Tinderbox and DEVONthink Pro

I have been successful in creating a “watch container” that monitors a DevonThink group and creates a new TB note when that DT group has a new item added to it.

However, the $SourceCreated and $SourceModified attributes are left empty when the new notes are created by TB. I was under the impression that those two attributes correspond to DevonThink’s “created” and “modified” dates.

It would be very handy for my to have those dates automatically associated with the TB note when it’s created by the agent.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks everyone!

$SourceCreated and $SourceModified: stay tuned. (These are already populated when a note is imported, but not yet when it is watched.)

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My temporary fix:
$SourceModified=$NotesModified;$SourceCreated|=$NotesModified;

I think for me the key attribute I would like to be pulled from DT to Tindebox is the kind attribute

As i am a newcomer to tinderbox I wasnt aware of this limitiation. If this is a limitation then For me if TBX and DT are syncing then attributes of the DT note should be provided, for example I would want the URL of a bookmark note in DT to be synced or the path attribute of a file (like pdf or TBX) to be synced. So I guess I have clarified my request, kind is not required, if the above is implelented :slightly_smiling_face:

While I second to head @PaulWalters’ call as far as direct-accessing documents in DT-Databases via direct-pathing, I think @sammas has a point here - since using the DT-URL brought over from DT to TBX always results in opening the respective document with DT-Editor instead of (let’s say: a PDF) in macOSX’s Preview.app.

Ideas, how to achieve that?

Again i think i am learning how TBX works. So from the previous helpful comments it is clear that people believe path attributes are pulled through to TBX from devonthink. After running a quick test it appears that this is correct DEPENDING on how you add the note from DT to TBX. If you drag and drop the note the path is added to the TBX note allowing you to access the URL, pdf etc.as appropriate. However if you watch a DT group then this is not the case. So again further refining my suggested requirement what is required is consistent behaviour in TBX when handling DT (or any other type of) notes

Sorry for clarity I mean the URL attribute is populated in the drag and drop scenario in the form of x-devonthink-item://2FC3E0DD-782F-4442-BDFE-AE8F7D98F6E2, this is the useful behaviour. The path is filled in both scenarios.

Interesting.

Will remove my erroneous postings.

Hi,
Just wondering what users of Tinderbox and DEVONthink Pro do with their Tinderbox files. Specifically, does anyone save and store Tinderbox files in DEVONthink Pro? Or Index them in DEVONthink Pro? I’m not sure how well DEVONthink Pro can read and search within Tinderbox files…
Thanks!

I like to store everything in DEVONthink if I can. The x-devonthink-item:// URLs are amazing. If something is imported into DT, then that link will always find the record even if I’ve renamed it or moved it. Throw something in DEVONthink, sync it to DTTG, paste the item URL anywhere… I can always find the record. It’s amazing, and every application should have that functionality. Most don’t though :slight_smile:

I do this if I want to use git or dropbox for version control. Indexing is more fragile than importing though, because indexing is based entirely on system path. So if you rename or move the file on disk, DEVONthink loses the reference.

This has always been inconsistent for me, it seems like it changes from version to version. As of today (DEVONthink 2.10), DT can search Tinderbox files somewhat effectively. It appears to only search the contents of <text> tags, which is close to what we want. So for example, a section of the Tinderbox XML might look like:

<attribute name="Name">movie</attribute>
<text>babe is a pig</text>

Here are some searches you might try:

  • “movie” – not found
  • “babe” – found
  • “attribute” – not found
  • “name” – not found

It’s unfortunate that it doesn’t look in the <attribute> tag, as this means that note $Name won’t contribute to a positive search result – only $Text.

That’s how it works today. How it’ll work with the next version of DEVONthink, I couldn’t say :slight_smile:

I especially like the idea of bi-directional sync. IMHO.

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Pat,

I am intrigued on the consistency and immutability of DT links. Do you have any process, or is it scriptable to extract the DEVONthink name along with the link URL in a batch process?

For example, if I dump a number of documents/images into DEVONthink, can I automate extraction of all of those URLs or do I have to manually click through each note to obtain the link?

Thanks if you have any ideas or thoughts on This question.

Don

Of course. There are numerous scripts available here and in the DEVONthink forum for this. For example:

Or, the easiest thing to do is to select records (e.g., documents) in your DEVONthink database and use their Create Table of Contents command from the contextual menu, and import that TOC into Tinderbox.

Or, drag notes from DEVONthink to Tinderbox and the name, URL and other metadata will come along.

Or, use Tinderbox’s Watch feature to watch a folder in DEVONthink and the name, URL and other metadata will be grabbed.

And so on.

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Thank you Paul ( and everyone else on this thread). I will work through this, appreciate the links/help
Don

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 &quot;IT Ecosystem&quot; -- what is it?</attribute>
<attribute name="NoteTaker" >PW</attribute>
<attribute name="OriginalText" >frame the problem using a new concept &quot;IT Ecosystem&quot; -- 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.

Hi Mark,

I ´m a beginner with Tinderbox and work with DEVONthink pro Office since years.
Are there any Tutorials about this theme?

Thanks,
Bernhard

Welcome, @Lupo – this is a very long and old thread – which message are you referring to? I don’t see “theme” in any of the earlier posts :frowning: