Dragging notes from outline to an adornment

Hi, I watched this excellent [video] (Processing Qualitative Data with Tinderbox on Vimeo) by @Tom_Webster from a few years back and wondered whether the action screenshotted below is still possible, namely to move notes straight from an outline view to an adornment. It would seem that more recent versions of TBX do not allow you to open separate windows, between which notes etc can be moved.

Apologies if I’m missing something here, and thanks in advance for any help.

In short ‘No’, due to the changes in the app UI going from v5 to the v6+ single window design. Some useful behaviours were lost, this being one.

Off the top of my head (no tested) the same sorting might be achieved by opening a map on agent ‘Food Issues’. Next turn off aurto map re-sort for this agent (see $CleanupAction). Create the adornments in the agent map rearranging the map so un assigned notes are on the left and adornments on the right. Now drag aliases from the left and drop onto an adornment (repeat the process onto a second or third adornment if the note applies to several categories).

Thanks @mwra, appreciate it. I’ll give that a try.

It does seem as if @Tom_Webster’s approach was a really useful one. Would be great if Tom could update us on how he worked around this, or chose a different approach?

Stamps, which have improved significantly since the Tinderbox 5 era, take up much of the slack here. Note, too, that you can still use Tom Webster’s technique within a map view; that’s often very handy for quick coding tasks.

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I was interested in this too and found this seemed to work in a light test (rather than a real coding session). Basically, identify a blank area on the map, assign that location to all the notes to be coded, then they show up on that place like a stack of index cards all on top of one another. Click the first note and move it, and underneath that note you’ll see the next one. Not too useful if you want to use the outline because you want to pick and choose which note to code, but works well if you just want to burn through the stack one at a time.

  1. CMD-Click on the map. You should see the coordinates for that position in the context menu that pops up.
  2. Create a new stamp, add this code to it:

$Xpos=-4;$Ypos=-5; (obviously, replace the numeral values with your own map position)

  1. Move the notes you want to code into the container with map (or create aliases and move those).
  2. Apply the stamp to the notes you want to stack up for coding.

Hopefully that’s clear enough in words, I’m not entirely sure I’ve explained it too well.

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Hi Mark,

I’m curious if you can expand a bit on how stamps take up the slack in Tom Webster’s example. Would the new method be to right click, hover over the Stamps option, and click on the Stamp that would give the appropriate metadata/badge/color/etc? And then repeat if you have an additional Stamp to apply?

Thanks,
Beck

Given the time elapsed since the last post and the original video to re-state the purpose here. IIRC the original notion was quick qualitative coding (tagging) of notes, using a mechanism no longer available (dragging between windows).

Though the original method, as illustrated, is no longer possible I’m sure there are other paths to the same end. Thus the suggestion of stepping away form the original workflow and re-stating the process in general terms…

Since stamps are listed in Tinderbox’s menu bar on the Stamps submenu, they can be given shortcuts via System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts. Or even better use Better Touch Tool to add buttons to the Touch Bar on machines that support it.

So, select note(s), use shortcut or Touch Bar to assign. I’ve done each of these at one time or the other in a similar classification activity that I think you’re doing @beck based on your recent posts.

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Great idea, Paul!

Sorry to post out of context and referencing a video that has been top of mind for me for some months, though I realize this is not the case for everyone (ha!).

I’ll be playing with this some this morning and will post something specific if I can’t make my way through.

Thanks all,
Beck

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