Thanks so much again for your generous support! I've asked follow up questions in turn...
Quote:Q1. You can suppress display of the time element of attributes displayed as KA -see more. If insisting on neat times, I'd fill in the dates and then make a stamp that works with Date.hour, etc. to set a common time in h/m/s for each of your custom Date attributes in each of the notes using them.
I'm afraid you lost me here. I clicked the link, and have a sense of what you're trying to convey, but I'm unclear about the process I'd need to follow to achieve what you're suggesting. (By the way, this is my biggest complaint with TB in general: it feels technically overwhelming and opaque, even when tackling the most seemingly small stuff. Obviously, I hope to overcome that!)
Quote:Q2. I don't understand the data. Are you saying you've put the job title as part of the not'e title (i.e. its $Name), or is it added via a $DisplayExpression, or is the job title in an attribute of its own. If the latter don't overwork which attribute. If you can't find a suitable built-in one, make your own; more important the latter case is considering the data type for that attribute.
So far, yes: I've just put the job title as part of the note's title (i.e. its $Name). I haven't used $DisplayExpression -- I don't quite get how it's used. I'm happy to use a suggested attribute that would just fulfill my aim to separate the name from the title, esp. since titles (e.g., Secretary of Agriculture) are ways of ID'ing and grouping certain officials (e.g., by their rank, and the fields the operate in).
Quote:The nature of your questions makes me think your trying to conceptualise everything before actually touching the doc. I think that's not the best way to leverage Tinderbox which bis very supporting of experimentation. The only caveat I'd make to that is experiment in new to-be-discarded docs intended just for exploration/test, as opposed to messing up your 'real' file with all the data you've carefully added. If you need specimen data for a test, make a copy of your real file, give it a name significantly different from the original so your know it's a test, then experiment. Once you've understood an issue you can apply the desired solution to your main work folder.
I hear you, and really appreciate your observations. Believe it or not, I'm actually trying to
avoid conceptualizing everything! Rather, as I'm creating notes and containers (so far, all in the online view), I've begun to realize that I need some definition in order to define some of these notes so that I can better sort and group them. Just having a name, title, and certain key dates seems like basic info that I ought to include. I'm sure there'll be more attributes that I'd like to develop along the way, but I'm trying to avoid complicating things -- esp. given the stage I'm at right now with TB!
Quote:So, for instance, make a new file and add the built-in 'Event' prototype. Now add a few new notes and set there prototype as Event, thus showing $StartDate/$EndDate/$DueDate as KAs allowing you easy experimentation with how the time elements is displayed and possible stamp or quickstamp approaches to altering time in Date attributes. Then, once confident in the choices you prefer (they will differ person to person), apply them to your main work doc(s). Actually trying things early is a faster route to understanding the depth of the app.
I think I follow you about this... Right now, I'm trying to flesh out notes in a TB file, and trying to figure out what attributes I'll likely need as I go. But I'll consider your suggested approach, too. Thanks!
Quote:Q3. DEVONThink has its own pseudo-protocol (something like
devonthink://etc...) which you generate within the DT app and which work within the context of a single Mac - i.e. opening the URL opens DT at that note. Such DT URLs can be placed in $URL or in custom URL-type user attributes which can be exposed as KA. I've not tried but if you make a 'web link' in $Text and use a DT URL as opposed to a web (
http://...) one I guess it would also work, as in all cases TB hands passes to URL to Finder to resolve and it opens DT or your web browser or whatever. For other apps you could use a $File or a custom File-type attribute to store a path to the data file of some other app for as with URLs, TB just passes the path to finder and asks the latter to open it. DT is somewhat distinct in allowing external (local) access direct to specific notes; for other apps likely the best you can do is open a given data file in the target app.
Oy. This seems like a lot of technical work. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it does feel rather overwhelming. I'm not at this stage yet. But I do need to figure out how to link TB notes to files / tags that correspond to consolidated annotated research about said notes. Make sense? I'd certainly welcome any other suggested approaches.
Thanks again!