Hi, there! I’m new to this forum and @discorobot just showed me around, so I thought I would get started posting my first questions.
I actually bought Tinderbox fairly early on in it’s development but never wound up using it much. I tried lots of other ways of keeping all my information accessible over the years, but nothing really worked out for me for a number of reasons. So I came back to Tinderbox and bought an upgrade a little while ago. And now, with a bit more time than I had in the past, I hope to get to know and use Tinderbox better…
So, I’ve been lurking around this forum since I bought my upgrade, and have skimmed through the manual, but haven’t really seen what I am looking for. I have bought the new version of The Tinderbox Way and am just waiting on the information to download it. (Yay!)
I’ve noticed on other postings that a number of you suggest that new Tinderbox users ask specific questions regarding actual usage, as in “Can I use Tinderbox for…” So here are my questions following some background on what I want to do.
I am an artist who would like to use Tinderbox to store, retrieve, and help me find and understand connections among notes based on visual information that I use, or am interested in using, in my art. I know that Tinderbox can have “adornments” on notes, but what if the adornment is actually THE note? – or am I overthinking this?
What I mean by that is that I focus primarily on color, composition, symbols, and mathematical visualization. When I make my notes, I really need to somehow associate images with those notes in a way I can see them when I retrieve or look at my notes.
Here is a simple example: I want to keep notes on different kinds of spirals (logarithmic, Fibonacci based, Archemedian, triple “Celtic” spirals, etc. I will want to note things like whether the spiral is curved or angular, found in nature or not, which cultures may have used the spiral for a symbol, and what that symbol means in those cultures, etc.
Another example, is to keep “mood boards” of pieces which I am currently designing. What I mean by that is a layout of colors I will use with their designations (could be web-friendly color codes, or even a dye recipe – I spin and dye my own fibers, or a code number for a watercolor I am using), along with images of shapes and items (some e.g.s flowers, plants, lace, mineral samples, landscape features, characters (as in typography, not necessarily Roman script), glyphs, etc.
So from what I have seen, Tinderbox does not seem geared to images, and my guess is that adding images could slow down retrieval during a search?
Any ideas about best practices for limiting images (size, number)?
Should each “mood board” or subject (e.g. spirals) have it’s own Tinderbox? (I could do that, but I admit I wish I could put it all into one big Tinderbox file since I would love to see the connections.)
It is possible to structure my Tinderbox(es) so that the images can be accessed or accessible whenever I am looking at my notes?
What do you think? Is any of this do-able? Or am I trying to do something that Tinderbox just isn’t geared for?
Arielle