Ulysses->TextBundle->DEVONthink->Editor, Scrivener, or Word Processor

Cool Workflows
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Well, I think I finally resolved a long-standing dilemma of my creation.

I’ll not share the gory details except to say that I’ve struggled for months trying to decide between Ulysses and Pages for my non-book writing projects and presentations (I’m using Scrivener for my book project). As anyone who has read my posts knows, I’ve vacillated between using a markdown editor or Pages. My struggle resulted, on the one hand, from the sense that I “should” use markdown to “future proof” my work and, on the other hand, thinking that the concern was overblown and that my work was “safe enough” in an application like Pages. My struggle also arose from two things that bothered me about Ulysses: 1) it is a subscription app (though I qualify for the education discount), and 2) it uses proprietary markdown, which results in losing specific features when text is exported to an editor that uses “standard” markdown.

However, I just conducted an experiment bulk exporting Ulysses formatted articles as TextBundle files to DEVONthink. I discovered that once in DT, I could convert the TextBundle files to various formats and open them with the references and images preserved in apps like Scrivener or Pages.

This means I can have my “cake and eat it too!” I can use Ulysses’ excellent library and other features, export my work to the TextBundle format to DEVONthink, and not lose the images and citations. The formatting is preserved.

Here is what this looks like:

Imported TextBundle Document in DEVONthink

TextBundle Import to DT
TextBundle Import to DT1920×1247 182 KB

TextBundle Article Converted to Rich Text in DEVONthink

Converted to Rich Text
Converted to Rich Text1920×1247 310 KB

Opening Rich Text Document in Pages

To Pen in Pages
To Pen in Pages1920×1247 212 KB

Article Opened in Pages

Article in Pages
Article in Pages1920×1247 121 KB

Article Opened in Scrivener

Article in Scrivener
Article in Scrivener1920×1247 173 KB

The bottom line is that I can use Ulysses for all my non-book writing and export the finished products to DEVONthink for archiving, converting, and opening in other applications as needed. Because of DEVONthink’s conversion feature, I don’t have to worry about the limited number of apps that can open TextBundle files.

I hope that my experiment will be helpful to others. I believe I now have the best of all worlds.

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It just seems to me that you discovered that Rich Text Format (RTF) is the universal format for revisable text. Seems to me that you are relying on a single program (DevonThink) to convert the (proprietary?) Ulysses TextBundle files to RTF. So you might be in trouble if you don’t immediately convert every TextBundle to RTF.

For generally non-editable archival storage I think PDF is safe at this point.

FYI, the Pages workflow could be fraught with trouble as well without converting to RTF. Some years ago Pages format kept changing and it was possible to have saved .pages documents in one version that wasn’t openable two versions later. Beware of anything proprietary! (I know that technically both RTF (Microsoft) and PDF (Adobe) are proprietary, but they have been reverse engineered for many years.)

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Adobe released the spec for it to become an ANSI standard

which further strengthens your excellent points.

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Textbundle is an open standard, and reasonably well supported: https://textbundle.org/. It’s effectively just a zip file containing all the assets associated with a plain text file, including markdown. The main advantage over RTF is that it’s readable text, which RTF certainly isn’t without a compatible application.

Of course, RTF and PDF are going nowhere and have a lot of support. The main downside and advantage over Markdown - depending on your perspective - is that they includes the styling of the document baked in. I personally like the ability to style a document in different ways now and into the future - who would have guessed we might be reading text file on a device 3 inches wide?

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I am, but I don’t understand why I would immediately need to convert every TextBundle file to RTF. I created a routine to do that at the end of June each year. I don’t expect Ulysses or DT to become abandonware any time soon. Am I missing something?

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What is particulary nice about the TextBundle format and the ability to convert to RTF is that I can preserve the images WITHIN the converted file, which I cannot do with a standard markdown export. The standard markdown export produces a file with the text but without the images, the text only contains the non-working markdown image syntax that can’t locate the image. With TextBundle to RTF, I can open a fully formatted article matching the original with no extra steps involved to recreate the original.

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Just don’t forget! I’ve been burned many times with proprietary text file formats. Things are better now, but you never know what might happen.

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I won’t forget. I have a recurring task in Reminders to, well, remind me. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Which application is easier for you to think and write? If an app allows future proof but doesn’t allow you to think and write freely, how come can you have future proof assets?

If Pages is easier, that’s no problem if you backup to something like plain text and PDF because there is no perfect solution.

For me I rather use Apple Notes to draft and write, if the notes are blog articles that need to be published, I will export to plain text with attachments on Notes for iPad (because I usually use iPad) so that I can directly upload images on Squarespace and Substack. PDF will be generated too in the app to preserve all the formatting.

For my case I can use Bear, Ulysses, Obsidian and even iA Writer but again, there is no prefect solution but what’s important to me right now does matter, and I don’t want to spend too much energy on possibilities in the future which can sacrifice what I am doing or enjoy right now, while I take those factors into consideration.

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Some time later, we might look for a posting here where someone asks whether a Reminder that they found on an old mac machine used by their grandfather that says to “translate bundles” might have any significance.

On a serious note though, the effort to convert all textbundles to rtf seems overkill. If textbundle is an open standard, and if that standard is projected to remain static at least in the time you need, the only case to protect against is when the tools to convert it should all disappear before the standard is depreciated.

So set your reminders for fun things, not this.

I am confused. I generate markdown contents that contain text with URLs to images. The images are stored in a folder at the same level as the primary markdown file. This approach is … well supported. It seems that your approach to store markdown + images is leaving out the step to store the images??

—
JJW

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The PDF/A standard was established to take away the anxiety as far as storing for archival purposes. Also, one archives a document only when one is done editing it. Everything done before that is called making a backup. When one archives, one wants to future proof readability, not future proof the option to re-edit. By now, locking the ability to edit a PDF against changing its content in place is done at best only by creating a bitmap of the document. I believe documents containing text that are however bitmapped images in their entirety are not PDF/A complaint even at its first version (but perhaps bitmaps were supported in part for images … I don’t have this information in full).

In summary …

How you get to a document format that contains text and embedded images in a layout and format to your fullest satisfaction is a story that could fill multiple forum posts in its own right. When you want a format to archive your document with text and embedded images that you have arranged in a specific layout and format for all future times, you should now want PDF/A. When you want a format to store that same document and you want to assure yourself the future ability to re-edit, you want whatever backup format is most convenient for you over the lifetime that you plan to continue to work on the document. Finally, when you want a format to store that same document but you also want to assure that your grandchildren and future generations can continue making changes to the work you are starting now, you probably should be using more than one backup format, because you must plan for perpetual backups against the uncertainty of not knowing which backup format may die before you do.

—
JJW

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When Project Gutenberg started, they faced this problem and decided on ASCII plain text files. Ugly, but works but for images. Since then they have expanded their offerings, but those ASCII files are still available. They should always be readable, as long as they are saved on media that is readable.

Personally, I’ve made plenty of documents that I can’t recover because I saved them in the proprietary formats of the day that are long gone. Luckily in the early days I printed things out for archival storage. Then I’ve scanned them into PDF files! I realize that after I’m gone, virtually all of this will be trashed, but it’s easier to press Delete than it is to fill up recycling bins.

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You make a good point. The problem with backing Pages documents up as plain text or PDF is that you cannot do this in bulk; it is a cumbersome document-by-document process. Additionally, as I wrote here, my writing is varied, complicating things. Pages does not export images with the plain text file like Ulysses does when exporting as a Textbundle document, which can also be done in bulk.

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But it doesn’t seem supported by many apps. For example, Textbundle.org does not have a long list of apps that support the standard. Am I misunderstanding this?

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I would exercise caution here and check for official TextBundle support in DEVONthink. Obviously DT can view TextBundle files because they are zipped markdowns, no big deal for DT, but they have an internal folder structure and the markdown will reference it, for example for embedded images inside the TextBundle file itself and that’s what can confuse DT because these embedded assets are not part of the DT database itself.

I guess you will be fine if you only want to use DT for archiving and transforming these files into other formats, but directly editing TextBundle files inside DT would probably have issues. Too many layers of magic on top of the other, I think.

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Good advice. That is my sole use case. I dislike the DT editor so I have no intention of editing files in DT. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Although I put this factor (creating) as my top priority, I try to take advantages of backup not making backup as a burden which may occupy time of creating and even making creating/writing more difficult.

I always write on Apple Notes because it is a good way for me to start from collecting ideas and writing a few words into an article, but I am doing in a locked database.

So now my workflow will be copying my drafts or articles which have just been finished to iA Writer. On iA I can revise and edit the articles. I found that when publishing on my blog, I always need to edit, so why not do it when backing up?

And I will have three copies eventually: one on my website, one as plain text which can move anywhere when needed, and one is on Apple Notes.

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Exporter (‎Exporter on the Mac App Store) is great for liberating Apple Notes into Markdown.

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That is an interesting workflow. You probably know this, but you can now export directly from Apple Notes to Pages.

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But the problem is that, I still need to take out images for me to directly upload to the blog platform like Squarespace as I can’t simply, directly copy and paste everything from Apple Notes or Pages.

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