New to Version 7

This page links to articles covering new or significantly improved features in Tinderbox v7. In no particular order:

• New app icon.
• Composites.
  • Some Built-in composites are provided to get you started.
  • 7 new composite-related actions.
  • 'my' designator.
• Guides. These give additional visual clues in map view item placement. Can be toggled on/off via View menu.
• Quick Links. A new method in $Text for quickly add-in in-document text links to other notes.
• New Fonts. 4 fonts are now packaged in Tinderbox. Ideal Sans Book is now the default map font. Mercury is now the default font for text ($Text). Ringside Condensed is used for adornments, Tungsten is provided for use in display conditions like dashboards where you want big numbers in a small space. Users with existing TBXs may wish to check and update Font-type attribute defaults. Existing $Text can only be updated to new fonts on a note-by-note basis (and doing so will remove any bold/italics).
• Hover panels - support for images.
• Import:
  • DEVONThink. Items pasted or dragged from DEVONthink Pro now retain their tags. In addition, multiple items can be dragged or pasted from DEVONthink Pro.
  • AutoFetch.
  • Dragging URLs to views , sets $URL as a key attribute.
  • Emails may be dragged from Mail.app (improvements ongoing)
• Action Code:
  • For composites (see above).
  • Enhanced number formatting in Number.format() and format().
  • hasLocalValue(). Tests inheritance - useful for power users tracing inheritance breakage in big documents.
• Inspector:
  • Tinderbox Inspector. Link counts now exclude prototype links (i.e notes' links setting their prototype).
  • Links Inspector. Adds controls for named colours.
  • Prototypes Inspector. Adds discrete [Cmd]+3 shortcut.
  • Quickstamp. Now offers autocomplete for String/Set/List type values and has a pop-up of existing values for the selected attribute.
  • Plot Inspector. Hides non-relevant setting depending on selected plot type.
  • Inspector remains visible in when Tinderbox loses focus to allow use of image wells for setting $Badge and $HoverImage.

Key Attributes (KA):

• KA configuration panel now ignores a $-prefix when typing names. The string is accepted as typed but the '$' is ignored when setting KA. On next opening the panel the '$' will be missing for the attribute name.
• For those using many KA, the KA configuration panel now grows to show all selected values.
• KA table accepts URLS dropped from Safari.
• Local files can be dropped onto URL-type KA to generate a 'file:///' type URL.
• Smart Links. If a note’s text contains "smart links" (e.g. links automatically created by the system from URLs), those links are converted to Tinderbox links when the note is next (re-)selected.
• Browse Links link table now show the link type for each item.
• Text pane:
• Text pane - multi-item view selection
• Note ▸ Split will split a note.
• Persistent tear-off windows.
• If an image pasted into the text is wider than available space, it will automatically be scaled.
• View pane:
• Outline, column view copies all columns as tab-delim data.
• Attribute browser: user-set bins for numerical attribute values. Where pertinent, categories sort on category summary values.
• Better default X/Y placement. Agents and non-map view do a better job at avoiding creating piles of notes with the same map view co-ordinates.
• Map view: numbered link stubs. If in/outbound link stub represents more than one link the link count is shown at the end of the stub. Clicking this link count reveals a menu of sources from which you can select.
• Map view: [Ctrl]+[Opt]+Return (^⌥-Return) creates a note below the selected note. Return creates a note to the right of the selected note, and [Ctrl]+Return (^-Return) creates a note to the left of the selected note. If there is already a note where Tinderbox would place the new note, Tinderbox seeks a suitable location.
• Map view: Use Note ▸ Navigate (⌘-Return) to follow this first basic link from the selected note in map view.
• Option drag (single item) duplicates the item and drags the duplicate.
• Option Shift drag (single item) creates an alias of the item and drags the alias.
• Auto-complete:
• To support GTD, '@' is accepted as an auto-complete character (very useful for rapid KA value entry).
• Where action code auto-complete is offered '=' and '==' are used contextually (i.e. '==' only in queries).
• More flexible matching, e.g. to partial strings, not just from string start.
• Get Info's Attribute pane better accommodates long attribute names.
• Built-in Prototypes:
• $AIM removed for the Person prototypes KAs.
• 'HTML Template' and 'Code' provide more tab stops for better default code layout (avoiding faux line-wrap)
• Menus:
• File ▸ Open Recent sub-menu now contains more items.
• View ▸ Align now named View ▸ Arrange. Move Note Up/Down and Send to Front/Back commands have moved from the Note menu to the View ▸ Arrange menu. View ▸ Cleanup also moves to the View ▸ Arrange submenu.
• The note contextual menu now includes a submenu with all currently defined stamps and (map view only) a Create Composite option.
• Configuration:
• Document Settings, Text: when the default text font is changed in Tinderbox now scans the text of every note in the document and changes each usage of the former text font to adopt the new font family while retaining the current size.
• Document Settings, Text: TBX XML preferences now store the $Text size setting from Document setting in whose value is specified in points.
• Config.xml now supports DarkenOutlineColors value 0 to permanently disable the default of darkening colours.
• Cleverer choice of note copy names when duplicating (i.e. 'Note 2' rather than 'Note 1 copy').
• Explode. Improved speed/stability with large source texts. Better handling of escaped characters in custom delimiters.
• ind:
• View pane Find allow a user-configurable attribute to be added as a toggle filter on the view find toolbar.
• View pane Find results show the context of the (first) match if within $Text rather than title or an attribute.
• Attributes:
• $AdornmentFont
• $HoverImage
• $HoverFont
• $OnRemove. Containers, agents, and adornments now have an OnRemove action which is performed when a note is removed from the container. The OnRemove action for agents is applied to the original note, since the alias will be deleted.
• $OnVisit. In Storyspace, an action performed when the reader visits the note. This is honoured in Tinderbox and can be used as an 'OnSelection' event trigger.
• HTML Export
• File ▸ Export Selected Note now respects $HTMLExportFileName.
• HTML view pane now responds to the font panel, allowing setting of font face/size via $HTMLFont and $HTMLFontSize. The default has been changed to Andale Mono, 13pt.
• ^value()^ no longer encodes non-ASCII characters in the attribute value.
• When constructing text links, $HTMLLinkExtension specifies the extension to be used for link, and replaces $HTMLExportExtension.