Sorry if this has been discussed much before, is too elementary or too vague. I have been using DEVONthink for a long time and recently started using Tinderbox. I have understood that the two programs should work good together although there is no syncing of content. How do you recommend that notes are kept so that it is easy to access the content in DEVONthink and work with the notes in Tinderbox. I see that there is functionality to have a Watched folder which I imagine is useful for adding content to Tinderbox using iOS. Is there some recommended way to add content from Tinderbox to DEVONthink? I can imagine that the answer depends on if the notes are supposed to be editable in DEVONthink or not.
You’ll find quite a few threads throughout the forum on strategies for working ith TBX and devonthing. As for your watch folder questions, yes there is:
And if you want a simple approach that doesn’t require setup in a Tinderbox document, keep in mind that you can use a short AppleScript like to move data from Tinderbox to DT.
-- select notes in Tinderbox 9 and run to export them to DEVONThink
tell front document of application "Tinderbox 9"
tell selections
--selections can be non-sequential: multiple levels ok
--each line below makes a list of that attribute's value for all selected notes
set theNames to name
set theTexts to value of attribute "Text"
set noteURLs to value of attribute "NoteURL"
set theTags to value of attribute "Tags"
end tell
end tell
tell application id "DNtp"
activate
set destGroup to display group selector
repeat with i from 1 to length of theNames
create record with {name:item i of theNames, content:item i of theTexts, URL:item i of noteURLs, tags:item i of theTags, type:rtf} in destGroup
end repeat
end tell
Copy-paste into Script Editor (in Applications > Utilities)
Select notes in Tinderbox
Click the “run” button in Script Editor
If “nothing happens” make sure Script Editor is listed and selected at System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility.
The script can be placed in the Script menu so it can be run in a way very similar to the way you would run a stamp in Tinderbox. But unlike a stamp you don’t have to copy it from document to document. It is reusable.
This one creates a link from DT back to the Tinderbox note. Of course many other variations are possible.
My own approach, which is probably a bit Neanderthal, is simply to copy the TBX note and paste it into DevonThink using the contextual (right click) menu option New–>With Clipboard.
This creates a rich text version of the note in DevonThink with a link back to the original Tinderbox note. (I don’t love rich text, but it seems to be the most versatile, portable, and cross-platform of DT’s notes options.)
My own convention is to use DevonThink as the primary note container. I keep all my notes in one group called “Slipbox.”
But I generally start the notes in Tinderbox and do all my cross-reference linking there, using the ziplink feature. [[
The rich text notes in DevonThink then automatically convert the Tinderbox links into wiki links in DevonThink, provided I have a DT note with the same title.
I then select any link in the DevonThink document and do Option + right-click to get the contextual menu command “Convert All Links.” This converts the wiki-links to true links which can be read in DevonThink To Go.
While this process is brutish, it does give me access to all my TinderBox notes while I am on my iPad. It also doesn’t break when there is a code change, the way some of the more automated options have.
