Pause all rules before opening a document?

Q & A - getting started with Tinderbox
1

Hi,

New TinderBox user here–and I think I just tripped over the lamp cord while trying to plug it in. Help would be appreciated!

When I attempt to open TinderBox it just “hangs”. I think this is because of a rule I created that is probably poorly crafted. I’m trying to determine if there’s a way to disable rules from running so I can open up a document and delete the rule before it runs.

I started down this path because I wanted container viewports to default to showing the center of their interior. After perusing the Forum, I came across @mwra’s Reference article which addressed the viewport and suggested rules could be used to fix the $InteriorScale, $MapScroll X, and $MapScroll Y.

I figured “what could go wrong?” and selected a single container. I displayed the attributes $InteriorScale, $MapScroll X, and $MapScroll Y and then dragged the Viewport until I was satisfied with how it looked. I then displayed the $Rule attribute and (again, “what could go wrong?”) attempted to hammer out a rule. I think I typed something along the lines of “$InteriorScale = 5; $MapScroll X=16.0; and $MapScroll Y=-6.2”.

My cursor shifted to the pinwheel. I figured it just needed time to process, so stepped away for a few minutes. When I got back, TinderBox had “stopped responding.” Every time I open TinderBox it “stops responding” almost immediately–certainly faster than I can select the note and delete the rule.

I do not want to abandon this TinderBox document: its got everything. Is there a way I can pause all rules before they attempt to run? Thanks in advance!

2

I think I found a solution and wanted to document it here. Definitely open to any sage advice or more elegant solutions.

After playing around a bit, I ended up:

  1. Duplicating my TBX file in Finder.
  2. Opening the duplicate TBX file in TextEdit.
  3. Searching for the offending note and then deleting the attribute values that caused the problem.

After this, I was able to successfully open my TBX file again.

With my newfound knowledge of rules (whew!), I instead opted for an $Edict and ended up with the following:

$InteriorScale=“5”; $MapScrollX="-5.265325031
“; $MapScrollY=”-0.02058273646";

The first time around, I suspect I didn’t use quotation marks and possibly didn’t end the rule with a semi-colon. Not sure which would have caused TinderBox to have a seizure–but he’s healthy now, so I’m happy.

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3

Actually, you might have run across a bug. So, if you still have the offending file – or can reproduce it – I suggest sending it to support-at-eastgate.com and so Mark Bernstein can examine it to see if the issue is reproducible. What you describe as root cause shouldn’t actually cause Tinderbox to fail – the rule might fail, but I wouldn’t expect the app to fail.

2 Likes
4

That’s pretty esoteric! But Paul Walters is right: send puzzles like this to bernstein@eastgate.com and we can get the sorted.

5

Gentlemen,

Thank you for the perspective: good to know! I’ve just sent the file to Mark. If I can be helpful in any other way, let me know.

A