A note may be designated as a separator. A separator is drawn in outline view as a horizontal line. The note's name, if any, is shown centred in a box-out in the middle of the separator line. If the note has no Name value or it is "untitled' the separator shows as a solid line. For separators no duplicate name warning is given if the Name value is left blank. An agent may be a separator.
Note that separators weren't originally designed to be able to be containers but rather like a (non-smart) adornment for outlines. However, they can be containers - even agents can be separators.
Just as adornments are only visible in Map view, separators are only shown as separators in Outline view. However, in all other views except Map view, a separator is visible as if a normal note. By the same token children of a separator are hidden in Map view - as their parent container is not drawn on the map. The latter can be a useful way to 'hide' content, either notes or containers, in a map without removing the content from the overall document.
No note icon is shown for a separator note so the age/level of content/age can't be judged although the separator is a fully functional note. In major views other than Outline and Map views, a separator is shown as a normal note.
A separator can still have normal note features like a Rule and OnAdd action and become a container by having notes added to it.
If data columns are enabled for the Outline view, separators still draw normally. Thus the data columns are not displayed for separator notes, unlike all other items in the outline.
Even if not needed as a separator for Outline purposes, making a Map item into a separator can be a way of hiding it (temporarily) from Map view; note that when hidden like this it can't be selected from the Map either. To make the item visible to the map it is necessary to find and select it in a view other than map and remove the separator status.
Separators, but not adornments, are included in $SiblingOrder whereas both are included in $OutlineOrder. This makes sense when considering export is where SiblingOrder values are most regularly used and where adornments do not appear.
A separator can link and be linked to. It can also have note text; in such cases Treemap and Chart views will show a 'dogear' symbol denoting text content.
To designate a note as a separator, check the Separator checkbox in the Create (Rename) Note dialog, or set the value of $Separator to true.
Separator notes default to exporting as HTML (only) if either:
- they contain both a title and have note text (i.e. have $Name and $Text values), …OR…
- they contain child notes
If exporting Separator notes with no text (i.e. with children) ensure either the template will link through to the child content or add a ^childLinks^ into the $Text of the separator note.
Making a note into a separator doesn't alter any of its font-size related attributes but when drawing an outline view Tinderbox draws separator titles very slightly smaller than for normal notes. Likely this is done so as not to expand line height, i.e. allowing for the box around the separator title. This effect is more noticeable as zoom level is decreased.
From v5.0.2, if a separator has children, the separator and its children will be shown in Chart view. Normally separators are not shown in any view but outline.
From v5.9.2 duplicated separators retain their original name rather than receive the name suffix " copy" - this makes it easier to clone unnamed separators.