This was already addressed in the beginning of the thread 
There is a change in quicklook plugins in macOS Sequoia which apparently affects OmniOutliner.
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Oh, I thought of an alternative suggestion but completely forgot to add it.
Are you aware of the Table of Contents inspector? It works very well with PDFs, but also markdown! If the point is:
and:
This might be a simple, built-in solution. It doesn’t help you with folding sections in the preview – but other users have wished for that, and actually found this a superior alternative. For example:
(which also links to an earlier discussion.)
A screenshot:
It works in the preview as well as source/edit mode. You can navigate it with the keyboard.
It also works with .rtf files, though with some limitations. I rarely use rtf, so I can’t comment too much on that. I remember there was a thread recently about improvements to this, if you search the forum.
… But if you wish to add specific color or formatting to some text, this can also be done in markdown with html tags and/or custom css. E.g.:
<span style="color:red">Some red text</span>
Or
<span class="red">Some red text</span>
with something like this in your stylesheet:
.red {
color: red;
}
To make this faster, you can use a text expander utility or the (more limited) built-in macOS text replacement feature. I have a bunch of snippets/macros set up so that I type 2-3 letters, and then my cursor is magically wrapped in some html, ready to type the actual text
It might not be for you, but I wanted to make you aware of the possibility. There are a lot of posts in the forum on CSS, if you search around. Or on the wider web.
If that’s too much of a hassle or too complicated, DEVONthink also supports multimarkdown syntax for underlining and highlighting: {++Underlined++}, {==Highlighted==} — for some ways to mark text besides italic and bold.
If you want folding in markdown, you might wanna check out the excellent, free MarkEdit. (It also has a table of contents for navigation, and keyboard shortcuts to jump to next/previous heading. And works with the new Apple AI/language tools, since you’re on Seqouia.) I know this doesn’t help with the preview in DEVONthink, but I mention it as a snappy external editor that doesn’t require you to index a folder like Obsidian. If you decide to use the markdown/ToC inspector-approach, but have a case where you just really want to fold some sections anyways.
Troejgaard, many thanks for bringing this to my attention - this is super helpful!
I actually was not aware (and why didn’t I try it??) that I could open a TOC inspector for rtf files - I had only been using it with pdf before.
I like the TOC Inspector for rtf, but I am a bit confused how it works.
The first time around, it created anchors (the inspector side) for what in my rtf were bold large font headers (but no other formatting really) - but then when I added a new “header” it did not appear as a new anchor - I am sure this because the rtf is not really structured 
But it’s getting there.
Now I am trying to use PanWriter for importing that rtf and converting it into md, but I find the results very messy - maybe the rtf is not that crisp.
I will continue and try and do what you’ve shown, and come back later to report!
Anyways, I can definitely live with the inspector and its anchors!
Cheers,
Mike
Wonder if there’s a way to “refresh” the TOC in the inspector after editing the rtf file
Glad to hear it was useful!
See this thread for some explanations/discussion on how the .rtf ToC is constructed – and maybe discuss the .rtf specifics further there, if needed, to make the forum easier to search.
I don’t have any experience to share, since I only really use .rtf for document annotations with many links. In that case I find .rtf more readable in the inspector, since you can hide the urls (the annotation inspector only shows raw markdown).
But yes, the ToC should be easier to manage with markdown, which has inherent structure.
You can also just convert your .rtf files in DEVONthink? (Right click > Convert > to Markdown), but I don’t know if it’s any better or worse than PanWriter (never heard of it). I was about to suggest PanDoc, but I see that’s what PanWriter uses…
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Dear troejgaard, you’ve been super helpful.
It is interesting to start reading some of the conversations where you, Amontillado and several other super knowledgeable people are chatting about markdown, rtf and more. But I am careful not to get down a rabbit hole ha ha (just bumped into AsciiDoc - but no!).
I did manually convert what was a fairly unclean rtf (amazing the crud that is revealed - but I guess a result of much cut & paste and formatting) into a clean md, and yes, it is nicely rendered in DT of course, and the Inspector TOC works well, with nice folding/unfolding. Sweet!
I guess I will follow so many here (including Jim!) in starting to use md much more, eh!
Now to investigate using colors, etc.
I do have a small question - not sure you mentioned this, and maybe it’s a silly question - where do I find the stylesheet for the md rendering?
Cheers
Mike
Yes!! Downloaded MarkEdit and love it!
And yes, easy to just insert html for text color, etc - thank you.
You basically gave me an md course - much obliged!
Mike
Easy to insert – yes. Easy to maintain – no. Imagine you wanted to change all occurrences of red text to something else.
Better to use CSS classes then inline styles.
chrillek - you’re totally right.
I am still trying to figure out where to create the css for the markdown file, though. Any pointers?
In the md itself?
Cheers,
Mike
Have you tried searching the excellent built-in help, the manual or the forum? It should be quite easy to find.
But for a quick answer, you can either:
- Add a custom style sheet in the app settings under Files > Markdown > Style Sheet
- Link to a style sheet in a multimarkdown metadata header,
css: link-to-stylesheet - or play around in a single document with a style tag at the start:
<style>
some css
</style>
Please use the search function. It’ll tell you all that has been said about CSS here and doesn’t need repeating.
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troejgaard - many thanks!
This is super helpful! - and yes, I had totally overlooked the DT settings, now that you pointed it out to me I see there are tons of great settings for files. Somehow I missed that.
Mike
P.S. A very excellent md settings page, with the usual DT excellent help. (I suppose Jim’s?)
Yep, will do - you are right.
I think I’m just getting a bit swamped by the variety of stuff I’ve been finding, started getting a bit lost. But you are 100% right.
Cheers,
Mike
@chrillek has also written a beginner’s guide to CSS on this very forum: CSS for Markdown – the series
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Ah! (I’m really embarrassed)
@chrillek Sorry - and thanks - will read right away. You have all the reason in the world to get annoyed at me, yet you were quite gentle. Your write-up is what I need. Again, apologies for not having the focus to go search for this.
Mike
Read @chrillek css in markdown tutorial, and created a first css stored in DT’s StyleSheets library folder. Getting there Many thanks to all!
md preview below (wip)
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I’m digging md
I resisted it for a long time until @korm took me aside and said “You really should check it out.”. It wasn’t too long before it became a daily part of my computing life.
However, other formats like rich text is still viable and widely used too. Just saying.
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Yep, I am using both now. And also pdf. And, for images, mostly png. And a few Omni Graffle files. And a few others.
I am dedicating these few months to being a little more systematic about the way I do things, as DEVONthink basically is, well my life. Finance, hobbies, document archive, past design work, travel, reading, my art and photography, philately publishing, you name it.
DT and Lightroom.
So I have adopted Keyboard Maestro, Yoink, PopClip, and a variety (I called them workflow) little apps and utilities.
I export from Lightroom edited screenshots from my phone, and other imagery I need, as decently lightweight png. I can convert LR keywords to DT tags (thank you DEVONthink).
I now use an Applescript to tell Acorn (sweet little app) to resize images that are too heavy (thank you DT for the ability to do such flexible smart groups).
And I use PDF Squeezer to do the same to heavy pdfs.
And PDF Outline to rename the TOC items for the many pdfs that I obtained via merging files, screen captures, other pdfs…
And Highlights to create some really useful notes including images.
I rely a lot on labels (I standardized on a set that had good semantics back in 2008-ish) and tags - which I do NOT nest, I prefer breadth than depth, and I use replicants a whole lot.
In fact, I started using DEVONthing label colors for the physical world as well. Sweet.
In these 15 plus years, my databases are very stable, semantically, and I prune them every few years for obsolete content, moving it to “depot” databases. I try not to clean up too much, just de-crude. Life is short.
I also do a lot of cleanup with BBEdit, A Betteer FInder Rename and Attributes.
My goal lately has been to prepare good “master” files - the md is taking me into that direction.
These will be used to help me with all dozens of things that I, the ultimate dispersive guy, am interested. I am dispersive but I dive deep (especially when @chrillek gently chides me).
These md “masters” will have hyperlinks to DEVONthink main sections in different databases, and they themselves may point elsewhere.
I know something like this might have been attempted in Tinderbox (which I also have and love), but I am reserving TB for some other kinds of authoring, as I never found a mind mapping app that did what I wanted/needed.
So, one thing I can say about DEVONthink, is
THEY WILL HAVE TO PRY MY F*****G FINGERS OPEN TO TAKE IT AWAY FROM ME
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And, goes without saying, this is a freaking great user forum, with the best people
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