Yeah, I’m with @beck. All of your questions and concerns are identical to mine.
Like @tonycraine I just use Open with... to jump into iA Writer. Or, because I’m indexing my files, iA Writer’s Locations point to the same files I see in DT (on both macOS and iOS). So I can just open iA Writer and they’re already there. (whine: why does iA Writer not use filesystem tags…?)
In DT itself I keep my .md files on Preview, and I’m trying to use templates to make sure that every file has a nice CSS style that corresponds with that file’s purpose. So everything looks pretty most of the time. (Bonus: because that css file is also stored in DT and I use DT item links to point to it, it looks the same on DTTG too.)
I don’t do much with images most of the time, but if you stay inside DEVONthink you can actually cmd+click and drag an image into a Markdown file. It’ll generate a working markdown image-syntax link using DT item links. Of course, this doesn’t work outside of DEVONthink—in my experience, other apps display it as if the image is broken. I haven’t been able to get another syntax to work reliably, though. I have heard you could keep a giant images repository and have every image link be something like ~/Media/Imagename.jpg, or keep a media folder next to every piece of writing and do /media/imagename.png, but neither of those options are for me.
I’m really trying to stick with non-proprietary formats and one “layer” for all of my stuff. DEVONthink adds a layer, but metadata and universal cross-platform links are so beneficial that I’m willing to accept that, especially when most of my stuff remains indexed anyway. But robust images support… I haven’t been able to wrangle with that one successfully.
I was going this way and inserted some intention - now using Ulysses for research, Byword with markdown for teaching & service, and Notes for everything personal (and easily shareable with family). Drafts feeds all three. This partitioning corresponds to Omnifocus folders and has worked well for me to avoid distraction.
I’m intrigued by this conversation. My question is about handwritten notes using Apple Pencil. The research literature is clear that handwritten notes are better for processing and retaining information. I also find them helpful when I need to draw lines, arrows, etc., to connect thoughts. Is there a way to use DT as described to index plain text files for all things typed and still use DT to access handwritten notes, say in Apple Notes or an app like Notability? I don’t believe DT has a way to take handwritten notes in the iOS version of the DT app.
I still haven’t had enough free time to fully dive in, but it seems to work with my test notes.
You’ll have the benefits of a Note app interface (like Apple Notes, Bear etc.), mix it with handwritten notes via GoodNotes (multiple folder levels) or Notability (auto-backup is limited to one folder level) that show up inside of Notebooks and in addition the powerful indexing of DevonThink.
I do this with GoodNotes. Exported PDFs from GoodNotes contain the OCR layer and are searchable in Devonthink. Notability also retains the OCR layer on PDF export.
That’s good to hear. I’ve been a little too busy to really stress-test Notebooks so it’s been on the back burner for a few weeks. I’m still interested in seeing if it can be a cross-platform solution that can also replace EagleFiler on the Mac side, but I’m not in a rush to move on that right now. (Also, I’d really rather not have to use/pay for Dropbox, which I’d need to if I went full-in.)
@ryanjamurphy How do you settle with DT on mobile? At the moment I just sync the global inbox because I use multiple databases and syncing is slow. This means that DT on mobile isn’t much use, and the app isn’t very good either.
All of this prevents me from using DT as an active system - it ends up being not much more than a filing cabinet where documents go to die.
It can be a real pain. I went through app hell trying to get it to any degree of speed in the first year I was using it. And I am so sad that DT3 is so far ahead in terms of features…
A few things made a big difference for me, though, and it’s definitely useful to have:
I use local, Mac-to-iOS syncing. It is much much faster. You can use this and use any other syncing services simultaneously and they don’t conflict. (I read somewhere that you can do a cable-based sync, too, which may help for the initial sync if you’re loading up something huge.)
I broke down my databases. I was stubborn for a while and left basically everything in one, but that meant sync almost never completed properly.
I minimized the number of tags. For a while I was automatically tagging items and had thousands of tags with 1-2 records. This was dumb for a number of reasons so I stopped.
For my working files, I index iCloud folders. This means that you have two paths to get iOS access to those files: DEVONthink To Go and Files. This does mean you’re taking up double storage though.
I accept DTTG’s limitations. I use it as a file-finder (e.g., if I want to show someone something, I know I’ll find it in DTTG), as a reliable repository (e.g., I can point Shortcuts to data-storing items there), and as reference (papers and highlighting). I don’t try to do a lot of file creation/manipulation in it.
I had huge hopes for Notebooks but, as far as I’ve seen, it still lacks a decent web clipper. (Despite how dusty the app is, Evernote still reigns king in that field and I wonder why no developer seems intent on taking that crown from them.)
I am evolving more and more toward a plain-text, app-agnostic approach. Take markdown, for instance. I can edit it with anything from TextEdit to nano in the terminal to LibreOffice to VS Code. Having a preview is secondary and not essential (although preferred).
Currently I am using VS Code for both ZettelKästen files and all my SSG sites using 11ty (markdown, nunjuck templates, javascript, CSS, etc.) I like that the files are both portable to many editing environments and can be powerfully parsed/manipulated by 11ty or other SSG’s. It’s a ‘separation of concern’ between content authoring and content output. All the power has been moved to the generator. By the time the file is delivered to the reader it’s in plain old HTML.
Like @ryanjamurphy, I keep my notes in standard file formats (typically HTML for me, so that I can use rich-text features like multiple highlight colors and text colors, but also lots of diagrams, spreadsheets, etc., in other standard formats) in my computer’s filesystem and index them in DEVONthink (v2), with heavy use of file tagging. I never edit the content of files in DEVONthink, but use “Open with…” (usually “Open with default editor”, keyboard shortcut: shift-command-O) like @tonycraine and @ryanjamurphy to edit files in my preferred editors.
I also use Leap.app, Finder, BBEdit, and Terminal to browse/search/batch-modify files. This is another benefit of using standard file formats in the filesystem: I can use a variety of file editors and filesystem interfaces. I suspect this gives me more control than the “obscured database” approach that you mentioned as the alternative.
I’ve been happily working this way for about five years and I don’t anticipate changing.
I feel a little embarrassed by how low-tech my response is: I use TextEdit for notes! I think it works great. It’s full, not semi, WYSIWYG. I wrote an AppleScript service that I invoke with a keyboard shortcut (F16) whenever I want to write a note. It prompts for a date and time (autofilled with the current date and time), creates an HTML file at the proper place in the filesystem, opens it in TextEdit, and inserts the provided date and time.
I only use TextEdit for notes and journal entries in my Zettelkasten-like personal hypertext system (and yes I insert hyperlinks between relevant notes in addition to tags). Longer-form one-off writing projects, formal letters, etc., are done in other apps (Scrivener, Word, etc.).
Years ago, the DEVONthink developers quickly implemented a feature request of mine (or bug fix, depending on your point of view) so that I could do things the way I wanted, which was very helpful.
