The Scrivener Way cannot be out because it cannot be in - the Scrivener Way is everywhere. It is all around you.
Um.
Interesting that you say that you have never used TinderBox as a mindmapping tool - I guess I am missing a lot in that program. I agree with your analogy - the two programs do completely different things, and they can probably be used alongside depending on your workflow…
Best,
Keith
That’s an understatement! 
While I haven’t been able to “delve” into TB due to lack of unicode, I own it and have used it at times. For those who don’t understand what it can do (I don’t say “what it does” because it can do many things), or who feel it’s just like Stickies, or who aren’t sure about the difference between it and other outliners, I’d recommend taking a look at some of the screencasts they now have up on the Eastgate site…especially the ones about setting up a “diabetes tracker”; they show the basics of what TB is really capable of.
I do think that’s the BIG problem with Tinderbox: just what the hell IS it?
I am in a minority of users in that I “got” it pretty much straight away. There is one conceptual flaw (lack of semantic linking, for Tbx fans here) but otherwise I’d have to describe it as an almost limitlessly flexible thinking/writing environment. I’ve used it for three books & currently on the fourth, and for numerous other projects (a couple of academic papers, lecture notes, a stage play in progress etc etc), and I’d not want to be without it.
The downside is that the almost limitless flexibility comes at the price of almost limitless complexity. Out of the box it’s fine as a note-keeper, organiser and retrieval system, but to go beyond that you need to get under the hood. As for the price – it’s like saying “I drive a Volvo and the hell I’d pay $400,000 for a Cessna”… until you realize that a Cessna can actually fly. Then the cost/benefit equation changes somewhat…
For me, earning my living from words, $200 is a small price to pay (especially written down over three years) for something I use every day. I think we’ve got used to Really. Cheap. Software. Tinderbox costs me $0.25 a day. That’s cheap.
And, yes, I would have paid a lot more for Scriv
8)
The strange thing about typed links is that Tinderbox does allow you to create them, whether from note to target, or from text link to target. You can say, “This link means ‘supporting evidence.’” Then comes the oddness in that you can do very little with that information automatically. Sure you can manually browse it, but that is tedious. The latest release does include a template function that allows you to export link lists, filtered by type, which is getting there – but you still cannot say in an agent: Status=unverified & #linkedTo(supporting evidence), to find all notes that need to be fact checked, that also have been marked as being supporting evidence by some other item in the network.
You can somewhat work around this problem in certain scenarios, but it would be so much easier if agents reacted to the notion of whether or not a note is networked, and why. Hopefully that gets addressed in the coming year.
Agreed on the price. If you actually figure out how to pull back on the yoke and take off in Tb, the cost is a pittance for what it does.
I bought it and have yet to get too deep into the text. I’ve read a bit and am enjoying the book. I am definitely a Tinderbox newbie however.
Too many apps, too little time, I’m afraid.
Yes – I was surprised at the lack of that functionality. As you say, it can be kludged, sort of, but a simple “Show me all the “see also” links from this note” – a sort of Nakakoji view but useful – would do more than anything else to demonstrate to new users the power of Tbx. (That, and a live Road Map view, which Tbx users here will immediately grok.) I’ve been harrassing Mark Bernstein about this for years but without success, so far.
Perhaps Scrivener 3 will have something…
That analogy made me laugh out loud … I drive a Volvo, and I wish I could afford a Cessna, because I’m learning to fly one 
And then when you figure out how to pull back on the yoke even further and stall and spin in, the cost is ruinous 
(From one who, playing with rules, replaced the text of an entire book draft with ten thousand notes saying “This is some note text blah blah yadda” and then, in a hideous reflex, hit Save.)
Aaaaargh! :mrgreen:
I never do more than scratch the surface of Tinderbox, but it has run my blog for years, and I did plan my last book in it. Tbx now comes with Yojimbo, an excellent database thingy. And as a newcomer to Scrivener - just writing my first article in it (liking it enough to recommend to my book editor) - I can foresee a workflow for the next book that goes something like Safari -> Yojimbo for research, then Tbx for planning the structure, and Scriv for the writing, pulling relevant material out of both into the Scriv environment.
Pip pip!
I think that would be an extremely flexible workflow. I auditioned Yojimbo a while back, and while I liked it, I didn’t like it enough to shell out any cash. The next time I upgrade Tb I’ll be glad to have it. It looks like it will be a nice “inbox” kind of application. The type of place where you stash things that interest you, but do not have the time to fully read.
That’s exactly the way I use Yojimbo. It’s very accessible. I pop all kinds of things into it. Later sort them out and put them elsewhere, delete when done, or… just let them pile up.
I’m really glad to have it. And I got it because Mark Bernstein (of Tinderbox) extended the free inclusion of Yojimbo with a Tinderbox upgrade backward two months. So I just got in the door with it.
John Robert
He’s a nice guy, Mark. Popped in to see us when he was speaking/holidaying in NZ.
I’d played with Yojimbo too, but when MB added it in to the last Tbx version increment package, I had an excuse to use it properly. It is good - makes it easy to get stuff stored away - nice bookmarklets for Safari, and a “drop dock” - and very easy to find things afterwards. I’d like some flexibility with the tagging - some sort of tag “stamp” would be nice, but the developers are responsive - and busy.
Perhaps Scriv could offload its research folder to Yojimbo, or offer interoperability (mind you, I’ve no idea if that’s even possible/feasible)…
Pip pip!
Exactly.
Tinderbox is like Inspiration - a combination outliner and mind-mapper.
However, Tinderbox also has a build-in programming language, note attributes (which are like database fields - but which can be written in on-the-fly), and an extensive export template system (which allows one to create a website out of one’s outline, for example).
The programming language can be used to create agents (which are like automated database searches). If there are too many agents used at once, it can slow down the programming significantly.
The combination of attributes and a programming language makes Tinderbox like a database. However, unlike a database, there is no fixed form into which one enters data in Tinderbox.
In comparison to Filemaker (a database program), both can have fields added on-the-fly. But Filemaker doesn’t have Tinderbox’s outlining capability nor its mind-mapping capability. Thus, in Filemaker, note-writing is a fairly rigid pre-defined task, whereas Tinderbox is a much more unstructured in data entry.
Tinderbox cannot handle huge numbers of notes since it uses a straight XML file for holding the data - without having indexes like in a database to speed up searches. If one is to write a textbook which has more than 10,000 notes, then Tinderbox may become too slow to use. The mind-map of such a project would also be extremely unwieldly - thus negating that function of Tinderbox. Tinderbox’s author recommended using a database when one has a huge number of notes.
For lightweight outlining and mind-mapping, Inspiration is fantastic. Inspiration also creates prettier graphics than Tinderbox can for mind-maps used for presentations.
I can’t understand Tinderbox. From what I do understand though, I can’t quite understand how it’s better than a whiteboard?
I would agree if what you need of an application is a whiteboard. In that case, something like OmniGraffle would probably be a better choice, and cheaper (even for the professional version). Tinderbox’s map view, which is the view most similar to a whiteboard, is a minuscule fraction of its power, which is more well expressed in the programmatic handling of data. If the manipulation and complex handling of information at a code level is not what you need, then there are probably better places you can spend your money. To put it another way, if you played with Tinderbox’s map view and presumed it to be no different than any other spatial-visual graphing application, you really, on all due respect, only scratched the surface of it.
Look at it this way, each “node” in the map can be programmed to do things. Further, groups of nodes can be programmed to do identical things based on their type. This is referred to as Prototyping. Each node can submit to its prototyping, or override specific aspects of its on a point-by-point basis. The sky is nearly the limit in terms of how you can program a node. You can even have it react and change itself according to where you put it on the map! It can be aware of its siblings, and its siblings can be aware of it. For large information problems, you’ll not find a more elegant solution—but for quick diagrammes of ideas with no depth beyond what can be seen, it’s probably overkill. It can be used for that, but I would only recommend such usage for people that already own it—otherwise its too expensive and complicated.
I agree with the above, in some ways it is more like an SQL compliant database. If you know how to program in SQL, you can do some awesome stuff, but its even more freeform than that, at the expensive of not being as robust in a large-scale environment. A good SQL database can handle millions of rows. You’d be insane to put that much information in to Tinderbox—but using an SQL database like Tinderbox would likewise be an exercise in madness. It’s just not as flexible.
I have put up three views of Tinderbox at my blog. The point of these posts is to show how versatile and useful Tinderbox is even if you do not grok all of its amazing functionality (which I still do not).
Here are the links:
welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/ … tinderbox/
welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/ … ox-part-2/
welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/ … es-part-3/
Perhaps these will help you decide if Tinderbox is for you.
Steve
Steve,
I found those blog posts interesting and useful. Do you plan to do any more?
H
Hugh,
I am hoping to do some additional ones, but haven’t found the time recently. I will put a notice here and on outlinersoftware.com when I have something new.
Steve