From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Eric Abrahamsen Subject: Re: [OT] Does anyone use Tinderbox? Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2012 18:24:48 -0700 Message-ID: <87zk55uuqn.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net> References: <87ipbty202.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:50113) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1T94MY-0003Sx-0Z for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Tue, 04 Sep 2012 21:25:03 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1T94MW-0002hb-5F for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Tue, 04 Sep 2012 21:25:01 -0400 Received: from plane.gmane.org ([80.91.229.3]:39241) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1T94MV-0002hU-Q9 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Tue, 04 Sep 2012 21:25:00 -0400 Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1T94MW-00050g-Qr for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 05 Sep 2012 03:25:00 +0200 Received: from 63.226.249.211 ([63.226.249.211]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Wed, 05 Sep 2012 03:25:00 +0200 Received: from eric by 63.226.249.211 with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Wed, 05 Sep 2012 03:25:00 +0200 List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org On Tue, Sep 04 2012, Marcelo de Moraes Serpa wrote: > Hi Eric, > > Thank your for sharing your insights! Tinderbox does look > interesting, albeit a bit overkill. > > > *without* later discovering some > free open source software that did the same thing better. > > > Care to share which? Well the most obvious example was TextMate, which I was happy to pay for and enjoyed using, but after hearing it described as "emacs-like" several times, I googled "emacs" and ended up… here. Others include Quicken, which I replaced with ledger; iWork, which I replaced with OpenOffice (actually iWork is much nicer, so that doesn't count); and some photo editing program I forget the name of, which I replaced with GIMP. I never said I'd bought a *lot* of software in the past :) > Thanks, > > Marcelo. > > On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 3:19 PM, Eric Abrahamsen < > eric@ericabrahamsen.net> wrote: > > On Tue, Sep 04 2012, Marcelo de Moraes Serpa wrote: > > > Hi list, > > > > I've recently found out about Tinderbox (http:// > www.eastgate.com/ > > Tinderbox/), a personal information management application/ > framework > > for the Mac. It looks very interesting in its visualization > > capabilities. > > > > Does anyone in the list use it, and if so, care to share a bit > about > > the experience? > > > > Perhaps it could serve as inspiration for orgmode extensions/ > > integration ideas. > > > > Cheers, > > > > - Marcelo. > > I used to use it, when I still used a Mac. Despite the price tag, > it was > the only piece of software I paid for, *without* later > discovering some > free open source software that did the same thing better. > > Tinderbox has some feature overlap with Org, but not a lot. It's > much > more a generalized note-taking/data collection program -- it can > and > often is configured as a TODO machine, but you'd have to build in > much > of the stuff that comes with Org by default. On the other hand, > it's > much more powerful and flexible when it comes to (re)organizing > chunks > of plain data. Tinderbox notes are comparable to a single Org > headline-plus-text-and-metadata, but they can be arranged and > related > much more flexibly. Tinderbox doesn't have spreadsheets, tho -- > not as > far as I remember. > > Multiple views on the same data is something that Tinderbox also > does > very well. > > One interesting distinction is Tinderbox agents. Agents are notes > that > are mini-programs: they collect other notes according to various > search > criteria, and the act on them according to various rules. They > make > Tinderbox powerful, but they also make it confusing: the search > and > action rules are written in a mini-programming language that is a > bit > perplexing. > > But there are interesting implications for Org. Org agenda views > are the > equivalent of agents, in the *collection* sense: you give it > search > criteria, and it gives you what is essentially a set of symlinks > to > other headlines. Action is done by the user, of course, with > Agenda > commands. > > I've daydreamed about this before: what if, instead of agenda > views, we > took a page from the Tinderbox method and made "agendas" simple > headlines, with some cookie saying "I'm an agenda", and a > property > containing the search string. Instead of having an ephemeral *Org > Agenda* buffer, your "agenda views" are simply another in-file > headline, > whose children are TODOs/headlines that match the query. Multiple > and > persistent agendas are suddenly a matter of course. > > It wouldn't work well for date-based Agendas, of course. In fact, > it > would probably turn out to be a bad idea for reasons I haven't > fully > thought through, yet, but it was an interesting daydream. > > E > > -- > GNU Emacs 24.2.50.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.24.11) >  of 2012-09-04 on pellet > 7.9.1 > > > > > > -- GNU Emacs 24.2.50.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.24.11) of 2012-09-04 on pellet 7.9.1