This, incidentally, reminds us of a useful Tinderbox lesson: read the release notes.  They describe nice new features and additions that are easy to overlook.

For newcomers, release notes are sorted in three flavors:

• Major (not otherwise categorized): new features, new views, new capabilities.  Everyone will want to know about these.
• Minor: Extensions and improvements; new actions and queries. Frequent users will want to review these.
• Details: Cosmetic fixes and improvements that you might be able to observe, but that you probably won't notice.

Hi, I've been searching for a way to organize my book notes and wondering if Tinderbox is the most appropriate tool or if it's overkill given the relative simplicity of what I want to do (and if so, what alternative would you recommend):

–collect quotes with bibliographical and page reference. I saw from Mark' s and Ben's posts that this can be done. I'm just wondering how that works when I've accumulated notes and quotes from hundreds of books–would it be better to have one document per book or is it better to have them all under one document called "book notes" so that I can do searches between books?

–make notes with my own summaries and observations, linked to appropriate quotes as needed (I understand that this can be done as well)

–sort notes and quotes from different books by topic, be able to both make connections between ideas from different books by hand (with links or whatever) and serendipitously discover connections through some kind of intelligent search mechanism. I read about how Steven Berlin Johnson does that with DevonThink but that program seems like overkill for what I want to do, plus I like the visual tools included with Tinderbox

–be able to sort my book list by topic, author, etc.

–take bits and pieces from various notes on various books and assemble them into an outline for an essay (or book, eventually) and export it into a word processing program

–store blog posts/essays and ideas for new blog posts, sorted by topic so I can see at a glance what topic I haven't written about in a while, with links to book notes or other relevant articles or websites as needed

Thank you for indulging my total newbie questions.

There are a lot of very open-ended questions which are best teased out into separate thread (topics) to explore in depth - I'm not clear if you're asking whether tto do these things or the mechanics of how to do them. Anyway, Mark B has answered the one/many document question. In ssence it boils down to the breadth of your data and personal choice.  Get the split wrong? It doesn't really matter. Splitting or merging Tinderbox documents is possible so if in doubt it's better to just dive in rather than get stuck in analysis paralysis and not get started.

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You can make notes and and link them to references to books (or store the reference in the note), or make notes representing books you're studying and link your commentary notes that. The 'right' way will again on your style and needs. Visually-focused people will tend to Maps as a primary view, others prefer Outline or Chart view.  The context (app view type) in which you do your main review and analysis will colour how you will want to customise your file. If you use Bookends (BE) as your database for citations, Tinderbox (TB) supports drag-drop of BE reference data.

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All TB containers (notes containing other notes) and agents can sort their contents on pretty much any system attribute and any user attorbutes (the latter being those you add to your TB document). The simplest way is via a container's (or agent's) Rename dialog.

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To sort by something like 'topic' you will need to decide how this is indicated. It might be a word of phrase in existing note text ($Text attribute) or it might be values you have placed in a user-created attribute. For instance you might add an attribute $Topic that you could populate and then search via agents. In making such an attribute, consider whether it will only hold one topic per note or several; for the former a String-type attribute is got whereas for the latter a Set-type attribute would be a better choice.

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Sorting has already been covered - but if you want help with the mechanic of sorting do post a question in the Q&A forum

Tip: you'll find you get more/better answers by separating questions into more tightly defined threads. Posting a number of different questions in separate threads is actually a help to everyone - more posts are good - as topics can be dealt with in more detail.

Do keep the questions coming, and don't be wary of just diving into Tinderbox use - unlike many applications it doesn't penalise for not making 'correct' guesses about use as you start out. Indeed, one of it's strengths is allowing you add any necessary structure as its need becomes apparent.

I've recently begun using the built-in StartDate and EndDate to record when I start and finish reading each book. I can then use the Timeline view to get a nice visual history of my reading habits.

Here's a screenshot of this year so far...

Hmmm. I've just counted ten books on my shelves that I've got half way through and then stopped -- one at least that I started about six years ago, if my memory serves me correctly. And then there are about five more that I started but never got beyond the first twenty pages. Somehow I don't think I will be using this idea!

Martin.

It's too easy to get up on setting both start and end. Even a single date can help. When did I read that paper? Put it in $StartDate and timeline can show back to you the order and rate of your research. YMMV: it might mean a lot to one user and nothing to another.

Still, I think the concept is interesting. The point to remember is that if you want to use a Timeline you must at minimum set $StartDate. In this context if you want to use this info you might use a prototype and make that use a rule:

$StartDate |= $Created

Thus the former is set once, and once only, to the date your note was created which is likely the date you started reading the reference. Setting $EndDate is quite optional.

To avoid setting every $startDate - which might be overkill you could always make a stamps with this code:

$StartDate |= $Created

You could always use an OnAdd action in your container

    $StartDate |= $Created

This will set the start date to $Created if you haven't already set it.  Hard to be easier than that.