Keyboard shortcut to open tinderbox file that crashes on opening? Is there a safe mode keyboard shortcut?

Q & A - getting started with Tinderbox
1

What is the Tinderbox shortcut for opening a tinderbox file that crashes when opened. Its my fault, I wrote some bad code to test and it crashes my tinderbox file on open. I faintly remember a keyboard shortcut to bypass.

BTW…I deleted the application saved state files, but tinderbox is still crashing when I open this one file.

Thanks…
Tom

2

I’m not aware of such a shortcut (but will document it if there is one. But, the normal fix for this would be:

  • (for those happy working with XML) To open a copy of the TBX in in BBEdit or similar (so you can see the XML), then delete/edit that bade code. Some notes on the XML structure of the document are here.
  • use Time Machine (or other back-up) and retrieve a copy from before you added the bad code.
  • If you don’t like trying the former and don’t have the latter, zip a copy of the document and sent it to Tinderbox Tech support (tinderbox@eastgate.com)

Tinderbox evaluates all (active) agents and all rules/edicts as part of initialising a newly-opened document and that can’t be overridden. So you can’t stop code running. If you know there

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3

Another option that worked for me for a document that crashed when opening, I had an old copy of Tinderbox 7 (which does not support functions etc) and opened the document in Tinderbox 7, did my edits and voila.
all good.

Tom

4

Some apps under macOS will not re-open documents if you hold the shift key then click the Tinderbox icon to launch it.

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5

Send me the file, and I’ll likely be able to fix the crash for everyone!

6

I fixed it. It was my fault. It was Function code I was trying out. All working good now. Thanks anyway.

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I’d be interested to know what the function was that caused the crash…

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ok. When I get back to the office, I will send you the file with a brief explanation of what I did along with the crash log.

Many thanks as always,
Tom

9

I did not know about the shift key Easter egg, I will put that it in my devonthink and try it next time.
Many thanks Paul as always,
Tom

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10

Ah, I now recall this re-open behaviour rests on this OS setting (here, seen in Ventura):

Desktop & Dock 2023-11-09 17-08-34
Desktop & Dock 2023-11-09 17-08-34986×486 43.8 KB

As, I have this set ‘on’, the non-default setting for the OS (I’d use it if it allowed setting per app), the pertinence of the shortcut had faded from memory.

With this setting off, i.e. the OS default (and not as in the grab above), the Shift+Click-open override should work. It can’t fix the broken doc but it can let you open Tinderbox so you can work on other documents. Opening using Shift would, I assume, zero-out the list of docs to re-open at app start.

Hard to document succinctly due to the dependence on the OS Reference setting, but no less useful for that. I’ll try and find it a home in me shortcut reverse look-up page.

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It should, and does. I’ve confirmed that when “Close windows when quitting an application” is off, then shift-click-open Tinderbox will open it without the documents that were open when Tinderbox was last quit reopening.

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12

Thanks. I’ll feed this into my docs.

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