1. I encountered a problem!
2. Why can't I use <tab> to leave the text field?
3. How do I delete unwanted Types from the drop down list?
4. Graphviz does not show up as System Service!
5. When I delete a slip, new slips don't reuse that number!
6. SlipBox does not start!
7. SlipBox becomes unresponsive/does not quit!
8. I get a message that the number of words must be greater than number of slips!
9. How can I report a problem?

I encountered a problem!

While I try to make SlipBox as error-free as I can (I'm using it myself a lot after all), it is not commercial software and it is not tested as much as it would deserve. Here is what you should do if you encounter a problem:

1. Read the documentation.
2. Make sure you are using the latest version.
3. Read this FAQ.
4. Send me an error-report (see the last FAQ item on how and where)

Why can't I use <tab> to leave the text field?

You can use ctrl-tab for this, which is the default key binding for this. You can change this to <tab> in the Preferences.

How do I delete unwanted Types from the drop down list?

You cannot delete a Type explicitly. If there is a Type you defined yourself, which you don't want any more, you can close the document and reopen it. This gets rid of the unused Types.

Graphviz does not show up as System Service!

The Graphviz System Service shows up when you log out and log in again or when you reboot. Note that the current versions of Graphviz do not seem to provide a System Service. You should use version 1.13, which you can get here.

When I delete a slip, new slips don't reuse that number!

I see the point about being neat. However, there are reasons why numbers of deleted slips are not reused:

1. Consistency: it could destroy manual links between slips.
2. Trash: The slip is not really thrown into the all-consuming bit-vortex. Instead it is moved to the Trash, ie it actually remains in the SlipBox document. You can view deleted slips by switching to the Trash View and restore them. The slips in the Trash are deleted when it is emptied.

There is also a function to clear all slip fields if you want to reuse a slip.

The application does not start!

Sometimes (infrequently) the preferences file seems to cause problems on startup, but this is very erratic behaviour, so I don't know really what to do about it. The preference file is called net.markusguhe.slipbox.plist and is located in the folder /Users/<Your Username>/Library/Preferences/ (yes, you have to insert your own username). This file can be edited – if you think you know what you are doing. If not, just delete it, and the application will start with default settings. It's not guaranteed to solve your problem, but it often helps.

From version 0.9 on there is a problem with Cocoa's garbage collection mechanism. This can cause the application to crash when it tries to read a slip that contains non-textual content (images, etc). This is a problem with Cocoa, not SlipBox, but it should occur infrequently and won't affect your data.

The application becomes unresponsive/does not quit!

For versions 0.8 an earlier this most likely is an effect of using the Spotlight plug-in. Turning off generation of Spotlight cache files will solve the issue.

For version 0.9 it is an effect of a work-around. Version 0.9.1 fixes the issue.

I get a message that the number of words must be greater than number of slips!

This is only an issue with versions 0.7 or older.

This occurs during the computation of the slip similarities. This means that the number of words that are in the slip-box must be greater than the number of slips that are in the box. (This is a limitation of the algorithm computing the similarities, particularly annoying with toy-boxes, but it won't be a problem with real ones.) Note that:

1. This restriction holds for keywords as well as for texts (ie the number of keywords must be greater than the number of slips, and the number of words in the texts must be greater than the number of slips).
2. The algorithm throws out all words with 2 letters or less as well as a couple of function words like prepositions (eg from, with).

How can I report a problem?

You can report a problem by going to the forum (see link in the top right) or sending an email to: slipbox [at] markusguhe [dot] net. Please describe the problem in as much detail as possible. If you email, it will help me addressing your problem if – where appropriate – you also send

• The crash log (if the application did crash). You do this by
  1. starting the application Console, which is located in the folder /Applications/Utilities/,
  2. selecting the SlipBox entry and
  3. copying the last report into your email.
• The SlipBox document (your slip-box), if you think that it contains something that causes your problem. (I'm not after your data, nobody except me will see your file. If you can, just create a new box that causes the problem but does not contain any data you don't want to see me.)