Hi all,
Thanks so much for your response to my question and all of your helpful answers. Sorry for my late reply to them…
Just wanted to give you a heads up that the latest version of DEVONthinkPro is up, and it includes “improved indexing [for] Tinderbox files.”
I haven’t yet imported my Tinderbox files into DEVONthinkPro, so I’m not sure how this “improved indexing” will work, and how it affects DTP’s ability to better search in Tinderbox files.
By the way, these…
…look like great suggestions. Looking forward to giving them a try in a bit! Thanks again…
I have no idea what the release note refers to, but as far as I can tell DEVONthink Pro Office does what it always did with Tinderbox TBX files: it can find words in the file, but that is rather useless in viewing the note that the word belongs to.
For example, I have hundreds of TBX files indexed in DEVONthink version 2.10.1 (latest as of today) because the files belong to larger projects whose documents are stored in the DEVONthink database. I search for “concept” among those files. DEVONthink will take me to a section of the file and display:
<item ID="3424167039" Creator="system" proto="protoNote" >
<attribute name="Category" >Parking Lot</attribute>
<attribute name="Created" >2012-07-03T13:30:00-04:00</attribute>
<attribute name="HTMLDontExport" >true</attribute>
<attribute name="Modified" >2012-07-03T13:30:00-04:00</attribute>
<attribute name="Name" >frame the problem using a new concept "IT Ecosystem" -- what is it?</attribute>
<attribute name="NoteTaker" >PW</attribute>
<attribute name="OriginalText" >frame the problem using a new concept "IT Ecosystem" -- what is it?</attribute>
<attribute name="SelectionCount" >4</attribute>
<attribute name="Xpos" >5</attribute>
<attribute name="Ypos" >1.5</attribute>
</item>
I suppose the value is opening that note in Tinderbox and proceeding, but otherwise reading raw XML isn’t generally helpful.
Where do I put my general throughout-the-day notes?
I mainly work with the following three tools that I use to collect and relate my ideas, information, data on specific topics, or that I link with each other via URLs (=Hyperlinks).
DEVONtink Pro Office (my database for all kinds of information = analogous to the filing cabinet that is in my office)
Daylite (analogous to my personal assistant or secretary)
(Information about Daylite can be found here. (Info for Daylite)
Tinderbox (analogous to the flipchart that stands in my office for the visualization of thoughts and structures etc.)
My own ideas and thoughts are created in Daylite on the basis of notes and linked within Daylite equal to the corresponding topic.
I gather information or data of all kinds in the database of DEVONthink and link them to the corresponding topics in Daylite. That means the head office is Daylite.
With the help of Tinderbox, I want to make complex connections visible in the future.
For example, the workflow for a bookkeeping of a fictitious company, which is called “bakery Wolf” or creating a script for video tutorials.
Very interesting approach @Lupo. Do you use Daylite for CRM or just for personal management for yourself?
If your notes travel Daylight → DEVONthink → Tinderbox, then I think the Tinderbox 7 feature of “watching” a DEVONthink group (identified by its DEVONthink item link) can be very useful.
Here’s what Tinderbox help as to say about that:
Tinderbox can now automatically import selected groups of records from DEVONthink Pro.
To connect Tinderbox to a DEVONthink group, create a top level container to hold the imported notes and set its $DEVONthinkGroup attribute to the unique DEVONthink ID of the group you want to watch, or the the DEVONthink URL of the group you want to watch. Tinderbox will now automatically import or update that container whenever your file is reopened, and periodically thereafter.
Groups inside groups are not currently imported.
The imported notes inherit from a built-in prototype named “Imported From DEVONthink,” allowing you to set common key attributes or visual appearance.
Changes to the imported notes will not be propagated to the application or to other devices.
You can also drag documents from DEVONthink to Tinderbox and create notes that way.
Once you get notes from DEVONthink into Tinderbox then you can build out the map(s) you want along the lines shown in your image. If the “head office” is Daylite, and the “repository” is DEVONthink, then with the “glue” of “watched groups” in Tinderbox you can begin to close the loop your description implies.
This thread just brought me DayLite–very interesting. I’ve been looking for something like this. It almost sounds too good to be true, but it’s not cheap, so maybe it IS true!
I’m trying to unify a workflow and stem the tide of chaos that has been consuming me. I think Tinderbox can help, but I’m still struggling with how. This is very useful information!
@PaulWalters
My notes do not travel from Daylite —>DEVONthink —>Tinderbox.
All information between Daylite, DEVONthink and Tinderbox are conected with URLs.
If you own the current version of DEVONthink, then select a group (DEVONthink’s term for a folder) and choose Copy Item Link from the contextual menu, or from the Edit menu. This will put a DEVONthink reference URL on the clipboard. The URL looks like this:
Paste the clipboard contents (the URL you copied).
Wait a few seconds, and the child documents of the group (the “watched group”) whose reference URL you copied will appear as child notes of the note where you added the $DEVONthinkGroup attribute and the URL.
There are limitations. Child groups of a watched DEVONthink group will not sync. Not all documents from DEVONthink sync well. Works best with rich text or plain text, less well with PDFs, and even less well with web archives. Usually does not work anywhere satisfactorily with documents such as .docx, .xlsx, or images.
What version of DEVONthink and what version of Tinderbox do you have? The feature requires the version of each program that were modified by the developers to support it.
Make sure you have copied and paste the correct Item Link from the correct group in the most current version of Tinderbox.
Anyway, good luck. Seeing as we don’t have your data, it’s not possible to reproduce.
