Puzzling behaviour with stamp

Q & A - getting started with Tinderbox
1

I have a Stamp to get imported references (from Bookends) in the format I prefer. What I do not understand is that when I apply the stamp the first time, the Note’s name is changed to the reference title (e.g. Letter to John Smith). If I apply the same stamp a second time, it changes the title to what I intended, namely date and reference title (e.g. 2020-10-20 - Letter to John Smith). I am puzzled about why I have to apply the stamp twice to make it work properly. The contents of the stamp in question is:

$Name = $PublicationYear + " - " + $ArticleTitle;$Subtitle = $Authors;$Width = 12;$Height = 2;if($Authors.at(0).beginsWith(“Smith”)){$Color=#FFFFE9;}else{$Color=;};$KeyAttributes=“Authors;ArticleTitle;BookTitle;Journal;PublicationYear;RefKeywords;Abstract;URL”;

It is not a big deal, as applying the stamp twice is pretty easy, but I cannot understand why it should do this. This seems to happen fairly consistently. I drop the references in using Option-Cmnd-drag.

2

OK, assuming the quotes are as altered by the forum, I read the action as (I’ve added line breaks just to make it clearly to review)

$Name = $PublicationYear + " - " + $ArticleTitle;
$Subtitle = $Authors;
$Width = 12;
$Height = 2;
if($Authors.at(0).beginsWith("Smith")){
   $Color=#FFFFE9;
}else{
   $Color=;
};
$KeyAttributes="Authors;ArticleTitle;BookTitle;Journal;PublicationYear;RefKeywords;Abstract;URL";

This works first time for me in v8.8.0 (on a note dragged from Bookends v.13.x). I normally have just the Year in the Bookends ‘Date’ filed (which populates $PublicationYear) but I altered a record to your yyyy-mm-dd and the import and them stamp still worked just fine first time.

So, my best guess is there may be non-printing characters in the source data from your Bookends which confuses the action. Could you upload a small TBX with some imported references you know react this way and with your stamp installed? This will allow us to have consistent test data.

3

Will do, but may not be able to do this for a day or two.

Thanks.

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4

No problem, thanks for the update.

5

I waited to respond because I decided to upgrade my Mac to a new model running Catalina, and since doing that the puzzling behaviour seems to have stopped, most of the time, if not completely, hence my silence. No idea what I could have done in transferring everything to the new machine so I will just get on with trying to use TB to sort out some material. Thanks for the offer to help.

1 Like