Any new, improved Phone Note scripts or templates?

Hi @korm, I’ve been testing this in a test database as you suggested. So far, I’ve successfully applied Tags to documents that I’ve saved in DTP (and have saved them to particular DB’s and groups using your Global Inbox script that we discussed in the previous post). Everything works beautifully on that end! Here’s the hitch…

So,I created a test group, and used the same name for the group as the tag. For example, created group named “New Guy,” which had the same name as the “New Guy” tag. I applied the “New Guy” tag to a test document, and saved it in the DB’s Inbox. The document did appear in the Inbox and in the “New Guy” tag – but not in the “New Guy” group. BTW, I tried to fix it on my own by applying a “New Guy” tag to that group via the Get Info dialogue box – and also removed the “New Guy” tag to see if that would make a difference. I even tried changing the hierarchy of the “New Guy” group. Same results.

I suspect I’m making some small error, but can’t quite figure it out…

Thanks in advance for your help!

We’ve been discussing using groups-as-tags to make a replicant appear in different regular groups. If a regular group and a tag have the same name, DEVONthink defers to the tag when you use the tag bar of Get Info or any of the scripts that add tags. If you want to do what we originally discussed, then don’t make a tag with the same name as a regular group.

Thanks, @korm… I fear I didn’t properly explain my process. I meant to mention that I actually did change the names for the tags so that they were seperate (though similar for symmetry). I was just explaining the other stuff I did to achieve replicating files in different groups. I’ve been re-reading your posts that relate to this part of the threat, as well as other forum discussions re: replicating files in groups (i.e., unchecking “Exclude Groups from Tagging,” applying tags, etc.) (BTW, I wish DTP did a better job of explaining this…)

When I go to Save As… and save a file to a DTP group, I also assign various tags to the file. I thought that tags linked to groups (the tags / groups have similar but different names) would enable the replication of the file to tag-linked groups. I assumed this was in keeping with your statement that

Maybe I misunderstood or am doing something wrong. Sorry – I’m really trying to get it right. You’ve been super generous trying to help me out here, and I really do appreciate it… Thank you, @korm

I’ll chime in with my thoughts. I’m not exactly sure how you are setting this up, but linking tags to groups (by assigning regular, ‘blue’ tags to a group through the group’s info panel) is not the same as enabling tagging for your groups in the database. If you have groups with tagging enabled (the group is yellow instead of blue) and you save documents to the database with tags assigned with the exact name as the group (including upper/lower case), then the documents will be replicated to the respective yellow tag groups.

As a suggestion, forget about having similar names for blue, regular tags and yellow, group tags. That’s just asking for trouble. Ideally, tag naming should be as simple as possible. That includes standardizing on upper/lower case, singular vs. plural, etc., so that tagging, and searching for tags, is not more confusing that needs to be.

Yes you are, and I’m sure you will in time. Greg gave you some helpful advice. Good luck, and keep experimenting – that’s the one thing we all do. 8)

Thanks @Greg_Jones and @korm !

I think I got it, but just to make sure I’m going to outline the steps I’ve taken (just to make sure I haven’t found anything up or created redundancies that will bite me later)…

The Setup
-Unchecked the “Exclude Groups from Tagging” option in my DB properties
-Created the following sample tags (for experimentation purposes): dude, man, guy
-Created the following sample groups (again, just for experimentation purposes): The Dude, The Man, The Guy – these groups are in yellow; not the standard blue color
-Open the “Get Info” box for each of the nearly created groups, and fill the tags section with the corresponding tag (e.g., “dude” tag goes into “The Dude” box, etc.).

The Execution
-Go to app that has “Save As…” function. In this case, I’ll use Word (need to save pennies to get Ulysses III, @korm :wink: )
-In my case, I save to (with) the folder script that @korm created (a brilliant little script) and @devananda updated: [url]Global Inbox workflow - #10 by khw] – this pops open the group selector and allows me to place my file directly into the database and group where I want it to go. [NOTE TO DTP: This should be a part of the software!]
-But before I save the file into my database and group… In the “Tags” field of the “Save As…” dialogue box, I create or select the additional groups where I’d like the file to be replicated (e.g., if I want file “Duderino” to appear in “The Man” or “The New Guy” groups, I create or select those tags accordingly in Tags section of the Save As… box)
-Then, thanks to the help of the aforementioned folder-script, I select the database and group where I want the file to ultimately reside (e.g., “The Dude” group), realizing that it will also be replicated to “The Man” or “The New Guy” groups

So, upon reviewing this I think I just got my wires crossed w/ the relationship between tags and group names, and was including tag names instead of group names in the Tags field of the Save As… box. I guess I thought that the actual tags directed a file into a group and/or one could only put actual Tags in the tags field of the Save As… window. Hence the confusion there.

Quick questions…

Now that I have clearer sense of how this comes together, it seems to me that the step of adding corresponding tags to groups (e.g., the creating and putting a “dude” tag into “The Dude” Get Info box) is unnecessary. Is that correct?

@korm mentioned that

Just wondering if there’s a quick explanation for the functional benefits of doing this.

Thank you so much guys, and thanks for dealing w/ my confusion… Really appreciate all of your help – again!

Skip steps #2 and #4. Once you create the tag groups, you are done in DEVONthink. However, you may need to make OS X aware that you have these tag groups before you can add the tags while saving documents from a third-party app. To do this, save any document in the group tag folders (The Dude, etc.), drag the document to the desktop, and you have added the tag ‘The Dude’ to OS x’s tags.You can then delete the document from the Finder and now when you save a document from a third-party app, ‘The Dude’ will be available.

Do this if you don’t want all of your groups to also be tag names, which I would expect is the case for most users.

Yeah, I guess after seeing how this process works for tag-groups for replication (a function that I’ve been searching for…forever!) I don’t quite see the benefit of using “Exclude from Tagging” from the contextual menu. I feel like I’m missing something important, but can’t figure out what that might be…

Thank you again!

Just to clarify my last comment… I’m not totally clear about why using the contextual menu command to use “Exclude from Tagging” for certain groups would be beneficial, given the utility of enabling database for groups-as-tags tagging for easier replication. I suppose I don’t quite understand what is gained by using the the default setting over the groups-as-tags tagging approach. That’s all.

Thanks, guys…

What does that mean – this has nothing to do with “gain”? Maybe you’re overthinking what we’re saying – but there’s nothing complicated about this – it’s just the way it works.

Ordinary groups cannot be used as tags unless Database Properties > Exclude Groups from Tagging is false (off; unchecked). When Exclude Groups from Tagging is off, then some folks might want to re-enable Exclude Groups from Tagging for some groups. Like this:

Paprika, Salt and Saffron are groups enabled for tagging, and Ginger is a group not enabled for tagging.

@korm has explained the ‘how’, here is a brief thought on the ‘why’. There has been a ton of information published on the Internet concerning tagging/folders methodology for organizing data. Searching this body of knowledge might be the place to start to help inform your thinking on how you want organize your DEVONthink databases.

Having said that, my (condensed) approach to tagging is that tags are metadata (data about data), to help me at a later date to search and organize documents based on (most commonly) a combination of tags. Using tags to identify where a document is located is of no interest to me. Using tags to replicate (classify) where documents should be located in the database sounds appealing when first creating a database, but as a database grows a) this becomes untenable (more discussion below), and b) DEVONthink learns about your databases and its AI helps with the classification, which is one of the most compelling reasons to use DEVONthink in the first place.

The all groups as tags becomes untenable as the number of groups increase in a database (hundreds, or thousands) and group names become very descriptive, or worse yet, group names are duplicated. Duplicate group names means duplicate tags, and the user cannot trust where a document may appear when tagged with a group tag. Also, imagine hundreds or thousands of group tags combined with hundreds or thousands of regular tags. Assigning tags with predicative typing, performing tag searches, and/or browsing in the Tags view would become a chore. As example, look at this image taken from the Web of a subset of groups of an actual database where tagging is enabled for all groups.

A ‘good’ tag name is usually quite the opposite of what makes a good group/folder name. In the above image, ‘Books’ is the only name that comes close. Even then, I use tags that begin lower case and are singular e.g.‘book’ instead of ‘books’. I do create combination word tags with inter-caps (e.g. 'timeWarner), but some advise against using any caps at all. I also limit the use of combination word tags, choosing to use multiple, single word tags instead (e.g. ‘academic’ and research instead of academicResearch).

Anyway, the entire concept of tagging/data organization is very subjective, very personal, and what works for me may not at all work for @korm. or @Bill_D, or for you. My suggestion is to experiment and find what works best for you. Ask yourself how you are going to use your data, now and in the future. It would be hard to do anything with a database that cannot be undone later. I suppose in hindsight this wasn’t so brief after all, as I typically avoid this concept/theory DEVONthink discussions.

@Greg’s advice is very sound and spot-on for those who rely on the classify AI features of DEVONthink.

The image posted is from Rachel Leow’s blog – a part of a series she wrote a few years ago on using DEVONthink for historical research. I don’t think she uses tagging at all, so the long document names are probably not a problem for her. They are, however, essential to her workflow. For classification she relies on labels and a very clever (albeit complex) technique for using smart groups. I recommend Rachel’s three articles in the series (I, II, and III) as good reading for anyone interested in DEVONthink for research.

Thank you so much, guys! This is great, and it gives me a lot to chew on. @Greg, you gave a terrific summation! @korm’s suggestion for enabling database for groups-as-tags tagging to create easier replication was revelatory. And so, I was just trying to understand the functional benefits / costs of applying the “Exclude from Tagging” for certain groups. You’ve graciously outlined how it would affect the organizational structure, e.g., through creating an even larger number tags, and how that could overwhelm a tagging system, etc. I suppose I didn’t see the groups-as-tags tagging as having an impact on tag numbers or structure (i.e., my groups-as-tags don’t re-appear as tags), which is why I was wondering if there was any other feature I was overlooking in the default/“Exclude from Tagging” DB & group setup.

Anyway, I thank you again for the examples and the literature on groups, tags, and DB organization. That stuff is incredibly helpful. We all experiment w/ different ways of organizing DTP, but seeing other organization layouts for these and other DTP features is enormously helpful! I know these kinds of examples are floating around disparate parts of the forum, as well as in other corners of the web, but I’d suggest we create a space – some kind of central clearinghouse – for these kinds of templates, examples, literature and images for DTP groups, tags, and DB organization (while it overlaps w/ other tag/group approaches, it seems to me that DTP has its own, particular features and setup).

Maybe this are lady exists already, and if that’s the case please disregard! Just thought it might be helpful…

Thank you again, everyone! Once again, you’ve been tremendously helpful…

I was just suggesting a seperate topic could be created within the forum where image, literature and templates on DB organization (i.e., tags and groups) could reside. Just trying to be helpful to the community.

Just following up about this with a quick question… Is there app one could recommend for note taking (or a text editor) that would work in conjunction w/ this macro setup that @korm described here?

I’ve traditionally just used TextEdit, but maybe there’s another, better solution. I’d like to use something that’s similarly straightforward, has spell checker (at least a red underline) – but perhaps there’s something that also saves to the iCloud (and maybe syncs to an iPad app), and allows me to save the document as an RTF to DTP (obviously, TextEdit does that). I suppose Pages could be another solution, though I also like some apps that have unified folder system like Notes or Ulysses. Some have suggested using Evernote. While Evernote has great syncing ability, a nice interface for basic notetaking, and helpful tagging (along with other features), it doesn’t allow users to save documents as an RTFs.

Does anyone have any other ideas / suggestions about notetaking app solutions – that would also work with @korm’s macro setup?

Thanks!

DEVONthink.

I’ve been tinkering around with this, per your suggestions. I was hoping to create a template w/ TextEdit, since it doesn’t have to be opened w/in DTP (which just means it’s quicker to open when I need to take quick notes) and TextEdit documents are automatically saved on the iCloud, allowing a kind of autosave and filing for later. Sadly, one cannot create templates in TextEdit, so I’ve just tweaked the default settings a bit – and will employ the kind of snippet you suggested (via TextExpander).

But it seems that one might be able to also create a template (e.g., a “Note Taking template”) that would include the desired file format, and include the kinds of fields that exists in the DTP’s Phone Note template or our respective snippets – and then one could quickly launch this template w/ Quicksilver, Alfred, etc. I don’t know if there’s another app that might work w/ setting up this kind of template – i.e., one that can create an RTF, be launched outside of DTP, first saved via the iCloud, and contain the kinds of automated fields (date/time) and other, particular fields.

Sure. Pages, Word, Numbers, Excel, Tap Forms, Nisus Writer, Mellel … and probably a dozen or more in addition. All can be used to make forms/templates that can be exported to a cloud as RTF.

That’s an interesting approach… What about Scrivener? That might be another way to go. I’m trying to figure out how to create proper template files, instead of files that I’d be able to launch and then have to “Save As…” each time I want to use an iteration of that file type. Make sense?

Using Scrivener to build templates for a single file is like hiring a commercial prep kitchen to peel an apple. IMO, of course. 8)

Afraid I don’t know what “a proper termplate file” is, actually. Every app does its own thing.

I’m not aware of templates in any app that don’t require you to use “Save As” to save your data.