@SteveU75 It’s a new thing for me, so it’s very much a work in progress. Here’s a screenshot of the Smart Rule:
Find the relevant scripts and some explanations here. (My first GitHub upload in… five years! Holy.)
@tonycraine I should use Workspaces more! If I remember correctly, they also save where you were in a Database, so a Workspace can rearrange the panes and take you to a particular group, smart group, whatever.
(Sorry, I’m all over this thread.)
Something else cool that I haven’t used. Thanks for mentioning it.
Grab a link to a specific page of a PDF
@MitchWagner what do/did you use DT for and what did you expect/hope to get from it? I am not sure if asking us for the most loved DT feature is going to make it clear to you if DT is right for you.
In general; if one has a bunch of “document files” (of all kinds) and want to bring in some organization with the aim to find information quickly, or build a tree of knowledge, or structure a pipeline of information to write a conclusive summary, or … you will need some means to automate/help this process. If it is just a few files, perhaps a file structure is all that is needed. If it is a lot more than a few files, DT can help.
But DT is a swiss army knife, it is many different things to many people. That is good: it brings a level of versatility that is great to fit a variety of problems. That is bad: it may be difficult to figure out how to use it or what to use it “all” for. I have used it in my roles as engineer, marketeer very succesfully and do not know of an alternative system that is as effective as DT for me. I described a bit of this here: DEVONthink 3.0 Public Beta Perhaps that gives you some more ideas what to do with it and how you can figure out what to do with it for your use cases.
For me, the critical things I love about DT are:
DT is a huge toolbox. Most people don’t need everything inside that tool box, and certainly many of these tools on their own are available elsewhere. But once you put together one or two of the tools in the DT toolbox, it’s hard to replicate using any other single application!
Item links (DEVONthink’s custom URL scheme) are important – and I think the real value of them is that they always work because they are UUID based not path based. DEVONthink keeps track of al UUIDs:
The links work even if the document is trashed. The only way to make a link stop working is to delete the linked document and empty the trash.
I don’t think it’s possible to do anything like this in the file system.
I think the way it searches and presents those results is one of its major strengths.
I haven’t come across software that makes it so easy to search PDFs and then easily show and navigate to the search results within those PDFs without needing to scroll.
Along with that, the ability to link to specific pages in the PDFs (from those finely presented search results) and embeds those links in other software is very powerful and it works the same on IOS and MacOS.
DEVONthink has one of the largest and most comprehensive scripting dictionaries I am aware of. (OmniGroup’s apps are probably in the same league.) While most people do not know how – or care to know how to script, the value of DEVONthink’s exposed features via scripting is significant and anyone can take advantage of the existing scripted features. Not only in the large number of built-in scripts packaged with DEVONthink, but in the broad and deep contributed library found in DEVONthink’s forum as well as in numerous blogs.
Neat question. Here are some examples that come to mind.
(1) I use Hazel rules, the DT web clipper, and file saving hygiene to grab any paper, blog post, website I feel is at all relevant to my research and archive it in DT. I also sync my notes from various services and apps (including my Tinderbox zettelkasten). This gives me a rich foundation to crawl when I have a need or curiosity. I can search all these documents for a phrase or citation and when I find something of interest, I can “magic hat/see also” it and find things I had no idea were related. For example, a book I’d read mentioned a historical movement I was researching, but become the book wasn’t about that movement, I’d never have thought to look at it for a reference. I know you mentioned that see also isn’t working for you and maybe, given your needs, it won’t. But I can imagine a scenario where I’d feel that way, too, if I didn’t realize how to use it specifically for my needs. For example, I can take a reading note and “see also” to find relevant articles to read that I’d never known about. This is possible because I collect everything of interest to me. It wouldn’t work well if I didn’t do that part. Also, I can query every article I’ve found at all interesting for a method or topic I wasn’t even considering when I originally collected it.
(2) I can create a group of documents and search across that group for further analysis. For example, I collected a bunch of papers about technologies that focus on mindfulness. I tagged them so they’d end up in a smart group and then I searched that group for references to Jon Kabat-Zinn to see who referenced his definition of mindfulness, specifically.
(3) Another way I’ve used smart groups productively is to collect a bunch of papers, drag them into Tinderbox and map them in relationship to each other. DT and TBX work well together so when I drag an item into TBX, it appears as the first page of the PDF and the item link is preserved so it’s easy to access later.
(4) I put rosters with my students pictures and names so that when they email years from now asking for a recommendation or favor, I can remember who they were.
(5) When I have a personal or family-related health issue, I collect papers and websites and put them all in DT. I can query across them and see what commonalities “see also” reveals. Impossible to do in ad-strewn crappy med-space that is Google these days.
(6) I can read, highlight, and annotate a file across platforms and have that annotated version with me on my computer, iPad, and phone. Also, my highlights and annotations are automatically smart grouped and searchable on their own.
Beck Always Wins
Phenomenally informative! Is Hazel able to integrate into DevonThink? I’m always looking for further ways of automating. Also I feel like I need to get into the habit of throwing stuff into DevonThink. It would help my brain for sure. Do you also place items in folders and tag them as well? Do you foresee this changing with the release of DevonThink 3?
I just worked on a final paper and a final exam of a class that handed out multiple PDFs a week and also had a textbook. The test was open book and timed, so the professor gave the usual disclaimer that “if you searched for each answer you wouldn’t finish in time”. So I said “not today satan” and I just indexed my Dropbox folder with the lectures into a database and imported my Kindle highlights and began the test. It was very helpful to type in a search phrase and confirm my answers for the test and to cite examples in my paper.
I do pretty much everything else in Evernote, but Devonthink really shined in that moment. It was perfect for that one “project” at that one time.
DT3 has a new smart rule feature that replicates a lot of the functionality of Hazel internally.
And you can use both if you want. Hazel on files DEVONthink has indexed, smart rules on anything in DEVONthink 3.
Travel Data
Into trip-specific groups inside my “household” database, I collect all relevant information for upcoming trips; Hotel and air booking info. Boarding passes. Airbnb entry codes and other QR codes I might need for tickets. Info about places I am going to visit. Theatre ticket receipts. Emails received from venues or purchases related to the trip.
For business trips, info about the trip plan and agendas, etc. That database is synced to DEVONthink to Go on my phone (the free version is just fine for this).
Having everything I need for my trip inside this group makes it sort of like Apple Wallet on steroids. On the phone, I make that group a “Favorite” so it is available from the landing page in DEVONthink to Go.
Also results in an archive for future reference and, for business trips, the info I need to claim reimbursement.
Meetings
I do a similar thing, with different documents of course, for major meetings, workshops, and the like. A specific group for each meeting / workshop. In this case I sync this info to my iPad Pro. I take notes by annotating PDFs for meeting handouts (the usual PowerPoint dreck, saved as PDF). And I take notes in Notability, etc., then export the PDFs back to the meeting’s group in the database on DEVONthink to Go. Synced back down to the desktop and I have a complete record + notes.
I do the same thing for travel, though here’s a twist from me: All of my databases save one are set to leave content on the server from the iPhone/iPad and just download on demand.
The one exception is one that is cleverly named “mobile.” Everything in that database is set to download to the mobile device by default. I move everything I’ll need on a trip into that database, including especially itineraries. Then when I’m done with the trip I move that content back to the appropriate database for permanent residence.
I love this. I’m trying to understand how I would use devonthink. I appreciate all the different use cases.
Can you expand on this? How do you use DT to synthesize information?
What I’m looking for is a place to store reference materials and also create a summary or table of contents where I can link to the source/reference materials. Is that possible in DT?
I keep hundreds of articles and info in there including a bunch I edit and use just within DT. I have several databases. One of them syncs to all my devices and in it I have a lot of reference material that I may need out in the field. Things like doses for various sheep drugs or pictures and information on weed identification. I have one database that is my queries I use in LambTracker on my desktop. It’s referenced to text files that are in a Git Repo. I can more quickly bring up the queries, copy them out and paste into my SQLite tool than I can to open up the text editor and do the same thing.I can make changes in the queries and they are done in the real file and once a week or so I can commit and push them to my repository on GitLab.
I have folders for various projects that pull together all the emails, quick notes and links to other references I need for that project. Makes it faster to update, edit and deal with working in the project on various tasks.
I have a shopping list folder that contains picture sof things we need, or in some cases pictures of the broken part so when faced with hundreds of options at the farm store i can look at where it actually has to go and get the correct one.
I am by no means an authority on DT even after using it for many years. Each use-case I applied DT to is quite different, some may not provide you with any relevant application info at all. Did you have a read of the link I provided in my first response? That should give you a feel for what I do with DT.
Yes, DT allows you to select a set of documents and create a ToC that back links to the documents you selected. I dont use that function much so don’t know how configurable it is. I find that a combination of grouping, tagging and search capabilities of DT far more useful than a ToC (which is really just an indented grouping method).