There is benefits Vs Cost Calculations in all we do. I see no benefits in learning slowly. If Tinderbox doesn’t give me a solution I move to other apps to hack out a solution.
You guys really dig deep. I am trying to write fiction. I want to see. How all my plot and subplots connect and my characters act out as they are meant to. 
wow! That’s an amazing framework to remember when learning tools or new tech.
That might seem like extra work, but it reflects the fact there may be no single right answer, or that the correct answer for us individually might be an answer that best fits out PoV. With simple apps doing one think we get an answer which may or may not be right and with little idea as to the justification of the answer. Sometimes we don’t need the more complex answers, but a lot of folk using Tinderbox do, as their default need. There’s no judgement there, but this community is used to figuring out the correct question first as “How do I …” offers many possible solutions. So sorry for any crossed wires arising from that.
Re characters and plots, that’s a good point. In context to above, we might look at connections in time, location, plot strand. All possible to track, but not best done using a single ‘answer’. Thus understanding the time axis is aided by use of timeline view location might use a map possibly with geographical adornments. Plot strands could be stored in an attribute and queries via agents, etc.
BTW, some authors love Aeon Timeline for looking at plots and timelines. Unsurprisingly, the app sprung out of a desire in the Scrivener app community of writers as to how best follow plots in time. Scrivener also gave birth to Scapple which acknowledges Tinderbox maps as the underlying concept. They just wanted a ‘lighter’ mapping tool, for instance Scapple doesn’t nest maps like Tinderbox does and has fewer visualisation options. But useful for those that need it. Oh, and using import/export, you can move data between Tinderbox and Aeon Timeline quite easily: i.e. there’s no ‘wizard’ button, but it’s not hard to set up.
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We also have several scriptwriters breaking the “fiction” into scenes. And, let’s not forget our political journalists the are mapping out the “i can’t belive this is NOT fiction” relationships within politics.
For a project like this, I’d start with, who my characters are:
- People
- Animal
- Things
- Places
What attributes/meta data do I want to know about them? You could create a prototype with a badge for each type or one prototype that changes the badge based on attribute type. Your choice here will have a scale issue. Personally, I’d start with a prototype for each. You may choose to include images, e.g., headshots, in Tinderbox, but if you have several images and you think you might want to re-use these images across a note, then I’d store them on the hard drive and pull them into the $Fill, $Hover, attributes so that you can see the images when you are mousing over the image or viewing the notes in Map View.
You then can think about how these characters link together, the label of think linking, when the linking happens, and what happens when the linking occurs (you can use links to move data up and down the chain of linked notes). You’ll want attributes like dates; think about the named links, and the actions you want when things link.
Then, as @mwra points out, you can use Timeline, Mapview, or even hyperbolic view to help you think through and map out these relationships.
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Yes, and hyperbolic view is going to be even more helpful in its update from in v9.6.0 coming any day now.
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woah! this is useful Sir! thank you!
> Just a quick Q
If I could scrap the entire tinderbox forum site just to use as my person database to speed up my learning.
I don’t know how to scrape website, but before even attempting. I wanted to check with the forum, if this would be illegal or unethical in the least? As I don’t want to offend the creator of this tool, by scraping his intellectual property.
Scrapping is possible. I’ll leave the how-to to discovery.
But, with all respect for anyone who has ever posted here, I don’t think that reading all the posts, replies, ripostes, and re-replies in a forum is a way to learn how to use Tinderbox or any other software. It would lead to excessive diving in to rabbit holes just to find the gems buried in some of them.
All of the gems are already on display in aTbRef, which can be downloaded as a .tbx file and enjoyed to its fullest, offline.
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[puts on forum moderator ‘hat’]
I don’t think anything precludes re-using content in the forum. Reading the forum doesn’t, if recall, require a log-in; the latter in only needed for posting. Forum member’s views are their own but there is no blanket limitation on re-use, certainly for personal learning†.
Spidering/Scraping. Do you really want all the forum content. As you don’t know how to scrape a website, I advise against it simply because it’s easy to sent far to many page requests to the server due to misunderstanding the process. Better would be to save (via Safari) a ‘web archive’ of relevant threads, i.e. a local copy of the web page) and put the latter into your learning model. As one of the few who has read every post here, I’m to be convinced all is relevant.
Don’t overlook that as this is an active forum, it might be quicker to ask the question rather than try and guess the right prompt to get the answer from a (partial) language model. As I write, v.9.6.0 is out so your models’s out of date already! But, I respect the fact that we all have our preferred ways, and I do think the idea of a local model is interesting. 
† Of course, if you then decided to share your model as a product, you are morally obliged to recognize all those whose knowledge you are re-using/selling and consider some form of royalty payment if selling your model. I don’t think that’s your plan but am just pointing out the difference between personal re-use and something wider.
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No intention of making a “Learn Tinderbox Product via Chat”. I just feel extremely frustrated when I have to spend hours learning a solution on how to use Tinderbox rather than using it.
It like I come back to the tools every 2 year gap. I have almost forgotten what I learnt the last time around.
Since my exiting chatbased resource is working well in speeding up my learning process, I am just finding how to add more content so to make my chat model better.
Guys, thanks so much for the detailed answers here.
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I am already using the same as a PDF provided by @mwra and it’s working well in my current LLM model. LLMs are content-hungry. The more the merrier.
Freshly minted:
- aTbRef v9.6.0 in PDF form; https://acrobatfaq.com/atbref95/Tinderbox%20v9.6.0%20Manual.pdf.
- Tinderbox app Help v9.6.0 in PDF form: https://acrobatfaq.com/atbref95/Tinderbox_9-6-0_Help.pdf.
HTH
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You know, you could use the Forum to dig out of puzzlements that don’t yield easily. I’d say:
- Try the obvious.
- Look it up in aTbRef
- Ask your chatbot
- Ask the forum
The shouldn’t take very long. These days, you’ll likely to get a forum answer the same day — often much faster, depending on time zone.
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Wonder if anyone wants to give the chatbot I am using to learn Tinderbox a try, mostly based on @mwra resource. Here is the link - Action Required.
You might need to sign in to ask questions.
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I asked the LLM model to write me a review based on these files. Here is the published wotk - Tinderbox 9.6.0 Review
I hope it didn’t get too creative and fib
This review is based solely on my research on acrobatfaq.com. I encourage readers to share their thoughts and experiences with Tinderbox in the comments section.
In fairness to your readers, shouldn’t you point out that the review was generated by an algorithm?
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I don’t want to be a sitting duck for Google Algorithms. Let it do the hard work 
I do keep telling people who follow me on Twitter and other places that 90% of the content on the blog is AI generated. I have nothing to hide.
I hope this thread isn’t too long?
I have created a bot from @mwra docs here Chat with Tinderbox 9.6.0 | DocuChat Do check out @eastgate @satikusala
I like the approach of putting the help behind a natural language interface. I probably wouldn’t use the chat because a chat gives me too much prose and I need very concrete help quickly with a reference. acrobatfaq.com is just what I need here.
But: you could describe here the steps to feed the chatbot with content. It would be a nice idea to be able to create a chatbot from your own Tinderbox notes. In any case, I would be very happy if you would describe the necessary steps here - preferably (but not necessarily) with a sample document from Tinderbox.
P.S.: DocuChat may not be the best solution since there still is not public API available
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