[Tb] Use of Tinderbox by Historians

Hi all,

I tried to use tb as my all-in-one academia tool and have since given=20
up. Tindebox is indeed wonderful and I miss (desire!) many of the=20
features, especially the agents that make it so powerful. But there are=20=

several drawbacks:

1. file size: once you get over 1-2000 entries, tb becomes very, very=20
slow, much slower than filemaker. I spent the better part of 2 days=20
transfering my secondary reading notes into filemaker (wonderfully=20
seperated, with categories, etc.) as a test and was horrified by how=20
sluggish the program quickly became. according to the wiki site, this=20
is a natural consequence of the xml file structure, but it is really=20
too bad. I imagine any "real" history project, with the thousands of=20
notes that arise from primary research and secondary reading, make=20
tinderbox unsuitable for anything more than doodles for an article. at=20=

the moment it can't replace a file cabinet.

2. images: tinderbox imports images and then converts them into tiffs.=20=

i thought about this option at the beginning of my playing around with=20=

tb -- i have about 10,000 pages (thanks to my handy digital camera...=20
wonderful things!) from my archival research that are classified in a=20
filemaker database -- but, again, see point 1. tiff + xml quickly makes=20=

for a huge and unwieldy file and super sluggish performance.

the alternative is, of course, to break up a project into many smaller=20=

files, but then you loose that tb magic...

i would be interested in other experiences, especially positive ones!=20
but i gave up.

best, max

*********************
Max V=F6gler
Institut f=FCr Geschichtswissenschaften
Humboldt-Universit=E4t zu Berlin
Tel. ++49 (30) 2093 2541
Fax ++49 (30) 2093 2544
Email: voeglerm__AT__geschichte.hu-berlin.de
Received on Thu Aug 26 07:17:16 2004