It’s funny how moments of loss define our analog or digital strategies for years. I was all analog until I left my notebook on top of my car and it disappeared in a rainstorm in 2007. I could recreate it, but I never got back the feeling of trust.
Also, you can buy five pounds of Intelligentsia Otono directly from them. Probably not for the family discount Mike got, though.
Curious if anyone has any good paper-to-digital workflows.
I know there are more options than ever. @MacSparky referenced using an LLM, iirc.
But I’m curious about specifics — if you do this, do you just snap a photo and manually ask ChatGPT/Gemini/etc. to do something with it? Do you automate any of it? Do you use something like Agile Tortoise’s Simple Scan to digitize the page then … send it where? Can you use Apple’s foundational models?
I would love to be able to scan handwritten notes and notebook pages, extract the text into a plan text document (markdown — I use Noteplan), and keep the image of the page somewhere, with a link to the file at the top or bottom of the text version; for the rare case when I have a sketch, I’m fine adding a piece of the page image to the marked own note, eg as a screenshot.
My main criteria is not to have any app or format lock-in ( tons text/markdown, PDF, PNG, etc.)
Suggestions?
I print if anyone but me needs to read it. I just take a photo with my phone and use the Photos text recognition, which is fairly accurate. I leave lots of white space beteen lines and good margins
I have a high speed scanner although it’s nearly 15 years old now that scans both sides of the document in one go. I scan to DEVONthink and link from there and also extract the text if I need to. The link would create an app link, but everything else can easily be exported from DEVONthink. Plus the links work in iOS if you have DTTG.
Failing that, you could create an assets folder and scan to there giving your file a relevant name and linking though the file system.
Alternatively you could number your notebooks and pages and then reference it digitally. Ie see diagram in notebook N001p17.
Although using the phone camera is good I find you need a good album structure so they don’t get lost in all your photos.
The big issue with paper to digital workflows is that you need to be consistent and especially make sure you don’t allow it to pile up. This can create a lot of friction.