I have been experimenting with ways to integrate Bookends, DevonThink and Tinderbox, each of which has great strengths.
One method I have tried is the following. I select a reference in Bookends and then import it into DevonThink Pro using one of the built-in importers. This creates an RTF file, the text of which contains a link to the PDF corresponding to the reference, together with the contents of the Bookends Notes field.
I then created a new empty Tinderbox and I drag and drop the RTF file from DTP into it. A new note appears, containing the contents of the RTF file. Then, without my doing anything, the beachball spins for a long time, and the Reference prototype is created and applied to the Note. Not only that, but the body of the note is no longer the contents of the RTF but replaced by a bibliographic reference. Not what I wanted, which was to have the TB Note show the content of the RTF file. I was initially very puzzled by why things were happening to the notes without my doing anything.
My guess at what is happening is that, because the RTF created by DTP contains the Bookends URL in its metadata, TB automatically gets bibliographic data, but why should it get rid of the original content of the Note when it applies the Reference prototype?
My other question is whether TB contains the option, where there is a link to a file, to open with something other than the default RTF editor. “Open with …” or something like that? The reason is that if a file is located in a DTP database (as is the case with the SourceURL here), I would like to be able to open it in DTP. If I edit an RTF file in Nisus Writer (my default), DTP will not edit it at all. I could change my default RTF editor, but that is obviously not the ideal solution.
What would be better, in this case, is to copy the DEVONthink URL to the Tinderbox note, rather than copying the item itself.
If trouble persists, perhaps you could send tinderbox@eastgate.com a tiny DEVONthink database with a handful of these bookends notes; perhaps I’ll be able to see what’s getting confused.
Sorry, I was re-editing my post while the two of you replied and changed couple of points to clarify my problem. On second thoughts, I decided what was happening was not too bad, except for one point. The advantage of dragging the RTFs into TB is that I can drag a bunch of references into TB at once and the notes are created. copying and pasting a URL is a one note at a time operation.
But as my edited post says, I think the current setup would work, if only there were an easy way to open a file in something other than the default app for that filetype. Could I perhaps, configure “SourceURL” to open in DTP?
To Michael, yes, I was annoyed to have forgotten the meetup which had been in my diary for weeks, but I watched it right through the following morning. Informative. I have been using Bookends for several years, with a very large database, and am getting very familiar with it. (Incidentally, Jon stressed that BE works well with various online sources, but my reason for liking it is very different. It is very versatile, allowing it to be used in non-standard ways. I have tens of thousands of documents I have created from photos (using OCR inside DTP), and the flexibility of its output is remarkable. (I could go on about that!) I have also been using DTP much longer than TB, though have become conscious that until I find out how best to link it to BE and TB, I am unlikely to take full advantage of its capabilities.
But part of the problem, which I can probably work out only by working on a real project, is what notetaking is best done in each of the three apps. For me, TB is invaluable for the way notes can be organised visually, and links can be displayed (I use map view virtually all the time). DTP searches the PDFs and suggests connections to follow up. And BE is invaluable for organising the references.