PDFs and Tinderbox

Q & A - getting started with Tinderbox
1

Occasionally I attend a meeting and make notes in Tinderbox for the meeting.

Sometimes the meeting includes materials, such as a PDF or powerpoint file.

I’d like to associate these with my Tinderbox notes.

One approach is to create a note and drag the PDF into it. The PDF is then an inline part of the note but I cannot figure out how to display it in my default PDF viewer, instead it is a tiny scrollable window in the note itself. To launch an external viewer I assume I need to make a preview adjustment but am not sure how to do it.

I’ve read on the forum that some say this bloats tinderbox and a better way is to store documents is externally in the file system, which makes sense to me. In this case I can use hookmark to create a URL and put it in the URL attribute of the note (or one of the many URL attributes, not sure which is ‘right’)

I have a few questions on this approach. Do I need to use hookmark or should I simply use a file URL of some type? Again, how can i launch the PDF viewer or Powerpoint from within tinderbox using the attribute?

I didn’t see a tutorial on this in the list, but might have missed it. I’m slowly going through them (thanks Michael B!)

Is there a best practice on associating and using attachments like PDF, Word or PowerPoints etc. from within Tinderbox notes? If so I’d appreciate a pointer.

thanks, Frederick

2

First, don’t worry TOO much about “bloat”, especially in smaller documents like meeting notes.

But, when you think you’ll want to refer to the pdfs in their own viewer, just refer to the pdfs in the $File attribute (if they are files on your local disk) or the $URL attribute (if they are on a server). That lets you open them with a click in your viewer.

A drawback here is that, since the documents are outside Tinderbox, agents cannot see inside them. Sometimes, it’s handy to drag the text into Tinderbox and also link to the original pdf.

Since external links are to specific places on your disk, it may be worth thinking about where to put your pdf. Three strategies are popular:

  1. Alongside your Tinderbox document
  2. In a “pdfs” folder at a known place on your drive, perhaps shared with other projects
  3. Inside DEVONthink or another “everything bucket”

All are good.

1 Like
3

I didn’t think of the $File attribute - I need to look at that.

If I do place the PDF inside a note by dragging it into the note body, is there a way to invoke an external viewer on it?

thanks, Frederick

4

If you drag a pdf into the view pane to create a new note, that note contains both

  1. a text summary of the pdf, in the note’s $Text, and
  2. the location of the original pdf, in the note’s $File attribute.
5

that is different than when I first create a note and then drag the PDF into the body of that note (where text would go). In this case the attributes are not set and I cannot open the file externally (but can scroll a small inline version which doesn’t work so well). I think going with the external file and a link to it is the way to go, but I’ll experiment more.

thanks

6

Another method (the one I prefer) is to drag the PDF onto the map, which creates a note whose text is the PDF contents. The link to the filesystem instance of the PDF is also put into $File.

Then, you can select text in that PDF and link it to the relevant meeting note. See Michael’s video on linking, e.g., at minute 20:05, among other approaches he covers.

2 Likes
7

thanks. The training videos are the way to go - I’m working through them.