TidBITS#651/14-Oct-02
=====================
Longing to trade your Palm and cell phone in for a single svelte
device? Jeff Carlson passes on the results of his tests of the
Handspring Treo 180, perhaps the most successful of these hybrid
devices. Also this week, Matt Neuburg returns to tell us about
Tinderbox, an innovative text snippet keeper from hypertext
pioneer Eastgate Systems. We also have our reader grade of
Mac OS X, and ask that you vote for TidBITS in the 4th Best
of the Mac Web survey.
Topics:
MailBITS/14-Oct-02
Handspring Treo 180: Almost There
Light Your Fire with Tinderbox
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MailBITS/14-Oct-02
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**Vote for TidBITS in 4th Best of the Mac Web Survey!** From
today, 14-Oct-02, through Tuesday, 22-Oct-02, the Low End Mac
Web site is running the latest installment of their semi-annual
popularity contest for Macintosh news and information Web sites.
Last time we ranked 3rd in user rankings and 12th in overall
votes; I'd love to see those numbers climb this year. So please
take a moment and help the TidBITS PR cause with a vote, but make
sure to rank your other favorite Mac sites too. This time around,
Low End Mac broke the list of 100 sites into 4 pages of 25 sites
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[ACE]
<http://lowendmac.com/botmw/fall02/>
<http://lowendmac.master.com/texis/master/search/+/form/BOTMW4.html>
**Poll Results: Grading Mac OS X** -- It's a bit hard to analyze
the results of last week's poll asking how you'd grade Mac OS X.
I was intrigued to see that the number of people who rated Mac OS X
more highly than I did was almost the same as the number who rated
it less highly, giving some level of credence to my grade. The
most common grades were a B+ (from 25 percent of the respondents)
and a B- (from 21 percent). Subsequent discussion on TidBITS Talk
left most of my grades alone, except for the Internationalization
grade. Quite a number of people from other countries wrote in with
their frustrating experiences with Mac OS X, and although they
agreed that the foundations were solid, they felt Apple had a long
way to go before an A- would be justified. With that feedback, I'd
probably drop the Internationalization grade to a B, but that
wouldn't be sufficient to affect my overall grade. [ACE]
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbpoll=78>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06954>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=1760+1771>
Handspring Treo 180: Almost There
---------------------------------
by Jeff Carlson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I'm sure it was only weeks after the introduction of the original
Pilot before someone asked, "If I have all my phone numbers in
this little organizer anyway, why can't I use it as a phone, too?"
To judge by the paucity of such devices since then, fusing a
handheld and a cellular phone turns out to be a tricky problem.
Size is the main issue. Before the components in phones started to
shrink dramatically, models like the Qualcomm pdQ Smartphone were
bricks that ended up being larger and more awkward to use than two
separate devices. At the same time, it's not realistic to make a
hybrid handheld the size of mini phones like the Nokia 8290
because the screen becomes unusable for organizer functions. How
do you retain the usefulness of the Palm OS with the form factor
of today's cellular phones?
Despite the missteps of the past (or perhaps because of them), the
handheld/cell phone hybrid is getting closer to being a practical
solution for anyone who's tried to juggle two separate devices
just to place a call. Handspring's Treo line of "communicators"
(deliberately named to distinguish from the mere "organizers" that
preceded them) appears to be the best combination so far. However,
being the best right now doesn't imply that the Treo is perfect -
for every improvement or advantage, I found small annoyances with
the Treo 180 I tested. With what would seem to be subtle tweaking,
Handspring could make the Treo an outstanding product.
<http://www.handspring.com/products/communicators/>
**A Smaller Slice** -- The best news, at least on the surface, is
that the Treo's size is more in line with a cell phone than any
of its handheld/cell phone predecessors. Even using Handspring's
novel Visor Phone, which was an add-on that turned any Visor
organizer into a cell phone, felt at times like using a 1980s
elongated mobile phone. At 4.2 inches (10.7 cm) tall (with the
clamshell design closed), 2.8 inches (7.1 cm) wide, and 0.82
inches (2.1 cm) deep, the Treo fits into the larger end of the
size range of most cellular phones on the market today. It
includes a built-in rechargeable battery, enabling Handspring to
keep the Treo slim and keep the phone activated for hours without
frequently swapping AAA batteries. And, thankfully, it weighs only
5.2 ounces (147 grams), so you can slip it into a pants pocket or
purse without experiencing the too-common "tech slouch" caused by
imbalanced equipment.
That said, I personally still found the Treo too wide for holding
up to my ear comfortably. I'm accustomed to a much smaller and
narrower phone, the Nokia 8290, so the Treo's width felt like
holding a small pizza box to my head. Using the supplied earbud-
style microphone helped, but I often needed to make quick calls
that weren't worth the hassle of untangling the cord. (I can't
wait for Bluetooth-enabled wireless headsets to become more
widespread; corded hands-free headsets are better than holding
the phone to one's ear, but I hate catching the cord on desk or
a doorknob as I pace while talking.)
**Goodbye Graffiti** -- Handspring has done more than shrink
components to make the Treo line. A small keyboard has replaced
the legacy Graffiti area for inputting data on most models
(a Graffiti version of the Treo 180 is also available, but
the color Treo 270 and 300 models come only with the keyboard).
I'm conflicted about the change. As a longtime Palm user, I'm
accustomed to Graffiti and have very few problems using it.
However, people with no experience with Palm handhelds frequently
ask me whether they have to "learn a new language" to use one,
so I can see the benefit of not making users adopt a new technique
for entering information. Plus, no matter what, it's faster to
press a key than write a character.
Just don't expect to use the keyboard as you would a regular
keyboard. The raised buttons are small and designed for your
thumbs, an approach that works surprisingly well. (I've never
had much hands-on experience with Blackberry communicators, which
introduced the small keyboards, so forgive me if I sound like I
just fell off a UPS delivery truck.) Once you get the hang of it,
thumb-typing can be much faster and more accurate than Graffiti,
which is especially useful when composing email or SMS text
messages.
The Treo also includes a rocker switch on the left side that lets
you scroll between items or access the menus, theoretically making
it possible to ignore the included stylus. The rocker switch also
controls volume while using the Treo as a phone, and pushing the
rocker switch in selects whatever is highlighted on the screen.
Useful as these new interface elements are, introducing them to
the Palm experience has drawbacks too. Unless you're just typing,
your hands are moving all over: using the rocker switch (which I
guess you can do with your left hand while you type with your left
thumb, but I'm apparently not that dextrous), using the stylus or
a fingernail to tap buttons (I couldn't find a way to do this via
the rocker switch or the keyboard), and trying to avoid dropping
the device.
With enough practice, I could probably juggle it all successfully,
so I can't work myself into too much of a lather on that point.
However, at least two design decisions aggravated me on a constant
basis.
Since there is no Graffiti area, and therefore no main
Applications button, the only way to get to the Palm OS's main
screen is to press two buttons on the keyboard, a blue Option
button and a combination Menu/Application button. Perhaps this
is an indication that Handspring expects people to use the Treo
primarily as a phone and only occasionally as an organizer.
Surely, there's a better solution.
My second gripe is easily fixed: there is no ampersand on the
keyboard! I'd think that it would be invaluable when writing SMS
text messages, where you need to be brief, to replace "and" with
"&". To do this, you must type a plus sign (Option-G), then use
the List Type key (marked with ellipses and next to the space bar)
to select "&" from a pop-up menu. Handspring could easily replace
the little-used percent key in future models.
**The Great Communicator** -- The showcase feature of the Treo, of
course, is the built-in cellular phone, which offered its own mix
of features and annoyances. The grayscale Treo 180 and color Treo
270 models are GSM phones, with service in the U.S. offered by
Cingular and T-Mobile (GSM is the dominant protocol throughout
most of the rest of the world; check Handspring's international
sites for details on carriers outside the U.S.); the recently
introduced Treo 300 is also color and uses Sprint's PCS network.
<http://www.handspring.com/international/>
Since my Nokia is a GSM phone, I was able to pull its SIM card and
put it into the Treo, instantly making the Treo my primary phone.
The only change I had to make was to call T-Mobile and add a $4
per month data service to enable email and Web access on my
account. An included SIM Srvcs application on the Treo copied the
names and phone numbers from my SIM card to the Treo's built-in
Address Book, so I didn't have to re-enter that data. This
incredible convenience comes with a price, though. Because of
deals with the service providers, a Treo 180 with service
activation costs $350; to get the communicator by itself, the
price jumps to $550. The costs of buying a color Treo 270 or Treo
300 are even harder to swallow, priced at $500 with service and
$700 without.
So how well does it work for your money? Finding phone numbers on
the Treo beats any cell phone I've ever used, with a Phone Lookup
feature that displays character matches in any part of a person or
company's name as you type. Not only can the Treo tell you who's
calling, but the log of incoming and outgoing calls makes it easy
to call up someone from several days ago. You can dial using
large, easy-to-press buttons on screen, or use a grid of keys in
the keyboard - the Treo is usually smart enough to determine when
you're typing a phone number versus a person's name. And having an
actual interface for things like three-way calls and putting one
person on hold while you answer another incoming call antiquates
the arcane button combinations of most phones.
I especially like the physical switch on top of the Treo that lets
you put the phone into silent mode. Why suffer through a series of
menus, as on most cellular phones, to accomplish this simple and
necessary feature? The Treo also has a speakerphone mode so you
don't have to act as go-between when, for example, your colleagues
are trying to determine where to eat lunch.
And yet, again, a few minor things dampened my enthusiasm. At the
top of the list: the lack of a Redial button. On my Nokia phone,
pressing the Talk button brings up the last number I dialed, which
I use all the time, such as when the line I'm calling is busy or
I've forgotten to mention something important before hanging up.
On the Treo, you have two convoluted options for accessing a
number you just dialed: press the Phone Book button at the bottom
of the device or flip up the lid, tap the fourth icon from the
left to bring up the Call History List, then use the rocker switch
or stylus to select and dial the top number. The slightly quicker
method is to press the Phone Book button four times to get to the
Call History List. Handspring must be able to engineer a better
way to accomplish this simple action.
I was also surprised that the phone software in general could be
sluggish. For example, pressing the number buttons on the keyboard
(without pressing the blue option button to put it into number
mode) would trigger the software to recognize that I wanted
numbers instead of letters, but it took a second or two for the
screen to catch up with my actions.
Synchronizing with the Mac, too, isn't as straightforward as it
ought to be, though this is a problem that spans both Handspring,
Palm, and Apple. Although I didn't have any trouble, Handspring
cautions customers not to use Palm Desktop 4.0 if they haven't
first run the included Treo installation software. The company
recently released a version of Palm Desktop that works with
Handspring organizers, but the caveat still applies. I'd recommend
running the installer and setting up the Treo under Mac OS 9,
then switching back to Mac OS X (if that's your primary operating
system) before installing the latest Palm Desktop software from
Handspring.
<http://support.handspring.com/esupport/forms/hsResolutionView.jsp?
ResolutionId=8542&ResType=il>
**Internet, In-Hand** -- Of the Treo's online capabilities, I had
the most fun with SMS text messaging, where I could send short
notes to folks back at the office that they could receive and
reply via email (if they had SMS-capable phones, we could send
messages back and forth nearly instantaneously). However, I
learned a valuable lesson the hard way: my messages were truncated
at 160 characters, even though the software let me write as much
as I wanted. Some indication, even a note at the bottom of the
screen, would prevent that type of snafu.
Unfortunately, accessing the Internet required dialing a regular
ISP (EarthLink, in my case), as opposed to the always-on service
afforded by Palm's i705 (see "Palm i705: Wireless Internet, If
You're Patient" in TidBITS-635_). However, Handspring offers an
upgrade that enables the Treo 180 and Treo 270 to take advantage
of GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), a better way of handling
data and maintaining persistent connections; the upgrade is
already available in Canada, Europe, and Asia, and Handspring
expects to release it soon for the U.S., Australia, and New
Zealand.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06856>
<http://www.TreoGPRS.com/>
Once online, Handspring's included Blazer seemed to be a capable
handheld Web browser, but it's still tough to browse the Web on
such a small screen. Similarly, email access was acceptable using
the included One-Touch Mail client; at the time I tested the Treo
180, Handspring had not yet released Treo Mail, a $50 package that
connects to the Internet and retrieves email automatically.
<http://www.handspring.com/services/treomail/>
**Almost There** -- The Treo is certainly the best organizer/cell
phone combination I've seen. Despite the relatively high cost
compared to purchasing two devices separately, people looking to
reduce their gadget quotient will appreciate the Treo's compact
size and strong integration between Palm OS and phone software.
Handspring has made it clear that it believes the communicator
is the future of the handheld market, and is staking its business
on that belief. The Treo isn's so much a mature organizer that's
been combined with a cell phone, but rather a sophisticated early
template of what communicators are going to become. For that
reason, I'm more forgiving of the minor flaws I encountered,
and look forward to future incarnations.
PayBITS: Did this Treo review help you decide which handheld
to buy? If so, why not send Jeff a few bucks via PayPal?
<https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=jeff%40necoffee.com>
Read more about PayBITS: <http://www.tidbits.com/paybits/>
Light Your Fire with Tinderbox
------------------------------
by Matt Neuburg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Storyspace, the long-standing hypertext application from Eastgate
Systems, was the first program I ever reviewed for TidBITS, and I
described a new version of it last year. Now Eastgate is back with
a new offering, Tinderbox.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06453>
<http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/>
Tinderbox incorporates most of Storyspace's fundamental metaphor
and interface; outwardly, the two programs are almost
indistinguishable. But they are oriented quite differently.
Storyspace is about hypertext narrative; it presupposes an author
and an audience, and uses mechanisms such as guard fields and the
freeware Storyspace Reader program to guide the audience through
a non-linear narrative. Tinderbox lacks those mechanisms and
introduces new ones; it is aimed at the single user, and is meant
as a kind of lightweight database, a text snippet keeper, a note-
taking utility, a way of organizing pieces of information and
perhaps exporting them as HTML.
For me, this evolution is delightful, because it fills a need
I had already felt. I got lots of mileage out of Storyspace for
hypertext renderings of Greek grammar, but the program also seemed
as if it could be a snippet keeper; when I tried treating it as
one, I found the experience unsatisfactory. The reason is that
I was misusing Storyspace; Tinderbox turns out to be what I was
after all along. It deserves a place alongside the utilities for
storing, organizing, and retrieving information in interesting,
powerful ways that I've described in the past.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbser=1196>
**Getting Started** -- (Warning: This paragraph is highly
condensed; for a more complete understanding, reread my Storyspace
review.) In Tinderbox, the basic entity is the text snippet, which
is called a note. A note has two parts: its name, and its actual
content, if any, which can be styled and can include pictures, and
is edited in the note's text window. A note can be placed "inside"
another note, creating a hierarchical relationship among notes;
sub-notes of the same note also have an order amongst themselves,
which you can rearrange. There is thus an outline-like hierarchy
of notes; you can view this hierarchy in various ways, called
outline view, chart view, treemap view, and map view. But notes
can also relate to one another through hyperlinks; a link can
emanate from a note as a whole or from a particular stretch of
text within a note, and leads to another note. Following a link
from where it emanates opens the text window of the note it
leads to. A link can also be assigned a name.
Getting started with Tinderbox is extremely easy. If you're
willing to learn just a few shortcuts, you can start brainstorming
immediately, creating and entering successive notes without the
mouse: Return creates a new note, Spacebar opens its text window,
Command-W closes it, Enter renames it. Once you have a few notes,
you can rearrange them; the easiest way is in outline view, where
you can just drag or use keyboard shortcuts. Making hyperlinks is
just as easy: select a note or some text in a note, type Option-
Command-L, click on the link's destination. There are other ways
to accomplish these actions; my point is just that you can start
to work effectively right away.
To this basic bag of tricks, Tinderbox adds two major innovations:
attributes and agents.
**Attributes** -- Attributes constitute an additional mode of
snippet organization, ranking with the outline hierarchy and
hyperlinks. An attribute is simply a name-value pair, where the
value can be a basic type such as text, a number, or a date - for
example, "age:47". Many built-in attributes exist by default, such
as what font a note's title appears in; but you are also free
to create new attributes. Thus Tinderbox becomes a lightweight
database; for example, if every note representing a person has
the person's age as an attribute, you can quickly find all persons
older than a certain age.
Although notes don't actually come in different types, you can
treat them as if they do: you might have "person" notes with an
"age" attribute, "book" notes with an "ISBN number" attribute, and
so on. In reality, every note has a value for every attribute, so
a "person" will in fact have an "ISBN number"; but that doesn't
matter because you won't normally encounter it. You can set a note
to display particular attributes in a pane at the top of its text
window; so while editing a "person" note's text, you could see his
age at the top of the window, but not his ISBN number. And his
ISBN number will have a default value such as zero or the empty
string, so your "book" searches won't find any "person" notes.
There are many ways to view and manipulate attributes. I've
already mentioned that you can display attributes at the top of
a note's text window; you can edit them there too. A note's Info
window displays and lets you edit all attributes of that note. A
stamp is sort of the opposite: it is a particular value for a
particular attribute, which you can apply to all selected notes
by choosing from the Value menu or using the Quick Stamp window.
A prototype is a note that acts as a template; other notes, if
they're assigned this note as their prototype, inherit its
attribute values. Finally, an action is an attribute assignment
that's performed automatically by a note on its sub-notes at the
time they become its sub-notes (whether by being created within
the note or by being moved into it) - a powerful feature,
obviously, to be handled with care.
**Agents** -- To understand agents, you need to know about
aliases. A Tinderbox alias is like an alias in the Finder; you
make an alias of a note and put the alias anywhere, allowing the
same note to be represented in multiple locations in the hierarchy
(just as in the venerable outliner MORE).
<http://www.outliners.com/more31>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=02381>
An agent is a kind of query about all the notes in your document.
Now, Tinderbox already has a Find feature; so how is an agent
different? Well, an agent is itself just a note, one of whose
attributes is its query. The way an agent note tells you what
notes satisfy its query is that it is populated with sub-notes
that are aliases of those notes. This notion of searching and
gathering aliases is not completely original - MORE does it, for
instance - but Tinderbox's queries are more powerful than MORE's,
plus the whole thing is automatic and dynamic: Tinderbox is
constantly perusing your document and updating what's gathered
by every agent. For example, if an agent searches for all notes
whose text contains the word "Aeschylus", then if you type the
word "Aeschylus" in a note, an alias to that note will suddenly
appear among the sub-notes of that agent. Agents thus provide
automatic simultaneous alternate groupings of your notes to help
you keep track of your material.
**Miscellaneous Goodies** -- This section lists various neat
Tinderbox features I couldn't fit in elsewhere.
Storyspace, as I've long lamented, limits note names to 32
characters. Tinderbox lifts this limit, so notes can have
meaningful names, and you can use outline view as a genuine
outline.
Tinderbox remembers link names globally, so to assign a link a
name you've used already, you just choose it from a pop-up menu
(rather than having to remember and type the name manually each
time, as in Storyspace). Agents can search on link names - for
example, you can search for notes linked to by a "disagrees"
link - which makes such names genuinely useful.
If a word in a note's text window has internal capitalization
(likeThis), then if you Command-Option-click on that word, which
is normally the signal to follow a hyperlink, but there is no
hyperlink, Tinderbox will attempt to treat the word as a hyperlink
anyway: if the word is the name of a note, Tinderbox jumps to that
note; if not, Tinderbox offers to create a note by that name.
(This implicit link behavior is borrowed from the world of
WikiWikiWebs.)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06360>
<http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiWeb>
A note can have a file associated with it; just drag the file
to a text window's file icon. A menu item lets you open the file.
Tinderbox can thus be used as an organizing interface to files
on disk.
Sub-notes can be kept sorted, in accordance with criteria
specified in the attributes of the note to which they belong.
A convenient new view, Explorer view, works like REALbasic's code
browser: on the left, notes are listed in outline, chart, or map
form; on the right is displayed the text of whatever note is
selected on the left.
The Tinderbox file format is XML text, so it can be studied and
changed programmatically or with a text editor. I found a use
for this almost immediately: halfway through writing this review
(using Tinderbox, of course) I changed my mind about what font I
wanted to use in all my existing notes; I couldn't find a way to
make the change easily within Tinderbox, so I did it in BBEdit
with a single find-and-replace command.
**Web Features** -- Tinderbox also has a number of Internet-
oriented features. For example, a link from text can now be a
link to a Web page. And Tinderbox is itself a Web client: a note
can have a URL attribute, and its text will then be the text of
whatever is at that URL, downloaded on demand. However, Tinderbox
isn't a browser, so if the text is HTML, Tinderbox can only either
display the raw HTML or have your browser show the page.
Tinderbox can also download RSS news feeds. These are XML files in
a standard format, typically listing news headlines with links to
further information. They're popular chiefly because they're
machine-parsable, so your computer can comb the Web each day for
the headlines that interest you. When Tinderbox downloads such a
file, it eliminates the XML markup and other extra information,
leaving just the headlines and links. The links are live, meaning
you can click one to view that page in your browser. For example,
if a note has TidBITS's RSS feed as its URL attribute value, and
if its auto-fetch attribute is turned on, then every time you
open this Tinderbox document, Tinderbox will download the RSS
and you can open the note's text window to see the headlines of,
and links to, our latest articles.
<http://www.tidbits.com/channels/tidbits.rss>
<http://www.voidstar.com/node.php?id=129>
You can also use Tinderbox to export notes as HTML using a
template, an HTML text file with placeholders for elements that
are to come from each note. Links from text in a note to another
note are preserved as HTML hyperlinks; the hierarchical structure
of the document is preserved; and you can specify navigational
links to help the user move around that structure. The template
mechanism is simple but surprisingly powerful; for example, you
can construct conditional template elements. Furthermore, certain
details about how any individual note will be exported are set
through its attributes; so, for example, all notes could use a
certain template by default, but particular notes could use a
different template. The export for a note can include the export
of its sub-notes. And of course a template can access any
attribute of a note, thus combining the lightweight database
and HTML export features.
How might you use the HTML export mechanism? To make Web sites,
of course! The manual invites you, for example, to envision the
possibilities of exporting an agent along with its sub-notes; if
the agent's query is for notes created within the last two weeks,
sorted by the date of their creation, you've got a weblog.
(Several Tinderbox-generated sites in weblog form have already
appeared, including Eastgate's own.) Plus, the mechanism can also
do XML, so you could use it, for instance, to generate RSS files
and contribute to the flow of syndicated news feeds.
<http://cmc.uib.no/jill/>
<http://www.markBernstein.org/>
<http://www.eastgate.com/Development/makingno.html>
**Good Progress** -- When I first looked at Tinderbox, it was at
version 1.0 and ran only in Classic. It didn't take me long to
encounter a laundry list of bugs or surprising behaviors; so I
shelved the product for a while, and I'm glad I did. Tinderbox
is now at version 1.2, it's carbonized to run natively under
Mac OS X, and it has been greatly improved in many small but
significant ways.
Some of the laundry list remains, though usability is not hampered
in any major way. For example, when you change an agent's query
using Quick Stamp or the Info window, the agent's search results
don't update, which can be confusing. The content of certain
windows leaps around; for example, if you try to scroll the
Locate window, it suddenly scrolls back to the current selection.
There are no commands to expand or collapse fully all of a note's
sub- notes in outline view.
The manual isn't bad, but it appears to have been given minimal
attention in the heat of development. Some features such as
sorting, RSS, the Roadmap, and wiki-style hyperlinks are not
documented at all; other features, such as links to specific text,
are documented as if they existed when in fact they don't. This
is unfortunate, since incorrect documentation impairs one's
understanding and usage of the product.
An alias accesses the text and attributes of its original, but
doesn't display its sub-notes; I see no reason for this limitation
(contrast MORE, or the Finder). Also, I wish text export could be
performed as styled text, not just plain text as happens now; that
way, Tinderbox could become a real writing tool.
**Concluding Remarks** -- Tinderbox is, as I hope I've implied,
an inspired piece of work. With its Web capabilities, outliner
hierarchy, hyperlinks, lightweight database abilities, and snippet
keeping, Tinderbox will surely have something to intrigue you.
It's small, it's easy, it's fascinating, and it's cool. I strongly
recommend that you download the demo and see for yourself. You may
not understand the program fully at first, but keep experimenting;
this is a powerful program with many uses, and the possibilities
will start to dawn on you as you work with it.
Tinderbox costs $145. For the Mac OS X version, Eastgate
recommends Jaguar. The Classic version needs 16 MB of RAM;
Mac OS 9.0 and a recent version of CarbonLib are required,
with Mac OS 9.2 recommended. The demo is a 2.7 MB download.
<http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/download.html>
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