Most of what you do in Tinderbox takes place in two types of windows: note windows and view windows. A note window shows information about one particular note. A view window depicts some, or all, of the notes in the document; some of the document’s hierarchical structure; and possibly some of its links. There are three types of note windows:
- a text window shows the text (and images) of a single note; this is normally the currently selected note in a view window (see below).
- an Information window shows the values of all the attributes of one note.
- 2 types of export window:
- an HTML window shows the HTML code that would be generated if that note were to be exported to HTML.
- a Nakakoji window shows the (formatted) text that would be generated if that note were to be exported to text; Nakakoji views can actually be set to export the whole document or just a note but the window is called based on the selected note. This view is sometimes referred to the text export view, in that it exports plain text but the way it works is different from the HTML view (which can also export plain text!).
There are six types of of primary view windows:
- Outline view windows.
- Chart view windows.
- Map view windows.
- Timeline view windows.
- Treemap view windows.
- Explorer view windows—an explorer window combines one of the other view types (Outline, Chart or Map only) in the left pane, with the text of the selected note being shown in the right pane.
Of the list above the normal view for most users is Outline or Map. Indeed, some use one or other type almost exclusively according to their style of work. Regardless, the first window of a new TBX file is an outline and that cannot be changed via a preference.
There are a number of other 'view' windows (Find, Roadmap, Info) that the user will probably think of as dialogs or palettes but with due to how they work are considered views; the distinction is not important for the user and the term 'view' might best be remembered as the list above.
The Attributes 'window', although non-modal (i.e. you can still use the document with it open) is better thought of as a non-modal dialog with 6 panes/tabs.
You may keep many view windows, of whatever type, open while working in Tinderbox as well as note text windows and palettes such as the attributes/links/etc. They can show the same or different parts of your document. you can also have multiple windows open for more than one TBX. If more than one document is open at a time, windows from each/every document my be open at the same time (useful when trying out new code techniques).