Tinderbox is personal content management system for making, analyzing, and sharing notes.

1. How Tinderbox builds a Web page

2. Assembling many notes into a page

Much of the time, you'll want to include information from many different notes on the same page.

The left column of this Web page contains a variety of information about the page's author -- his most recent projects, publications, his travel schedule, contact information. In Tinderbox, each detail is a separate note; this makes it easy to find, update, and extend the information.

The right column is a Web journal (sometimes called a web log or blog) -- a chronological list of recent news about current projects. Again, it's convenient to keep each item in its own note; Tinderbox can then automatically sort, select, and arrange notes.

^INCLUDE

In our previous example, we created a simple export template that places a note's title and text on an HTML page. We'll call this BoxTemplate.html, and save it in our document's template folder.

To assemble several notes into a page, we simply use the ^include placeholder in the export template.

^include("Fresh Styles",boxTemplate.html)

When Tinderbox uses this template, the placeholder is replaced by the note titles "Fresh Styles", which will be formatted using the template file boxTemplate.html .

^include adds a single note. That note's export template might include other notes as well. It's common to ^include several different notes in the same template.

^include(Plans....)
^include(Travel...)
^include(Meetings...)

Be careful not to ^include a note in itself!

^CHILDREN

This placeholder includes all the descendants of a note -- all the notes it contains. If a template is specified, that template is used for every note; otherwise the template used by the parent is reused for each descendant. (The placeholder ^justChildren is nearly identical, but includes only a note's immediate children, ignoring grandchildren and their descendants.)

^children(boxTemplate.html)

^Children() is often useful for lists, indexes, and directories. For example, an agent called What's New might find all notes that have been modified in the last 24 hours; on export, it could create a list of the names of the changed notes. ^Children is a natural for adding Web log or journal features to a page.

Controlling HTML Export

Attributes attached to each note help Tinderbox decide what notes to export and exactly how to export them. Many of the most useful options can be set in the HTML View Window.

Export as page: if checked, Tinderbox will create a separate HTML page for this note. Otherwise, Tinderbox won't export the not (but the note might be included in another page)

Export children as page: if not checked, Tinderbox will not try to export the notes contained in this note as HTML pages. This is handy for marking sections of your work that you don't wish to share, such as drafts of news you plan to announce in the future or reminders about tasks you plan to do.

Markup Text: if checked, Tinderbox will scan any text included by the ^text placeholder for paragraph boundaries, bold and italic font weights, links, and similar style cues.

File name: Tinderbox will normally choose a name for the exported HTML file based on the note's title. Punctuation and spaces are removed and the name is abbreviated for compatibility with a wide range of servers. If you prefer, you may specify a specific name here.

Template: a popup menu that allows you to select any template from the document's Export Template folder. The nearby Edit button lets you edit the selected template.

Preview: push this button to preview the exported HTML in the browser or editor of your choice.

Details of these and other options may be found in the User Reference Manual.