Hello, as on-and-off user of Tinderbox (hey, the same I have with Emacs for decades) I am interested in the product offering in form of the official book.
What I find it that on official page, last edition seems to be quite dated, like seven years from now. Any timeline of further ed?
Also there is some fairly recent thread about a supplement
Any release plan on it as well?
Sorry if it was answered elsewhere, but as an infrequent user I don’t find navigating official web presence of this fine software as easy… and I don’t want AI agents to do the work for me
Hi @bjfs what are you looking to accomplish with Tinderbox? Is your question posted her on the theoretical side or on the more practical side—What can I do with it? How do I use it?
You can also create a threat that says something like, “Hi All, I’m looking to too XYZ with Tinderbox, how would I go about accomplishing that?” The community can jump in and try to help.
Also, I’ll DM you about a Tinderbox 101 course I’ve started teaching; you may find that useful as well.
Well actually nothing specific. Just looking around for fresh or rusty ideas, especially from the published documents, since they appear to have some interesting “philosophical” pieces on how to set your mind for Tinderbox approach, rather than through technical reference which is up-to-date and hosted elsewhere.
But because on the official site it seems that they cover TBX 7 then my post was about gathering information on whether anything else or supplemental has appeared and guess it will be EOY.
Have not much time for virtual classes. I tried once with OmniFocus and it didn’t end very well, also my tech expectations apparently were a bit over average as a guy from IT industry
In the Help menu in Tinderbox you can access release notes going back to version 6, up to the present.
In @mwra’s A Tinderbox Reference site, there are numerous pages covering prior releases. This page, for example, provides links to Eastgate’s announcements of significant prior releases.
It’s not a one-stop shopping effort to get up to date for feature adds since version 7, because there have been a lot of major changes. @Eastgate would have to chime in on whether the forthcoming book will provide an overview of major new features, or not.
I sense from your Mastodon that you might be an ACM member or have an library account that you can use, but if you aren’t and want a copy of any of these, email me.
The Eastgate main page for Tinderbox is here and it explicitly mentions v10, not v7, so you might be looking at an old page. The current release is v10.0.2b693 out on 1 Nov 2024, so less than a month old.
I’d note that Tinderbox is subject to constant additions and improvements. this reflects the modern trend of subscription and moving away from the old 20 Century model where features might be delayed so that the new version release had more new things. So, whilst it is possible to track where some features first appeared or were first announced to the public, that doesn’t tell the full tale. Better is to think which aspects of the app fit your work (i.e. which tools from the toolbox) and ask what’s changed in that area. It also helps to know what version you are using.
Which does refer to Tinderbox 7. And 7 was indeed current when I was writing The Tinderbox Way.
A lot has changed, but I do think the ideas in that book remain valid. Indeed, Thinking With Tinderbox was originally conceived as a fresh edition of that book, supplemented by chapters on some of the new views and language features.
That left me with a book that was (a) too long, and (b) inconsistent in tone and topic. I realized Thinking With Tinderbox was its own book, one that is a bit broader and (sometimes) abstract. No worries, though: it has plenty of very practical exploration of newer Tinderbox features, exploring why they are the way they are.
It’s been an interesting evolution. In the process, I’ve begun yet another book, which is at least a year away, and which is even broader in perspective.
FWIW, as someone who is eagerly awaiting the publication of Thinking with Tinderbox I bought The Tinderbox Way shortly after it was published. I have read and re-read it multiple times, and still find it relevant to how I think about making notes, connecting ideas and in the very broadest sense extending my learning. I am sure that the new book will repay similar attention. And I am now intrigued to know that there is another book in the pipeline.
