Any one using Matter in view to replace Instapaper and Pocket, etc

GoodLinks is my inbox for online content I intend to process for further use. (I know myself well enough to know that I need to be very intentional about what I put there.) When I process my GoodLinks inbox, I make a series of choices about each thing I’ve saved there:

  1. The very first step is to create a properly-formatted, plain text bibliographic citation for the article in a markdown or plain-text editor. (You know what’s great for this: my Obsidian daily note! It’s a handy place to both type the citation and keep a record of what I’ve read.) Yes, I do this for everything in my Goodlinks queue before I read it.

  2. If the article is ephemera, once I’ve read it I decide whether I need to share it, and then I toss it. (Note: “ephemera” doesn’t mean unimportant! It could be information that’s important to know right now, but won’t be a week from now.)

  3. If it’s worth saving in its entirety for future reference or careful note-taking, I use the share sheet to save it to DEVONthink as a markdown file. I use “Add to DEVONthink” dialogue box to 1) preview what the markdown document will look like to make sure the “Clutter-Free” option gives me everything I need; 2) add the relevant tags; 3) paste the citation I’ve already created into the comment box; and 4) add some brief comments for context if needed—for example, I might note that the article is an attempt to refute another author on some point. I almost always turn something I’ve decided to save in its entirety to a continuous PDF using Marked 2 or an epub document using Pages or Calibre. But first, I get it into DEVONthink and make sure I’ve captured all the important bibliographic information.

  4. If I don’t need to keep the whole article, but want to capture some highlights, I do the following. I’ll highlight the text I want to capture and use the share sheet to save the highlight to DEVONthink. I’ll use the dialogue box to give the saved highlight a title, add any relevant tags, and add the citation.

Hope that answers your question!

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