For my research, I import a lot of large documents - lengthy articles and books - into my database. I often want to tag small portions of the books as they relate to specific topics.
Obviously, if I just tag the entire book with every pertinent tag, it’s useless. So I break the book up into chapters - each chapter is a separate PDF. Then, if I search for a specific tag, it’ll at least show me the chapter instead of the entire book. But often, that’s inefficient, too. I might want to tag just a paragraph or sentence, but searching for that tag brings up the entire chapter.
Is there any way to tag a small portion of a document and have that tag bring up just that portion instead of the whole document? In others words, can I tag one sentence in a chapter and have that tag bring up just that sentence instead of the entire chapter?
Actually the previous question was about bookmarks or links, so that I could find my way back to a certain place in a document. I’m looking now for a way to focus my tags so they can refer not just to an entire document, but to a portion. The workaround I’m using now is breaking chapters into smaller and smaller units, so that a tag points me to just the pertinent text, not everything else in the chapter. But this is pretty labor-intensive.
That’s pretty interesting. If I assume correctly, this technique will still open the entire chapter, but it will point me directly to the beginning of the section I want tagged.
The problem for me is that it doesn’t indicate where that section ends. My ideal solution would be one that creates “culls” … a tag leads me only to, say, the two paragraphs in this large chapter that is pertinent to that tag. I’ve been creating culls manually in previous projects, and it’s labor-intensive, but it gives me exactly what I’m looking for, and no more, which is great for a project with tons snd tons of material.
But thanks for the quick response and the interesting suggestion.
I fear I’m taking advantage of your generosity by going on, and I don’t want to appear ungrateful for your suggestions, but these don’t really do what I’m looking for. Breaking the chapters into smaller pieces would be fine if each cull applied only to one tag. But some tags would cover sections that would start in one piece and end in another, etc.
All I’m looking to do is to be able to highlight a section of text and then tag it. Invoking the tag would then bring up just those culls of text in various documents that apply specifically to that tag. (And, of course, DT’s metadata would remain attached to each cull, so I could always know the source.)
But it looks like I can’t do anything that clean and simple. Alas.
Again thank you for your time and ideas. I do appreciate it.
Maybe this workflow could do what you’re looking for:
create MD note with the culled text / optionally add your own thoughts
add link to the line in source document from which text was extracted (either in the MD content or as custom metadata)
tag the MD note
Now you can see under that tag all those text culls from different documents that were tagged, each in a separate MD note. And you can quickly jump back to the source as well.
From here, you could use transclusion to create summaries and collections of these insights if you wanted to.
Edit: Alternatively you could tag the document and then also add the name of the tag as typewriter text next to the paragraph(s) you want to refer back to. This way, you can find the document by searching for the tag, and find the specific paragraphs the tag refers to by searching for its title within the document. With this workaround, it would probably be useful to add some syntax before the tag to avoid search results becoming cluttered with results from the main text of the document. So, for example “Tag_{tag title}” or “X_{tagtitle}” would return only the typewriter notes you added next to “tagged” paragraphs.
I use a variation of Bluefrog’s and A2307’s suggestions with a script triggered from the menu bar to select text in the PDF which is pasted into a markdown note. It prompts for the title of the note - you could maybe adapt it to prompt for a tag and maybe the metadata you want.
I can’t really script (I cobbled it together from much more elegant scripts posted by cgrunenberg, pete31 and others and added bits here and there) so it probably looks horrible, but it works with no problems for me.
-- Create note with MD link to selected PDF with or without selected PDF text
use AppleScript version "2.4"
use framework "AppKit"
use scripting additions
property theDelimiter : return & return -- or e.g. linefeed & linefeed
property theSeparator : "---" & return
tell application id "DNtp"
try
if not (exists think window 1) then
error "Please open a window"
else
set theWindow to think window 1
end if
set theRecord to content record of theWindow
if theRecord ≠ missing value then
set theType to (type of theRecord) as string
if theType is in {"PDF document", "«constant ****pdf »"} then
try
set theSelectedText to selected text of theWindow & "" as string
on error
display notification "No text selected"
set theSelectedText to ""
end try
set thePage to current page of theWindow
set theRefURL to reference URL of theRecord & "?page=" & thePage
set theSubject to text returned of (display dialog "State proposition/ title of note." with title "Subject" default answer "")
-- get source document info
set theName to the name of theRecord
set theDate to creation date of content record
set theMonth to ((month in theDate) as integer) as string
set theDay to the day in theDate as string
set theYear to the year in theDate as string
set mdLink to "[" & theName & "](" & theRefURL & ")"
set matterName to the name of current database
-- determines whether to include selected text or not
if theSelectedText is not "" then
set theContent to "# " & theSubject & theDelimiter & theSeparator & theDelimiter & "*Supporting quote*:" & theDelimiter & theSelectedText & theDelimiter & theSeparator
else
set theContent to "# " & theSubject & theDelimiter & theSeparator
end if
set theReference to theDelimiter & "*Source*: " & mdLink & theDelimiter & "Date: " & theDay & "." & theMonth & "." & theYear & theDelimiter & "Location: " & matterName & theDelimiter & theSeparator
my setClipboardToPlainText(theContent & theReference) -- necessary in macOS Mojave
set the clipboard to theContent & theReference
-- create the note
create record with {name:(theSubject), type:markdown, content:(theContent & theReference)} in inbox
else
error "Please open a PDF record"
end if
else
error "Please open a PDF record"
end if
on error error_message number error_number
if the error_number is not -128 then display alert "DEVONthink" message error_message as warning
return
end try
end tell
on setClipboardToPlainText(theText)
set thePasteboard to current application's NSPasteboard's generalPasteboard()
thePasteboard's clearContents()
(thePasteboard's setString:theText forType:(current application's NSPasteboardTypeString))
end setClipboardToPlainText
I know it’s not quite the answer you are looking for.
The other thing I’ve come round to is splitting large PDFs by chapters (“bookmarks” in Acrobat-speak) before I import and start marking them up in DT. It really helps search get you to the relevant parts quickly and replicating key documents (but my use case may be different). One of the great things about DT is how it makes you think about your work practices.
Anyway, feel free to use or disregard if not useful. Best of luck with it.
You’re very kind to take the time to share this. Thank you.
And yes, I have also come around to splitting large PDFs into smaller, bite-sized pieces so that a tag refers to relevant culls and not a lot of other extraneous text all around it.
My workflow also involves OmniOutliner. Everything first goes into DT3, organized by source. When I go through each document to find the material I want to cull, I use a Keyboard Maestro macro to copy the relevant text, paste it into the OO outline, open an Inline Note attached to the item, and automatically append the title of the source from DT. I then have one large OO document with all the culled material, which I can easily organize into an order that makes sense to me; nesting some items under others, moving things up and down, etc.
If your budget allows it you may want to look into MaxQDA or Atlas.ti or the like, as what you’re describing (paragraph-level coding, queries and selective exports etc.) is what QDA software is designed to do.
