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LEV There seems to be a huge amount of misunderstanding about what Tinderbox actually _is_, partly because, to go beyond the basics (which are themselves pretty powerful) does indeed involve a steep learning curve... as in "learning". Like you have to do with any tool. And partly because Tinderbox is, in the end, more or less whatever you want it to be. Which is why it takes some learning. Personally, I can't understand why anyone would spring for a CAD/CAM system or Adobe InDesign. Why? Because I don't need them or use them. I do need and use Tinderbox. Its web features -- handy customizable blogging, for example -- are wasted on me. So I don't use them. But the rest, I _do_ use. Since I first ran across Tinderbox I've used it for two full-length books (and currently on a third) and lord knows how many articles, lectures, papers and what-have-you. The price question is economics 1.01. For the cost of Tinderbox, a commercial organization will buy approximately 20 minutes of my time. Given slack-time, prep. etc., TInderbox is probably representing a capital outlay of one hour of my time. It has saved me that hour time and again; most recently when I wanted to set up some reasonably complex bibliographic stuff. I could have spent an hour searching for off-the-peg software (though there isn't any); instead, I spent the hour in building it myself in Tinderbox. Job done, and fit for purpose. In other words, YMMV. Perhaps if people thought of Tbx as an _environment_ rather than a standard app., it might clarify things a bit. I know that about 70% of people I show it to say "Oy gottenyu" or something similar; but 20% say "Hell's teeth, that's EXACTLY what I need." (The other 10% say "Is that a Mac? There's no software for the Mac.") (Version 3.5.4) |