Hyperbolic view

[First introduced in v7.0.0]

The hyperbolic view shows notes that are linked to or from a specific note—the 'focus' note—which is initially the selected note. This is the pivot around which the view is generated. The focus note is identified by a thin red border.

To build the hyperbolic view, Tinderbox constructs a spanning tree that starts at the focus note, at view centre. It examines outbound links from that note; if they lead to a note not already in the tree (i.e. the view), it adds that link and the destination note to the tree. After checking all the links in the focus note, it now repeats the procedure with each unvisited note added to the tree, continuing until it has either (a) exhausted the list of unevaluated notes, or (b) exhausted the list of unevaluated outbound links. From, v11.5.0 the tree is traversed out to a maximum of c.50 links closest to the from the source: this is for pragmatic reasons of processing load and complexity. As you drag the view, notes that approach the centre appear and very distant notes disappear.Finally, this tree is projected onto a hyperbolic plane; notes near the centre are large, and notes further from the centre are progressively smaller. In that resulting spanning tree, all links that connect notes in the tree to other notes in the tree, but which are not part of the spanning tree, are considered 'cross links'. There is a view settings option to hide these cross links, which is off by default.

For new views, the '*untitled' link type is used for initial tree display construction, unless only typed links exit the focus note, in which case the first type by A–Z order is used. Cross-links are disabled on first presentation: these make the tree more complex and so slower to load and are not always needed.

Selecting—clicking on— a note item the view, populates the text pane but, importantly, does not alter the view focus. Double-clicking a note item will shift the focus and as a result the tree is re-drawn, and the red border shifts to the new focus note. Given that the view only shows a maximum of 5 links out from the source, fully exploring the graph of a given link type may involve several focus shifts.

Hovering the mouse over a note will reveal its full name as a tooltip. This is often useful out near the rim of the view where note's appears smaller.

Web Links (to outside Tinderbox) and Prototype links are ignored in hyperbolic view (and cannot be enabled).

Navigating the Hyperbolic view.

Some controls for altering the view's setting are shown in the view toolbar.

Note shape and link colour are retained. Note that the normal map shapes map be distorted slightly reflecting the way they are drawn on the hyperbolic surface. Lines that represent links in the spanning tree are drawn as arcs, conforming to the underlying hyperbolic geometry.

The view supports mouse-wheel and two-finger swipe scrolling. Holding down the option key (⌥) when using the mouse-wheel or two-finger swipe scrolling changes the magnification.

A context menu for the selected allows traversal from the selected note using any outbound basic or text link. The destination note is selected but does not take focus. The context note also allows the selected note to be deleted.

It is possible click-drag from any note to another note and create a new link. Or, by dragging a link to a blank part of the view and releasing the cursor, a new linked note is created. The Link creation dialog opens allowing the new note to be named, before the other dialog controls are configured. If not named the note is called 'untitled'. If you change your mind and do not name the new note, the newly-created note and its link are automatically deleted.

Existing links, for the selected note, can be reviewed/edited using the Browse Links dialog.

The contextual menu of the focus note (i.e. with red outline) omits a 'Delete option, since deleting the focus would leave nothing in the view.

The prototype submenu of the contextual menu sets the prototype to the selected items' original note, even if that original note has prototypes (i.e. if the selected item is an alias, the $Prototype is correctly set—and then inherited back from—the aliases' original note.