On Notes

[terceiro]

3. A nicely formatted export with plenty of options, so I can get the quotes, summaries, comments, and notes into my word processor or DEVONthik database

Why you wouldn't take notes directly in DEVONThink?

After much grief and suffering, I have completely given up on writing directly in DEVONthink. I do love the software, but only for the semantic cataloging and search. "See also" is both genius and invaluable. But the interface for DT is a bear, and there's just way too much overhead for me to get notes out of my head and into DEVONthink. Small, lightweight, specific apps for the capture process allows me to avoid distraction/frustration with DEVONthink.

When it's time to stop the reading and get to producing, I'll export the notes from whatever I'm using for notes at the time (I've used OmniOutliner, Mori, Journler, Notational Velocity, text files, long word processing documents, and pencil-and-paper in the past), I'll export them as individual notes into DEVONthink. The goal, of course, is to get the benefits that Stephen Johnson mentioned in a blog post a couple of years ago.

The benefit I can see to SlipBox is the metadata fields built-in. They allow me to immediately forget about being consistent and instead just focus on getting the note down. Otherwise, I spend too much of my limited brainpower worrying about keeping things regular.

Too much work? Perhaps. But it's a workflow that [|seems to be] work[s|ing] for me (fingers crossed). I'm embracing my idiosyncrasies.

[bluloo]

You have full access to Bookends notes now (as they are implemented now) with the configurable concise view.

Jon
Sonny Software

thanks. The first time I tried to type in the notes field from the concise view, I couldn't (must have been my system).

Works great.

thanks again for the bang-up update.

[talazem]

I for one would like to put in a vote for multiple notes per reference in BE. One of two options:
1. Let BE index/import/attach all the notes of a given FOLDER in the Finder, or all the notes in another piece of software (that gives access to each note's unique ID in Mac OS X), and have an easy way of reimporting new ones that are added into that Folder.
2. To create such notes in BE. However, for it it to play nicely with other software such as DEVONthink Pro, it would be best that these notes not be in some proprietary database, but rather in the Finder. That way, the strength of DT and other software can be utilised, but without all their hangups.

At the end of the day, as far as note-taking is concerned, I would like to see how many notes I have for a given Reference.

I don't know how feasible either of the above are, but they don't seem to be too far off from what is available now.

[Jon]

Hi,

For suggestion #1, I think Bookends already will handle that (mostly). You can have as many notes (text files, Mellel files, Word files, etc) attached to a reference as you like in a given folder. I think the only addition you are suggesting is that you could attach the entire contents of the folder by drag and drop at once, rather than the items in it one at a time. Am I missing something?

Jon
Sonny Software

[talazem]

Hi Jon,

Yes, either drag-and-drop of an entire folder, or through an import dialogue in the menu. So:

(1) yes, drag-and-drop an entire folder;

(2) have automatic or semi-automatic some way of synchronising/updating the notes attached in that folder without having to manually go and drop-and-drag every folder for every reference whenever new "notes" have been taken into the folders.