Did MarginNote v3 add AppleScript support? I recall one MarginNote user mentioning it. I can attest to the difficulty of working with MarginNote’s existing export. If AppleScript is added it might offer a better MarginNote → Tinderbox.
No, MarginNote 3 does not have AppleScript support. The crew over there promises more than is delivered.
2 Likes
That is a very fair observation, I’m afraid - much to the chagrin of many MN users. Still, they have made some important improvements…
Alex, I’d be more than happy to share my work process with you, which involved MarginNote & Tinderbox. I’m still working out the kinks, but I think it might work for you – given how we seem to process and organize our research in similar ways. Just let me know…
6 Likes
PLS DO
1 Like
I’m sorry for not getting back to you sooner about this. I’ve actually been working with developers to revise a script that I had been using to organize the metadata for MarginNote files so they’d work better in Tinderbox, and I didn’t want to provide a breakdown of my approach until we first fixed the script. I’m also rethinking how much I ought to use this approach with Tinderbox.
Anyway, here’s the basic work process that I had been working on:
-
I annotate PDF files in MarginNote. (The app has many shortcomings, which I can quickly summarize, but has made some improvements.) When one outlines a passage of text in MarginNote, it creates discrete notes – and users can add titles at the top and/or populate the notes with hashtags and some other labels (e.g., timeline values) at a separate field at the bottom of the note.
-
I export MarginNote files in an OmniOutliner file. MarginNote doesn’t provide options to generate exports for CSV or Tab-delim files. I’ve tried exports in various other formats (e.g., iThoughtsX, rtf, etc.), but found that OmniOutliner works best because…
-
…I then run a AppleScript (the one we’re currently revising) in OmniOutliner for reformatting and reorganizing MarginNote-produced OmniOutliner files, so that they can better work with Tinderbox. (I had been using another script in tandem with TaskPaper to organize some of the metadata, but that script recently broke down – which is unfortunate since it provided the best approach for various reasons.)
-
Once that script is finished, I export the rendered OmniOutliner file as an OPML file, and then open that file in Tinderbox.
When I first set up this process, I had also been using a process in which I I used a script to group the hashtags by categories (e.g. category FRUIT - paired with apples, bananas, peaches), and then the categories would then appear as containers in Tinderbox. Most recently, I was trying to figure out how to create aliases of notes (since OmniOutliner doesn’t create aliases), so that they’d appear in other category / containers. But I’ve been discouraged from pursuing that for various reason.
Anyway, that’s the basic thrust of my process. I realize that it comes with many problems and is still a work in progress. Still, it seems like the best solution I’ve been able to find for using a PDF annotation app – that creates discrete notes and metadata – and then using Tinderbox’s (or another app) to organize and analyze those discrete notes (based on their metadata).
Hope that’s helpful. Happy to answer questions you might have.
4 Likes
Thank you for this , a lot to taken in.
Qs
- All your discrete notes are typed or hand-written on iPad ?
- If you want I can have a look at the notes output and see if Keyboard Maestro can help you organise something(no promises). During April 10th Meetup , Moritz von Seefried was running into some issues with export of files he was getting and we were able to resolve loads of his issue with automation via KM.
1 Like
Quite welcome! Hope it was useful…
In answer to your questions:
Neither, actually. MarginNote creates discrete notes whenever one annotates (i.e., selects) text. Then I type in a set of hashtags and timelines data, as needed.
To back for second… As I said before, I’ve create a stock set of categories (FRUIT , VEGGIES, etc.), and then I populate them hashtags ( apples , bananas , peaches ). Through my process, the categories eventually become User Attributes, and the hashtags become Values.
Thank you very much for your kind offer to help me with my process via Keyboard Maestro. I greatly appreciate that. Right now, I’m making my way through the OmniOutliner script, and think it’s manageable.
Actually, my main challenge is remember how to do certain things on the Tinderbox end, because it’s been a while since I’ve set things up…
Anyway, I’ll let you know how it goes!
Happy to answer additional questions that you and other might have… Thanks!
1 Like
Quick update…
It took me a while to get everything sorted, but I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve finally made this work – thanks, in great measures, to the incredible and generous assistance of @mwra !
I’m still working on some small script refinements to make the inter-app workflow work a bit better with OmniOutliner and Tinderbox (i.e., to better apply prototypes to newly-imported notes). But the basic thrust of the process works quite well: the OmniOutliner script uses a TaskPaper file to create columns by category, and then groups them with their respective hashtags.
When the script is done re-organizing the file, I export the OmniOutliner as on OPML file, and then open it in Tinderbox. Thanks to @mwra’s help, I’ve put together a Template file that contains a Prototype with the categories as fleshed out as Attributes (and assigned their dataset type), Agents per category / agents, a few other stamps and other things to make the import process work seamlessly.
Like I said, I’m still working to better refine this process so that it works even better. But the overall process involving MarginNote annotation -> MN export / OmniOutliner import -> OO script rendering -> OMPL export -> Tinderbox import does work, and appears to work quite well…
1 Like