I was excited to see that 7.5 allows from text-to-text links among notes. Then disappointed to see that I can’t make head or tails of the Changelog’s instructions for making such links.
The instructions say:
Blockquote
To specify a specific destination of the link, select the source and drag the text link to the link parking space. Then, select the destination and scroll so the destination text is visible. Finally, drag the link out of the parking space and click at the destination location. When the link is followed, Tinderbox will scroll the text view so the destination text is visible.
Blockquote
I take this to mean select some text in the source note, drag that selection to the link parking space, then move to the target note, find some text there, select said text, and drag a link from the parking space to this selected text.
When I try this though the link parking space doesn’t respond in any way to the drag. I have tried in both Outline view and Map view.
Can someone explain what I’m missing here? The instructions seem clear enough but following them doesn’t produce any result.
You don’t drag the selection. When text is selected you see a white ‘T’ in the link park top left of the text pane. You click/drag the latter onto the main tab bar link park. This too will know show a ‘T’. Aside this is exactly the same as if making a text link to a note not visible in the view pane
Now, scroll to and select the target note. Scroll the $Text if needed so that the intended target is visible. Don’t bother to select any text as inbound text links don’t need/use an anchor but rather just record a position in the target text. Now the target is visible, drag from the main link park populated in the previous step and drag/drop onto the target location. Complete the link dialog as normal.
Further notes:
There is nothing in the UI (or Browse Links) to indicate a link has a target text locations (as opposed to just pointing to a note. That’s at v7.5.0, it may possibly change in the future if theres’ a clear need to differentiate such links.
When you click on a text-to-text link in the source note’s $Text, Tinderbox will shift to the target note’s $Text and scroll it so the target position is in view. The word containing the link target (or closest to it) is briefly highlighted. If you follow such links using Browse Links or Raodmap, the text-scolling to target is not invoked. At present, anyway. The feature’s very new and there will doubtless be a bit of polishing now the basic process is in place.
Also, although you can make a Basic-type (note-level) link to a text target, there is no way to make it scroll to the target text as you can only invoke the link from places like Broswe Links, etc. with a result as just described.
Readers of this who used Tinderbox pre-v5 should note this is essentially the old text-to-text link returned albeit without the need for a specific target text selection.
(How do i know there’s no target anchor selection? By looking at the resulting stored link XML)
For now, I’ve found it useful to add an identifier to link names that indicate that the link is a targeted-text link. So I know in Browse Links and Roadmap that is the sort of link I’m dealing with. So, for example, I might have a link type “Context” which I will name “tContext” or “t_Context” if it is a targeted-text link.
Thank you for the lucid explanation of the process (and of the caveats about the limitations on being able to see the target text in this version)! It all works just as you describe.
This is an interesting new (though also, I gather, old and now revived) feature. I think it could make Tinderbox more useful for qualitative analysis (where, for example, you might want to “code” not a whole note but a single quotation in, say, a note that is the record of an interview with an informant).