Ah, yes, the asked and NOT answered questions…sorry about that. shame on me. These are indeed important questions.
First off, I looked up the terms to make sure I understood them:
cre·scen·do | krəˈSHenˌdō | noun (plural crescendos or crescendi ) 1 the loudest point reached in a gradually increasing sound ( Dictonary , 2020).
clef | klef | noun Music any of several symbols placed at the left-hand end of a staff, indicating the pitch of the notes written on it. ( Dictonary , 2020)
As for the references of strong and weak, I’m not sure what you mean (sadly, I’m not a musician, yet…maybe someday).
I sincerely believe that we’ve not come even close to theTinderbox crescendo, there is so much more that we can do, and the use clefs potential is nearly infinite.
On Literature
Outside of actually writing the atomic idea in your own words, #literature is the most important element of the Zettlekasten process, i.e. you want to cite where you got your ideas. Citing your ideas helps you follow the “chain of evidence,” i.e. from the source to the moment. It helps you become a historian of ideas, and if you’re lucky you’ll be able to find that one or more unique ideas that you personally can contribute to the world with confidence. How can you be confident? Because you followed the chain of evidence.
Properly tracking the chain of evidence has been a real struggle for me as I like efficiency and automation. I’ve spent the last 15 years + 11 months finding a way to automate my “## literature” process (i.e. before Tinderbox awakening and after Tinderbox awakening). I’m getting closer every day.
As noted, a key tenant of the Zettlekasten process is the atomic idea, which aligns with Tinderbox. For me, when you include ## Literature in $Text, you’re breaking the atomic idea. You’re mixing two pieces of the idea, 1) the idea, and 2) its references, aka literature, into one place.
The idea should be cleanly and clearly written in the attribute $Text so that it can be pulled in and used anywhere in the document. You can’t easily do this when you clutter it up by adding ## Literature along with it in the $Text.
What you want to do is create an attribute, call it anything you want, I use $CitationKey. You put your literature references in the attribute $CitationKey. $CitationKey is a set, since you may have one or more direct citations supporting your atomic idea.
Now that you have the values of the elements of your idea divided into their respective attributes, $Text and $Citations, you can curate the idea. You can look and operationalize it as a whole or in its parts. This is the whole point of attributes, IMO, in Tinderbox. You’re able to divide everything into its lowest level parts and then pull them back together, e.g. a lot like an atom with its protons, electrons, and neutrons. Together the three parts make up an atom, individually their their own parts. What this lets you do is pull an electron off of one note and use it another to create new matter, on the fly, with action and export code.
In other words,
Tinderbox helps you create new “matter,” new ideas, if you set it up in this way.
I’m still a novice, but citing literature is a critical skill to master, especially today. In an age of fake news and a loss of trust, citing your work helps build and reinforce trust. It differentiates you. It also, VERY quickly, cuts through your logic and helps you clearly see what you “know,” what you’ve “contributed,” and what’ve “borrowed.” Over time, as your thoughts mature and they become yours, and you conduct research, what you know may change, what you’ve borrowed will evolve to become you, and what you’re able to contribute will grow exponentially.
To get a glimpse of my workflow on references, take a look at the last couple of meetup recordings and my last video RE citing with Zotero (Becker, 2021a).
On Connections
After ## Literature, ## Connections is the next important step. This is the curation step of the 4Cs of knowledge management.
There are so many ways to create connections in Tinderbox. Making connections is all about immersing yourself in your note-taking, making the ideas yours, and incrementally formalizing, i.e. curating.
In the Zettlekasten process, the primary way was to link the ZettleIDs to the different notes, i.e. to make connections. But linking is just one way to make connections in Tinderbox. You also make connections with views, Taggers, Sentiments, Highlights, and action code, and other support capabilities like Smart Adornments. For example, Views help you make connections through visual cues. Taggers, Sentiments, Highlights and action code help you move, edit, transform, and yes link, not attributes values and notes. Again, all of this helps you incrementally formalize and clear out the noise of your connections and find your insight.
You can check out my linking video, that may help (Becker, 2021b).
Again, like with ## Literature, if you pollute $Text with a bunch of connection noise, your ability to use $Text elsewhere is diminished. You’ll want to move your connections into attributes. $CitationKey is a connect. Links are connections, Tags are immediate and potential connections, etc.
Conclusion
Everything about Tinderbox is about making your knowledge play/sing (collect notes, curate notes, create notes, contribute). As Mark pointed out in yesterday’s meetup (and as I’ve noted in my other videos), at the root level Tinderbox is very simple. You have a note. A note has attributes (every note has every attribute whether or not that attribute is displayed or not). Some attributes are operationally used by Tinderbox, others are not. Another way to look at it, a note is like a stem cell. It has the potential to be anything when it is first generated. As time goes on it matures. Maybe it starts out as a copy of its parent, i.e. it is a note that started from a prototype. Over time it because unique as the values of its attributes diverge from the parent, e.g. $Text changes. It can keep from the parent what it needs (inheritance) but drop what it does not want and become unique. Or maybe it was created and stands alone from the very beginning.
So, Tinderbox is your second brain, literally. It is your memory. It is your asset, that builds over time. For me, Tinderbox drives every aspect of my business.
It’s all an adventure.
BTW, I wrote this piece with Tinderbox, take a look:
TBX L - Response to Wakamatus san 8:22:2021.tbx (154.9 KB)
Terms
Trm- Crescendo
cre·scen·do | krəˈSHenˌdō | noun (plural crescendos or crescendi ) 1 the loudest point reached in a gradually increasing sound ( Dictonary , 2020).
Trm- Clef
clef | klef | noun Music any of several symbols placed at the left-hand end of a staff, indicating the pitch of the notes written on it. ( Dictonary , 2020).
Trm- Pitch
pitch1 | piCH |noun 1 the quality of a sound governed by the rate of vibrations producing it; the degree of highness or lowness of a tone ( Dictonary , 2020).
References
Becker, M. (2021a). Tinderbox Training Video 57 - Working with Tinderbox and Zotero - Training Videos. In Tinderbox Forum . Tinderbox Training Video 57 - Working with Tinderbox and Zotero
Becker, M. (2021b). Tinderbox Training Video 51- Linking With Tinderbox - Training Videos. In Tinderbox Forum . Tinderbox Training Video 51- Linking With Tinderbox
Dictonary. (2020). Apple Inc.