Comments on: Revisting the Note Taking Problem with DEVONthink

By: Lew

Lew — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:20:23 +0000

Could you share a copy of your original source document that you place within the group for an individual source. So if I am understanding your organization for any individual source is: Sources/GroupSourceName/MasterSource in RTF. Then this master source becomes the basis of tags etc for all subsequent notes via your script?
Thanks.

By: Lew Friedland

Lew Friedland — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 14:57:39 +0000

Great thread, thank you. I am also constantly messing with the Zotero/Devonthink/Tinderbox/Scrivener flow. It’s awkward. Zotero for quick capture of bibliographic material. DT for all the pages, PDFs, chunks, ideas, etc. Tinderbox for organizing them (although Stephen Berlin Johnson’s method sort of eliminates this export to TB step), Scrivener for writing. A lot of stuff really. Derek, if you see this, how do you use DT and Tinderbox together, i.e. what’s the simplest export procedure?

By: Cathy

Cathy — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:04:04 +0000

Thank you so much! These are exactly the kinds of tweaks I’ve been looking for but don’t have the smarts or experience to do myself. Now to tackle Zotero! Judging from the posts and your dreams for fixes, it might make sense to wait. Or?

Thanks again, really!

By: Deb

Deb — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 15:47:23 +0000

You can ignore the plea for help.
Just bought Getting Started with Devonthink 2.

By: Deb

Deb — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 04:23:58 +0000

Help!!!
I’m about to undertake a thesis…and I’m sorry this sounds so elementary, but I am a techno-idiot.

I want to be able to enter quotes as I read books (mostly) and have some way to organize, find them when I need them. I have Devonthink Pro, Sente….

How do I do this?
Do I need something else?
Can I enter my quotes into Devonthink as I read (notes?)?
Do I need something else.
Sorry….just a bit lost and overwhelmed.
Thanks in advance.
Deb

By: Mark Bernstein

Mark Bernstein — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 15:31:24 +0000

I agree with Derek: Devon and Tinderbox work nicely together.

The learning curve business can easily be exaggerated. In your case, you already KNOW about inheritance — that’s where we started! So you don’t need to learn about inheritance or why it might be useful.

By: derek

derek — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 20:04:51 +0000

Eastgate’s Tinderbox sounds like software that may interest you. http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/

It accomplishes much of what omnioutliner does, but is ultimately more flexible. As an academic researcher, all my research work is done with both DevonThink and Tinderbox. All the notes go into DT as rtf files and I use the AI to make interesting connections. Then the notes relevant to any particular piece of writing move to Tinderbox, where they can be flexibly arranged: mapped visually, put into outlines, arranged automatically through agents that can search based on the text of notes or based on custom metadata that you can create. It’s so powerful and flexible people often complain there is a steep learning curve because it’s not immediately clear how to exploit it’s power for your project. But, the developer will answer email and help you design your project, and the user forum will also help you with technical and conceptual issues.

By: jseliger

jseliger — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 16:52:05 +0000

You may not actually need your elaborate tagging system; I used to have one too, but now I've learned to trust the DTP associative search algorithm more, as Steven Berlin Johnson describes in this essay. It may also be that I'm too lazy to tag everything or keep tags straight in my mind. Also, if you haven't seen it yet, take a look at the "Best Book Stand" Jasmine. I use and love it. I don't know your field and whether you use many books (I'm in English), but if you're a library hound, you'll ask yourself how you managed to survive without one.

By: Markus

Markus — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 12:04:59 +0000

I come across the same problem like Kithairon. I had a look at the AppleScript and it fails in the line starting with “set theRecord to import theTemplateFiles…”. The reason is that the variable “theTemplateFiles” contains a wrong path. It holds (only the end bit) “…Templates.noindex:_Note on Source___Cmd-Ctrl-M.templatescriptd:Contents:Resources:Scripts:main.scptContents:Resources:en.lproj:Note.rtf”.

Obviously the function “pathToLocalizedResources()” delivers the wrong path, but I couldn’t figure out why.

Hope this helps.

By: Pat Maddox

Pat Maddox — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 08:26:23 +0000

Regarding limitation #1, DEVONthink will show documents for any group you have selected. So if you shift-click on a parent group and its bottom-most child, you will see a flat list of all the documents in that parent group. You could also command-click to show all the documents from only a subset of children.

By: Scott Kerth

Scott Kerth — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 14:12:15 +0000

Hearing about your work flow and how you structure your organization is very useful as this is one of the things I struggle with and use as an excuse to procrastinate. Your description of the perfect note taking software had me thinking of “The Personal Brain” software http://www.thebrain.com/

Here is a thread which discusses integrating Personal Brain and Zotero for a smoother work flow and I would be interested in hearing your thoughts as to how this might help structuring your research if it is of interest to you.

http://forums.thebrain.com/post?id=2833217&trail=45

By: Muninn

Muninn — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 19:52:18 +0000

Hi Kithairon,

I just downloaded and reinstalled my script and it works fine here. I’m not sure how to debug this.

Are you using DEVONthink Pro? 2.0 or later?

Is there any unusual text in the title or tags? (I doubt this should matter)

You can try adding the following line after different parts of the “try” section of the script:

display dialog “I reached this far.” which well help identify at which point the script failed.

By: Kithairon

Kithairon — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 14:40:24 +0000

Hi Konrad,

great stuff on your page; appreciate your thoughts and efforts to clarify workflow and use of pertinent software. Will responde in Zotero forum later to your script posted there.

Have tried your ‘Note on source’template in DEVONthink but keep getting an error saying “An error has occured trying to add the annotation. ‘Name of missing value’cannot be given as ‘2010.09.10 15:50:51 [title of my file]”

Do you have any idea what goes on? Tried this with several different files after installing your script.
Would love to make use of it. Thanks,
Kithairon