This is with Tinderbox 8.5.0 (b434) on macOS Catalina 10.15.3, based on a newly-created TBX file with a single note named testnote and a user attribute named TestDate, with a default of never. TestDate is a key attribute of testnote.
The following screenshots are of the Get Info window for testnote, which I opened by clicking on testnote in the map view, selecting the menu item Note > Get info…, and dragging the pop-up to turn into into a window.
First, I double-click on the text entry box for TestDate and enter the text today:
I again double-click on the text entry box for TestDate. The text is automatically selected, and is formatted slightly differently, using [space]at[space] instead of ,[space] to separate the time from the date:
This behaviour doesn’t occur if I use the calendar icon to select a date, so for the time being my workaround for editing the time is to enter the intended date and time via text entry, but to then manually click the calendar icon to select the corrent date. This is time-consuming, so I’d really like to know if I’m doing something wrong somewhere or if I’ve misunderstood how date entry works in Tinderbox.
Here are my macOS Language & Region settings, in case they’re relevant:
Please let me know if anything jumps out at you as unusual, because I’m struggling to understand why this is happening or how to achieve the expected behaviour.
FWIW, I’m on 10.14.6, but I see a different issue. I followed your steps in Get Info, but on initially hitting Return (or Enter†), nothing happens. But if I shift focus off/on to the attribute (i.e. refresh the view) the date is correct.
† Return being the key to the right of the first two rows of letter keys (commonly called ‘Enter’) and Enter being the key bottom right of an extended keyboard’s number pad. On older Mac laptops there was a key on the spacebar row, now you can only type the Enter key using Fn+Return. That said, though the two keys have discrete key code numbers under the hood, they generally do the same thing.
However, I can’t replicate to forward-by-1-week effect, but noting i’m on an older OS.
Thanks @mwra. For context, my keypress was generated by a return_or_enter key code from Karabiner, which I trigger by holding down my spacebar — but it doesn’t seem to make a difference if I use my physical Enter key to send the keypad_enter code instead.
On a hunch, I restored the default macOS date settings. This seems to have corrected the date-jumping behaviour, although it’s at the cost of my date no longer being presented in the format I’d prefer.
@eastgate Wow! I make that a two-day turnaround between my initial post and the 8.5.1 release which addresses my problem. This kind of pace and professionalism reassures me that my data is in safe hands. Thank you.
I want you to know that I’m two months into my time with Tinderbox, and last night it solved my first real-world problem for me; a merge conflict between documents that had been edited separately. I mapped all 30 versions of the document using a “Document” prototype in the Map view, with one Key Attribute to hold the modification date and time of each file, and another to hold the identity of the colleague who saved the file. I was then able to view these dates and names in the Attribute Browser to piece together some conclusions about what had happened.
Further, during this process Tinderbox gave me an insight that I hadn’t even thought to look for. I had assumed my PDF copy of this document had been exported from the latest Word master document, and I was so secure in this assumption that I had never thought to test it. But earlier, I had mapped the PDF alongside the Word docs using the same prototype — at the time, I’d done this purely to have a quick visual reference of all the files involved.
Switching to the Attribute Browser, it jumped out at me that the timestamp of the PDF actually matched one of the earlier master documents; not the latest one. I think what surprised me most about this insight was that it came from data that wasn’t new to me — I had already seen every date and time during the course of the evening. What Tinderbox gave me was the means to derive new understanding from the knowledge I already had.
This is a very special tool you’ve made, @eastgate. I’m glad I took the plunge.
