This should be an easy one.
(1) How do I populate the Open Favorites menu with Favorites?
(2) When I open Tinderbox I get a blank document. I would rather have my own blank template come up. How do I make that happen?
Thanks.
BH
(1) By placing files in the app support favorites folder. See here.
(2) At present you canât. I suggest you make a feature request to info@eastgate.com (this being a user-to-user forum, we users donât decide such things).
Re the latter, (2) was in large part what led to (1). It is also worth noting you canât suppress the oping of a new blank doc. If you open the app and switch focus (with no doc open) you get a new default doc.
HTH 
Amen to the last. However, it is worth noting that Apple haveâso I understandâessentially deprecated this pre-OS X feature so how long it works I donât know. Personally, Iâm happy to use it as described above but the appâs method is designed to not rely on features the OS vendor may withdraw.
Also (not tried) you can probably put a shortcut to the stationery note in your favourites folder so it shows up in the favorites menu.
Iâm confused, I think youâve misunderstood what I wrote. Stationery notes work on 10.14.x as I use them and on 10.15.x as I know thatâs what youâre using. I suspect they work on Big Sur too but Iâve not tried it. I didnât say they didnât work, indeed I added to your suggestion.
The point about deprecation goes back to a comment somewhere in (beta) discussions during v5 â v6 Tinderbox codebase shift about stationery notes. IIRC is was due to the way they are implemented vs the shifts in OS design since. I didnât keep note other than to remember stationery notes, as in the original pre-OS X sense were not necessarily a long-term feature.
The latter did lead to change in how favourites work as all files in that folder, regardless of an OS âstationeryâ flag, now open as if they are OS stationery files, which wanât always the case.
Any, at this point weâre probably confusing the OP. Either method is possible, the one the OP asked about or the generalised OS stationery note solution. Use eiher or bothâvery Tinderbox solution with more than one approach. 
Youâre confusing me.
Back in the day, stationery support was the responsibility of the application. A stationery-aware app would check the stationery bit and alter its behavior accordingly.
This broke sometime around Tinderbox 6. The file system API for accessing the relevant bit was deprecated in a wholesale file system overhaul, and it was never replaced. There remain shady ways to sense the bit, but I do try to avoid those!
HOWEVER, it turns out that in Catalina the stationery bit âjust worksâ: stationery pads work in 10.15 as they ought, without intervention from Tinderbox. So, stationery pads are again a great solution.
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We then have the best of both worlds. Files placed in the favourites folder show up in the âfavouritesâ menu and âregardless of a stationery bit set or not on the source TBXâopen a new unsaved copy.
TBXs elsewhere with OS Stationery bit set honour that flag (certainly in macOS 10.14/10.15) if opened in Tinderbox.
The latter donât show up in the favourites menu unless the use places an alias in the favorites folder.
What canât (yet?) be done is make use Tinderbox use a customised document as the default ânewâ document, i.e. instead of a basic empty document.
After 20 years across OS 9, OS X, and macOS and a change of app codebase/compiler Iâm not surprised that some things get confused, even for the maker! The desktop environmentâs changed a lot since 2001.
@eastgate Please add at least an option to donât open an empty tbx file when Tinderbox launches or activates. Itâs cumbersome to first close the empty file and afterwards open the file I actually want (i.e. my starter file or another file).
(In the past it also happened more than once that I didnât pay enough attention and started to work in the empty file instead of my starter file; using a different color scheme solved that. It was very confusing to find things that didnât work although they should - until I found that itâs simply not my starter file I was working in.)
Most people prefer to let macOS reopen the Tinderbox file on which they had been working; this avoids opening an empty document.
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Iâm not âmost peopleâ either.
Iâve found it annoying to have to dismiss that blank document that pops up with a default color scheme that I never use (with the inability, I think, to change the default?).
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Well, then obviously Iâm not âmost peopleâ. Iâve disabled this feature in macOS preferences.
I can see that the current behavior is convient for user that donât use a starter file and/or only use one Tinderbox.
But when working with several Tinderbox files it really gets annoying to have to dismiss the unwanted blank file. I didnât find a way to dismiss it via Keyboard Maestro, otherwise I wouldnât ask.
Wouldnât it be possible to have a setting that stops opening a blank file? As itâs a one off task a hidden preference invoked via Terminal would be fine, I think.
To close an empty document immediately: â-â§-W. (This works in most macOS applications).
The countervailing question is the brand-new user, faced with an empty screen and an intimidating menu bar.
I assumed that was the reason and understand it.
Adding a (hidden) preference would serve those users who donât need the guidance of an empty document each time they activate Tinderbox while no other document is opened. Itâs really annoying