The Tree of Widsdom

For sub-posts only.

Making a complex table in Tinderbox is easy: just add TABLE to a note’s $blogExpOpt to make it a the header note of a table—its paragraphs will become the headings of the table. The name of the header note becomes the title of the table.

The children of the header note will become the row notes of the table. The paragraphs of a row note become the cells of a row. The names of the child notes are ignored on export.

Each paragraph in the table container is a cell in the table header; its title, the title of the table. Each child of the table container is row; their paragraphs, cells in the row.

This provides an intuitive rendition of the Cartesian intersection we enjoy about tables. A table is the coordination of two series of differences. Or: a tables is an array that contains vectors as its elements.

This is replicated inside the Tinderbox outline as ordered lines of text inside of Tinderbox notes, which in turn are also lines of text. Notes, in Outline View, are lines of text that are also containers—of other lines of text (paragraphs).

• Column-ness—The difference-relation that informs a column becomes is the idea that paragraph ordinality is its own orthogonal dimension. Being “the” second paragraph in a set of notes makes second-ness a universal. “Being third” is a thing (as they say).
• Row-ness—The difference-relation that informs a row becomes paragraph seriality. A table’s row is now the vertical series of paragraphs.