#BBEDIT AND TASKPAPER MAC#

it is an outliner in the ordinary sense with tree structure. It is a sort of Ruskin-like approach to software. To my mind, this includes an active involvement with the user and research communities and a personal quest to discover new ways of doing things elegantly. Mark brings a philosophy of “Victorian programming“ to his product, playing up the hand crafted qualities.

#BBEDIT AND TASKPAPER MAC#

I find this aspect of Tinderbox experimental and thrilling, very much along the lines of an original user interface concept for the Mac where the position of multiple windows on a screen, and spatially arranged icons in a window could mean something. Tinderbox has superior support for this metalevel with the “spatial” view being almost a live research program in visualizing this structure. Generally, the metalevel of the links is structured so a machine can assist with organization. Rich hypertext is a matter of working with concepts (in text) that are related by concepts (as links). Hypertext in this context predates the web, where a web hyperlink is merely a “go to” relation. Tinderbox’s architect, Mark Bernstein, also uses the term “spatial hypertext,” when describing its unique category. In my case, I have a starting structure in mind. Described this way, the application is designed for precisely what outlining was originally conceived to support: working in the small and zooming out to the large to work with structure. Tinderbox’s power is in allowing you to make or discover emergent structure among those situated concepts.

The general idea is that one should make a short note of anything before the insight is lost. It is tailored for user-generated text, and is not great for images or snippet input. The creator of Tinderbox describes it as a tool for notes and has written a book about a general philosophy of capturing and relating thoughts. For those who might be interested, here are some tools I use.

Bbedit and taskpaper