I have some very long notes: hour long meeting transcripts.
Is there a way to create bookmarks so I can quickly navigate to sections I have highlighted, for example?
cheers
Not bookmarks*, since Tinderbox encourages short notes.
You might insert section markers with titles for which you can search; even if the note is very long, searching for (say) # Bookmark or !! Perkins Project will be very fast. The same markers can serve, later, as places at which to Explode… the meeting notes into a set of smaller, more targeted notes.
- Well, you could always add links to the same note with an internal offset. But that’s not as useful in the long run as the strategy outline above.
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Agreed, you could be delimiters in. Once you do this, you might consider exploding them into smaller notes and then tagging them in user attributes, e.g. $Term. I’d recommend that on the explode, you add an action like $Source=$Name(grandparent). $Source is a user-generated attribute, so I would like it to be a set (personally I contrive my out $Source to be the name of the TBX file, note $ID and date, not just $Name; that way, I can move the notes between files and retain the source even if I end up changing the note name).
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Very interested in learning more about this idea of using Actions with Explode
this sounds amazing, but it also sounds like i need a sherpa to guide me up the mountain. no kidding, i wold need this explained to me as if i were a child…
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Here are 3 great videos from @satikusala on using the Explode feature. It may be more than the exact solution you seek; but all good knowledge to have, for example how to deal with invisible characters that may scramble certain results and so on.
And also a meetup dedicated to the topic:
Tinderbox Meetup Aug 20, 2022
Don’t panic. There’s lots of power here (and @satikusala loves to harness it!) but you don’t need to use it all right away.
Explode is interesting, and not as complicated as it looks on first-blush, but in my opinion I think the suggestion from @eastgate, above is more on point – to the extent I understand the original post. If all one needs to do is find a way to quickly access key points in one’s notes, then adding markers to the notes and using search later is quick and easy. No need to learn two skills to meet one objective.
(I’ve always used such markers in my handwritten notes, scanning to find the relevant portions – I’m not alone in this.)
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Another easy option that might work and is worth considering would be use use ziplink syntax to push highlights into their own notes. To do this you would:
- navigate to highlighted text.
- place a double opening bracket (“[[”) where it begins
- place a double closing bracket (“]]”) where it ends.
This will turn the highlighted text into a link to a new note that has the highlighted text as its name. In map view the new note and the highlighted text will now be visible beside the main note with a link drawn between it. Do this multiple times and you’ll have an array of linked notes beside the main text containing highlights that function as your bookmarks but that you can also do other things with later.
This basic process can be refined/revised in a many ways (moving highlight text to note text rather than name, better anchor text in the main note) but as a starting point, I think the three steps above at least hint at how ziplinking can be used to triage long text.
This process is less automated than explode but allows for less formality and more variation in how you apply it.
Hey Dean, love the meme! I offering Tinderbox consulting on the side. Would be happy to help. I’ll DM you. 
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