>just waste of time.
>
>A focused academic would finish writing a journal article by the time
I
>spend playing with Tinderbox. Tinderbox will not get me that job. The
>publication will.

This sort of comment does little to create a convivial or
community-oriented space, which I presume is of benefit to both of us
even if we don't agree on what is or isn't a waste of time. I don't mind
that we disagree — and even imagine that we could learn a lot from
each other since we see some things quite differently — but I'm
less likely to consider your point of view when it is communicated in a
way that feels insulting.