That built-in Export to Bookends script in DEVONthink!

[chas]

Hi, folks,

I'm sure most if not all of you who use DEVONthink and Bookends together are using DEVONthink's built-in export-to-Bookends script. I just learned about it today. It's a gem. It was already simple enough to link between Bookends references and items like PDFs stored in DEVONthink, but this script makes it seem like the two apps are practically one. Maybe there's a gotcha that I don't know about it, but so far it looks like a great time-saver.

(I had previously written here that Bookends and DEVONthink could both tolerate changes, such as a change in location, made in the document file that is represented by the Bookends reference. That may not be the case with the Export to Bookends script provided with DEVONthink. There are apparently third-party scripts that behave differently, but I haven't tested them yet.)

Reading back over that post, it sure sounds like an ad created by AI. It's not! Nor am I associated with either Bookends or DEVONthink other than as an enthusiast. I was just pleased to discover this handy script, thanks to a fellow Bookends and DEVONthink user.

[vinschger]

I do all my management of my literature in bookends directly. What is the advantage of combining both apps?

[Dellu]

Hi, folks,
I'm sure most if not all of you who use DEVONthink and Bookends together are using DEVONthink's built-in export-to-Bookends script.

Thank you for pointing that out.

So far, for me the process always starts from Bookends.
I collect, organize, rename the attachments within BE, and THEN index the attachments to DT.


I will be checking it out the script it will have advantages over the current setup.

[chas]

I do all my management of my literature in bookends directly. What is the advantage of combining both apps?

Sorry for the late reply. I hadn't seen your post until today.

I was already using DEVONthink before I began with Bookends, and I've since learned that Bookends will store and help organize electronic materials like PDFs. That's really helpful.

DEVONthink does this, of course, and also has a high-quality OCR feature that means you can rapidly scan or import, organize, and accurately search through a huge collection of materials. It's able to capture and store websites, the contents of which can also be run through OCR and subsequently searched. It has a built-in editor that lets you create notes on materials, with excellent support for bi-directional linking. It has PDF-editing capability that let you do extensive annotations of PDFs, and your annotations are searchable, too. It can import and search e-mail messages, and it has sufficient AI capability to propose locations where the imported content should be stored.

But that's just a start. Rather than trying to describe it myself, here's a link.

[Myles]

I was also a user of DT pro before Bookends - I'm convinced by Bookends, I'm not convinced that DTpro adds anything other than as a collection bucket. I keep notes elsewhere, I use Highlights as a pdf markup thing and I am just not sure what DT does anymore that is really useful - although the magic search capabilities are really cool, and OCR is somewhat useful (can be wildly inaccurate and I prefer text sniper or some of the mac's own tools for that reason) - I'm really not sure it is worth the disks-space even though I still have a licence.

I am looking at it as a vehicle for organising my teaching resources, but so far it might not be my favoured solution.

[Dellu]

@Myles:
One serious advantage of DT over any other software is the ai; associations that it makes between your notes (files).

If you are in the academics. I can tell you how DT helps me.

If you have a collection of thousands of notes, the link or relation between noteX and noteY is always hard to find manually, or using searching.
What I usually do is: I write a short note or text containing the core points that I want to develop into one article. I call that note a hunch. The hunch is just like a tentative abstract that I want to investigate and develop. I then ask DEVONthink to look for pdf articles, notes and other resources that are closely related with my hunch. That is the "see also" feature.
DT gives you the list of resource that you want go through to develop the hunch to a real abstract.

[vinschger]

Thank you for your help!

What would be a good starting point for using DTP and Bookends together? There seem to be numerous threads and scripts floating around both in this forum and the DTP forum, but it's challenging to determine which AppleScripts are still valid and which might be outdated.

Is there a comprehensive tutorial or a chapter in a manual that explains how to integrate DTP and Bookends effectively for academic purposes? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.