[Tb] Many improvements in v. 2.4

I have been looking over Tinderbox 2.4 and have noticed many
interesting things, all very good. Serious users should probably
regard this as a "must-download". In addition to the many added
features and fixes enumerated in the release notes, the
application has once again been speeded up in subtle ways: map
zooming, saving, agent update and exporting all seem a bit
snappier (but I've done no actual timing). The major speed
improvement from my point of view involves editing attributes in
note windows: as I mentioned on the list a short while ago,
there was an annoying delay upon clicking in the text space
after editing in one of the little boxes that display the values
of the key attributes. Dr Bernstein wrote that this was because
editing these attributes forces an agent update, so they must
have changed that behavior. This one improvement makes the
application significantly more pleasant for me to use.

All the interface changes (like colored outline titles) seem to
be carefully thought out and make the program easier to use.
Some, like the yellowing dog-ears in the map view, are
remarkably subtle and inspired.

A few of the bug fixes address issues that have been brought up
here recently. From the release notes:

   Roadmap remembers its size;
   text links: title is now editable;
   The progress bar for HTML export is more accurate;
   Get Info Dialog: easier file choosing:
     The GetInfo view no longer disables files that are not
     known to be text files. This is especially helpful to those who
     use SubEthaEdit, which creates text files that lack the
     corresponding legacy MacOS file type.
     
This last one hit me all the time: I use SubEthaEdit.

The new feature that provides a popup menu for key attributes
with string values is potentially very useful. It's not just a
convenience but makes Tinderbox a better database, as it helps
to enforce consistent spelling of values that you want to be the
same among a collection of notes (such things should be selected
from a list rather than typed in, and now they can be). The
release notes say that the maximum number of unique string
values is configurable, but I can't find out where. Maybe it's
not configurable by the user.

I think there is one serious problem with the implementation of
this feature: if you have too many different string values for
an attribute, the menu contains a single value: "normal". This
is fine; there needs to be a limit to the size of the menu. But
if you select this by mistake then, if you had a value for the
attribute typed in already it will get wiped out, and there is
no "undo" for this. If you need to get it back you have to
reload your document.

Unfortunately, a few long-standing bugs remain, such as the
"file" attribute sometimes getting set to a bizarre, random
default value (today it's my home directory, and it refuses to
be cleared).
Received on Wed Mar 9 19:46:15 2005