Hey @wajakob, great question. Templates are one of the most powerful features of Tinderbox.
Why
Templates help you think about your notes—they are effectively new views. Likewise, they help you prepare your raw notes to get your processed material out of Tinderbox, i.e., copy and paste or export your refined information and insights. Once you’ve copied and pasted or exported your material from Tinderbox, you can then share it with others or enhance it further by processing it through additional workflows.
What
You use templates to prepare an individual note, a note and all its descendants, or your entire file for preview or export into whatever structure, e.g., linear document, bulleted presentation, table, complex visualization (i.e., images using JS rendered graphs, plots, and diagrams, etc.) and output format, e.g., HTML, markdown, CSV, JSON, etc., you want.
From this point, you can copy and paste the preview or export output into other apps (e.g., a text editor, Google Docs, MS Word, email, a learning management system, etc.) or send the output through a different parser (e.g., Apple Script, Pandoc, Quatro) to generate HTML, Word Docs, PDFs, Powerpoints, and more. With the latter, if can also have your citations automatically converted to APA, MSL, Chicago, etc. reference formats.
How
You’ll use Tinderbox attributes, action code, and export code to help you prepare your output. The action code and export code will help you use the values of your attributes (including notes $Name and $Text) to transform, transmute, transclude, calculate, etc., the values and place them in your output in the structure and appearance you want.
I know it sounds like a lot, but in the end, it is a learnable combination of structured systems: markup/markdown languages, accepted and standardized data formats, accepted and standard syntaxes, command-line arguments (including options and flags sent to applications), and your own incrementally formalized personal conversions and workflow.
Disclaimer: Undefined Terms and A Broader Perspective
Sorry about the undefined or complex terms. I realize that numerous terms above may be unfamiliar to some and indeed were, and in some cases and contexts still are, to me. It is a challenge in a single post to define everything and the context needed to fully grasp the comprehensive tools like Tinderbox, let alone the ecosystem in which it thrives.
I’ve come to realize that Tinderbox is not your run-of-the-mill app. It does not say, “follow these steps and you’ll get these outcomes.” Rather, it is a toolbox; it is more akin to an integrated development environment (IDE) where you can 1) enter text (e.g., words/code), 2) edit/debug your text and code, 3) compile your text into a human-readable output (linear docs, spreadsheet, presentation, image), 4) build automation to offload repetitive tasks, 5) navigate, search, and rediscover your text, 6) version control your text, 7) create plug-in/extension like capability with action code and template (your own and JS visualizers), 8) integrate with the terminal to use 3rd-party processes and application. In the end, our thinking/writing is a lot like programming code, with the former being read and interpreted by human or non-human agents (i.e., AI) and the latter be read and interpreted by a machine (i.e., computer) to ultimately learn something and to perform some action.
In the end, I’ve found that Tinderbox has helped me learn, improved my critical thinking, helped me develop reusable assets, boosted my productivity, reduced my errors (or at least helped me catch them earlier), streamlined my workflow, reduced my stress levels, given me community and friends. Again, it is pretty powerful!
Resources
There are TONS of FREE resources (video tutorials from me, others, and the meetups):
- Mastering Tinderbox: Training Videos (Complete List1)
- Mastering Tinderbox: Training Videos (Complete List 2)
Last week’s meetup was particularly good on this front: Tinderbox Meetup, Jan. 12, 2025 (Video): Using TBX to Write, List Temp, Dynamically Create Days Demo.
A Tinderbox Reference File (aTbRef) is also an instrumental resource. PSA to ALL: Please consider making a donation to @mwra for his 20 years and continued support and development of aTbRef (link also on the footer of aTbRef).
Finally, if you want to dig deeper into all of this, you can check out my Mastering Tinderbox courses.
Becker (5Cs and Mastering Tinderbox)