Aliases

Making an alias to a note allows you to put that note in more than one place in your document, just like the familiar aliases in Mac OS. The original note can be in one place in the hierarchy; the alias can be somewhere else entirely. But both the original note and the alias give you access to the content of the note: the same text window, the same attributes, and so on. When you change an alias, you also change the original.

When you delete the original, Tinderbox also deletes all its aliases. Deleting an alias, however, does not delete the original.

Aliases are one of the most powerful tools in Tinderbox, and one of the most flexible ways for organizing your notes in ways that a hierarchy doesn’t permit. Aliases are also useful for building Web sites, where the same content may be required in several different parts of the exported Web site.

A note can have many aliases, or none.

To create an alias

From anywhere,

• select a note
• choose Make Alias from the Edit menu, or press Cmd-L.

The alias will be created as a sibling of the original note. You can then move it anywhere in the document that you want.

To find the original note of an alias

• Select the alias in any view
• choose Show original (cmd-R) from the Edit menu

PROPERTIES OF ALIASES

• An alias will have the same name as the original. Change the name of either the alias or the original, and both will change.
• The name of an alias will appear in italics in all views.
• An alias cannot contain children.
• When you open a text window on an alias, you are opening a text window on the original.
• When you edit the attributes of an alias, you are editing the attributes of the original.
• If you delete an alias, the original will remain. If you delete the original note, all aliases to it will disappear.

Aliases share almost all attributes with their original. A few attributes are intrinsic to aliases, including Xpos, Ypos, Height, and Width.