"Versions" or "Snapshots" for note text & Map Speed

Hi Everyone,

It’s been a while since I’ve used Tinderbox. Before I renew my Tinderbox license, I had a couple questions for the power users.

1 - Does anyone have a solution/workflow for saving “versions” or “snapshots” of an individual note’s text?

That is, if I write a scene, can I “snapshot” my various versions so I can revert at any time (a classic Scrivener feature)?

2 - Map performance - several years back, there was a bug I believe and map view (on my admittedly aging iMac) ground to halt after having a couple hundred notes. I’m now on a 2015 12" MacBook - not a powerhouse by any stretch - How fast is map view these days with thousands of notes? (No agents, just a lot of notes…)

Thanks!!!

-Tim

@eastgate is travelling at present, but can probably provide a more authoritative answer.

  1. Yes/No. There is no snapshot feature per se but the File -> Revert To… menu does have some options, especially if using Time Machine.

  2. Personally, I don’t generally attempt to use maps >c.100 items even on a big screen, but I’d defer to Eastgate’s view here.

For simple and occasional use, Time Machine does an adequate job of versioning. So does Dropbox Pro. Tinderbox also works well with version control software like Git and Subversion if your requirements are more complex.

Map performance depends on lots of things. It’s almost always fast enough for reasonable tasks. Containers can help a lot with scoping!

Thanks Mark & Mark – that’s the information that I needed to know! Cheers! :grinning:

Note-level versioning, no.

The “revert to” has never worked for me – it’s really slow to browse previous versions, and eventually crashes.

Dropbox is really nice if you have the backup feature enabled… it uploads a new version to dropbox on every save.

Git is good for being very deliberate about your versions (of the document as a whole). I wouldn’t try branching and merging with it, however.


This thought just occurred to me while replying, so I haven’t tried it yet: you could combine git and dropbox. Put your TB file in a git repository in your dropbox folder. Dropbox will take care of the snapshots every time you save, git will handle the deliberate versioning. I’ll have to give that a shot :slight_smile:

Speed of browsing of old versions is exactly the same for Tinderbox and for any other program, including Time Machine. It’s nothing to do with us.

Some versions of Tinderbox have trouble reverting – it can be hard, for example, to be sure that the rules of reverted version A don’t try to act on original version B. Contact us with problems – or just use Time Machine.

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Did you try this?

3 years on, who is ‘you’?

Yes I know, just wanted to check how it worked out for @pat (if he tried …). Started using git this week and searched the forum.

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Ah, sorry. :slight_smile:

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I use Tinderbox in git all the time, as the development roadmap Tinderbox is checked into the Tinderbox source tree.

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Maybe, with the right set of logic, one can program a note-level versioning system? :slight_smile:

I could. I’m not sure it’s worth the overhead and the storage space. Git gives you concurrent checking if you avoid conflicts.

Shipman’s VKB was built on a versioning system. It was nice to have! But I’m not sure it’s worth the headaches of adding yet another layer of versioning.

Is the need for full versioning a workaround for human fallibility, or is there a larger purpose to such effort?

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The Scrivener snapshots referred to in the OP aren’t automatic. They are manually created “restore points.”

I think an equivalent could be created with a simple stamp.

  1. create a root level container called “Snapshots”
  2. create a stamp with the code: $MyString=$Name;$Name=date("today").format(yM0D)+"-"+$MyString;$Container="/Snapshots";

Anytime you want to take a snapshot of a note, duplicate it (cmd-D) and then apply the stamp. The duplicate will be time stamped and moved to the snapshots folder, which could be set to sort by name.

I’ve tested this sequence, and once the stamp is built, it doesn’t really take any longer than creating a snapshot in Scrivener, and it can be applied to multiple notes at once.

ps–I just realized I missed the “3 years later” mid-thread after which all later posts are about versioning. Sorry! I’ll leave the stamp info though.

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I really like scrivener snapshots as manual and intentional versions of selected texts. Especially with tests take take a long time to write, I like to use them and sometimes compare with earlier snapshots of that particular scrivening.

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