Bumping this thread because…
… there’s a fresh sale under way at eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Speci … vener.html
… there’s a thread in Feedback debating what (if anything!) Tinderbox is good for
… there’s some good stuff in this thread!
Hello, I took advantage of the recent sale and bought a copy of Tinderbox. I am reading through the manual and am watching the screencasts on the developers website, but I figured I would ask here: Is there a good (visual) reference to starting out in Tinderbox? What I want out of this program is the ability to create timelines, character/setting hierarchies, and family trees (all of which seems possible from the developer’s website) and I am currently trying to figure out where to start. I know that I will get there eventually but I was wondering if anyone here (those who are more experienced with the program than the guy who took two hours figuring out how to change the default color of notes in map mode) could point me in the right direction. As always, I am amazed by the quality of the LaL forums and I look forward to talking with you soon!
Sincerely,
Daniel Paradise
PS:
What the heck is this the small floating tool bar that appears at startup that contains the “select area tool” the “select tool” the “create weblink” “create link” and “link parking space”? Can I add commands to this toolbar or simply get rid of it (I close it but it reopens like it thinks I am playing wack-a-mole)
Hi Daniel,
Tinderbox is just a very flexible piece of software, you can have different ways to use it.
And you would probably never need to know or use all of the features it presents.
Part I: Bare Essentials
There are a few things to get started on:
- The Outline view - this is where you just type out your thoughts in outline format.
- The Map view - great for visual people
- Using Links (explore this. You can always undo them with Cmd-Z)
With the above features, you will be able to get most of your characters mapped.
Every Tinderbox note comes with the Name (title of the note) and Text (body of the note). Think of Text as an extension of the Name. It’s up to you how you want to use the Name and Text of the notes, different users may input the same information differently, so it’s up to how you organize your information in your brain.
Part II: Getting used to the interface
Just about everything you want can be customized in Tinderbox. The color of the background, the notes, the font - size and color. You can even draw graphs on your notes in Map view (this is advanced stuff)
You can change the document interface (colors) at Edit > Document Preferences.
You can change the note properties by selecting the note and effecting changes at Window > Inspector.
Tinderbox is not hard to use if you enjoy it in plain vanilla (less on customizing colors). It will hold all your information like a personal brain, and you can organize the information to your liking anytime using Agents (you’ll need to know a little bit of logic for this to work) and Adornments.
Shortcut keys are great to use with Tinderbox. I don’t know where I’d be without them.
: opens the note for editing
: deletes the note
: opens the note properties
: edits the note Name in place
: creates a child note
: creates a new note (on the same level)
: moves the note up (do the same for down)
Part III: Organizing the information
In Map view, Adornments (right click anywhere on the map and you’ll see it) are great for grouping notes (again, for visual people). They are specially created for Map view only, so you won’t find them in other views (yes, even Outline view).
Agents are like your little elves or assistants. They filter through all your notes in the document and show only those that meet a particular criteria. This particular criteria will require a little brain logic, input into the “Query” in order to work. It’s simple if you understand a little programming.
I’m not using Timelines yet, but you could always create a new document to test out the functionalities. Consult the aTBref. It answers most of the questions (just do a google search at the bottom of the page). Ask your questions in the Tinderbox forums, they are very helpful over there.
Good luck!
Daniel:
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visual reference: try this for a start: http://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/tinderbox/. The posts are written by a Scrivener user and contributor to these forums, Steve Zeoli. Also, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a parallel thread here that contains some good stuff, especially brookter’s post: [url]https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/todays-scrivener-newsletter-tinderbox/12942/1]
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the “small floating tool bar” is precisely as you’ve described it. It comes into play particularly when you’re creating links in the Map view. As far as I know, you can’t add commands to it or remove it. If you persist with the application (which I too am certain will do what you want and more), all will eventually become clear!
H
You can hide the toolbar – Command-Shift-T – it’s under the Window menu.
Cheers, Martin.
PS: you can also choose whether to have the toolbar appear on launch of the program, or on opening a document – remember that there are preferences for the whole program and for each document. Go to Edit>Tinderbox Preferences>General or Edit>Document Preferences>General and tick or untick “Toolbar initially visible”.
It’s worth recording that the first in what is promised to be a new tutorial series – CD or download – is now on sale: eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Tutorial_CD.html
I haven’t had time to download it yet, but it looks like the kind of thing that many Tinderbox novices have been calling for.
Thanks for the reminder, Hugh. I bought Tinderbox a few months ago and every few weeks I have another go at learning to use it in more than the most basic fashion. I have a collection of notes in colour-coded containers but the screen on my MacBook is so tiny that I can’t read them and I haven’t a clue what they’re all about. But, following your post, I’ve now bought the tutorial CD and I look forward to long evenings of puzzling over yet more passages of impenetrable jargon.
It makes writing a novel feel so easy in comparison.
cw
Lot easier with a double, single malt and ice. cr. 
8) 
Vic
No ice. Just a dash of spring water, please.
cw
My favourite (of many) is the term “deprecate”, as frequently used in the Tbx forums. It took me a while to realise the folk using it were not expressing severe moral disapproval of the computer code in question, Downton-Abbey dowager-duchess-style, but something else entirely. 
As you wish
Cheers
Thank you so much for clearing that up for me. It also took me a few minutes to realise that a ‘check’ wasn’t a tick but a ‘cheque’. And I did two years at an American school, so I should know these things. When all else fails I phone my-daughter-the-software-engineer who has a kind heart and great patience – and makes me find out things for myself – it’s something to do with her upbringing, apparently.
cw
Computer people adopt unusual terms like “deprecate”, and bend them slightly to their use. In modern parlance, “deprecate” is not nearly as stern as “deplore”; it just means, “this might have been the way we used to do things, but be warned – it might not work sometime soon!”
We hope the new tutorial CD (and download) helps clear up some of these mysteries. And we agree about the spring water (though I myself like an Islay neat, thanks.)
I’m using the trial version for a couple of days - I’ve just written a short story draft, and thought I’d try out Tinderbox in plotting the second draft, to see if I wanted to buy the software.
My conclusion is that no, I won’t buy it. I’m sure it’s probably magic, but at the moment I’m finding it kludgy and Windows-like.
The main reason is not the software itself, but the lack of any simple, direct, step-by-step tutorial to show its basic features. And please don’t point me to this acrobatfaq.com/tb_manual/tinderbo/notes.html or any of the other helpful sites about the software. They don’t actually do what a basic manual should do; they assume you already know the basics. It brings me back to the time when I moved from an Amstrad to a Windows 3.1 computer; I remember ringing my nephew and geek adviser then, and raving “If I knew how to ‘create’ a folder I’d be God effing Almighty”. It’s the same kind of basic knowledge of the program that the tutorials don’t address.
A couple of examples: the ‘map view’ of the notes open in a little rectangle in the corner of my screen. I took a look at the Preferences (the usual Mac place to keep tweakables) and could see no way to set its size and readabilty automatically to open to full screen; I made a bunch of characters and then linked them in various ways, and accidentally clicked on something and closed this ‘map view’; I opened a new map view and all the characters were still there but their links were gone. These are typical beginner’s mistakes - but a good tutorial for beginners would have saved them.
I can’t help feeling that the makers are shooting themselves in the foot by failing to have great tutorials; there may be thousands of possible customers - hundreds of thousands, even, if they got into the education and civil service markets - who will try out the software for a day, using the existing tutorials, and give up. A software trial should be a seduction, not an obstacle course.
And the money thing, of course. Very, very dear.
First of all, I agree completely. Eastgate should have better “how’s this thing work” videos on their web site for people who are just getting a taste of the program. However, I am not sure if one can ever shake that “obstacle course” feeling with Tinderbox. I’ve been using it now for about two years, and, while I can handle the basics very well, I still hit hurdles with it all the time. The secret to Tinderbox bliss is not getting frustrated (too much). For me, the advantages of using Tinderbox far outweigh the frustrations, but I acknowledge that wouldn’t be true for everyone.
BTW, you may already have checked out my review of Tinderbox on Mac Appstorm, but if you haven’t you might find a little more help relating to getting some of those basics. The link is here:
mac.appstorm.net/reviews/product … tinderbox/
Steve
It was among many, many, many pages and sites I visited in trying to get the horrid thing working, and your piece was without doubt the very best.
An example of the bafflingness: in the screencast eastgate.com/Tinderbox/video/Planning.mov - intended to teach you to plan a book using Tinderbox - there’s the statement “We select the Note button”. I couldn’t see where the speaker was finding this, and went fishing frantically around the menus. Finally (now too late; I’ve used up the trial), I realise that he’s failed to say "Select the Note button, the little snowflake-like button on that baffling palette with the three tragic rectangles saying “empty, empty, empty”, perhaps designed to replicate the barren feeling of trying to get it working without help; and I further realise that this ‘Note’ button is on a palette quite different from the one I see in the trial version, which is quite different. Dear God.
Yes, there is simply no manual that really works. No walk-through for beginners. A book “Tinderbox for Dummies” would skyrocket the sales, I’m sure, even a small one. Everything you learn about how to use this application (which radiates a strong “wow-supposed-one-would-understand-at-least-the-basics-one-could-do-amazing-things-with-it”-feeling, which is why one does not simply give up and use AppCleaner to get rid of it) you learn elsewhere in the internet, not on their homepage. (It took me a year to find out how to call up “Rename” via keyboard 
) (You use the Enter key, BTW, not the Return key.)
This is why I don’t upgrade anymore. Not until I have groked the functionality I already have at hands. Which will take another ten years at least, I think. Until then, I use the version I have to do tiny things with it, and keep on staying miles below Tinderbox’ possibilities.
An awesome piece of software, nevertheless. Unfortunately, it seems there was no awesomeness left for a decent introduction.
I’m waiting for the Mac version 
What’s the Enter key???