This TBX and website was created by Mark Anderson, and is essentially expanded documentation of the Tinderbox app. Originally a private resource, experimentation with HTML Export showed how easy it was to make it a web resource. In the spirit of sharing online, the website is offered as a public resource. As the source TBX holds all the export templates and shows a few interesting code techniques, it too is offered as a downloadable resource.
The current document is baselined on version 8.0.0. As not all users have the latest release, ongoing changes are recorded with the version where they first appear (since the benchmark version), which should aid those who do not upgrade regularly. Any per-release references to changes pre-v8.0.0 have been deleted (with a few deliberate exceptions).
The first version of this document 'aTbRef.tbx' and associated website was written in April 2005 to reflect a baseline of Tinderbox v2.4 features and has been regularly updated to encompass all version changes since. The original baseline and subsequent versions online are:
- v2.4.0 through to v.4.2.5: https://www.acrobatfaq.com/tbx/index.html.
- v4.5.0–v4.5.3: https://www.acrobatfaq.com/atbref45/index.html.
- v4.6.0–v4.7.1: https://www.acrobatfaq.com/atbref46/index.html. New baseline to reflect significant action code changes)
- v5.0.0–v5.12.3 Still available at https://www.acrobatfaq.com/atbref5/index.html.
- v6.2.0 (for v6.x)–v6.6.5. Still available at https://www.acrobatfaq.com/atbref6/index.html.
- v7.0.0–v7.5.6. still available at https://www.acrobatfaq.com/atbref7/index.html.
The previous versions have, for the while, been left online at their original URLs above both to aid those using old versions and to honour the many inbound links. Web pages in the old versions have a header indicating the location of the (next) most recent site.
Although there are probably now no original notes left, the original document was based on a TBX originally created by Benoit Pointet; that document was called 'aTbRef' and the name lives on here. From that source the document was greatly enlarged before first being published as a website.
Special mention must be made of Eastgate's Mark Bernstein has been extremely helpful along the way in answering all sorts of obscure questions and has shown a lot of patience in his explanations.
Much of the update data is drawn from the Release Notes kindly provided by Eastgate as part of the Tinderbox downloads. Parts of this document that directly quote copyright materials from Eastgate Systems Inc., e.g. the manual, release notes, etc., and do so with permission from Eastgate Systems Inc.
This document, in its public form is not meant to replace or supplant the manual or the wiki as references. Instead it is simply a way of sharing what I have learned from the kindness of others about Tinderbox.
Thanks/kudos to:
- Mark Bernstein & Eastgate Systems Inc. for answering so many questions, for all the release notes and their permission to use Eastgate materials here.
- Benoit Pointet for the TBX that became the seed of this file and which gave it its name.
- Matt Neuburg for his article on writing Mac Online Help files in Tinderbox (for Affrus) which got me started on structured HTML export and specifically the hierarchical site navigation used in the website pages.
- The users of the Tinderbox wiki and forum. Their questions have contributed to the depth and scope of this recourse. Their errata have also helped keep things correct. Errata are genuinely welcomed!