I have for years used the “Take Rich Note” service to add content to my DT Pro database, which now contains some 1.5 million documents and 998 million words (a record?).
I was delighted when the Clip to DevonThink bookmarklet arrived, and installed it. But I found it useless. Why?
It clips notes, bookmarks, Webarchives, PDFs and HTML, and it allows tagging … but it does not clip rich text files.
I always clip rich text files because I want to access everything in my database both on and offline; I want the text to be editable, with images still showing where possible; and I want the file sizes to be as small as possible. It has served me very well, and I just cannot imagine why there isn’t a Rich Text option.
OK, I can carry on with the “Take Rich Note Service”, just as I have always done. No big deal. But why on earth isn’t there an option to clip Rich Text files using the bookmarklet? It seems like a major omission.
I would love to add Rich Text to the options so that I can clip and tag at the same time. Any chance? It surely can’t be hard?
If you set your preference for importing to ‘Import>Destination>Select Group’, you can clip RTF documents and tag at the same time using the Take Rich Note service.
I tried that, but something seems to have broken. The booklet now doesn’t seem to do anything at all, even after I restored it to it’s previous settings. Any clues?
No idea why it isn’t working for you now. I assume you are using the bookmarklet, and not the Safari clipper extension? Both work for me, but this info might help narrow things down.
No I was using the Safari Clipper extension. I have since experimented with the bookmarklets. None of them allow me to capture formatted text, only plain text. I do not want plain text. I want formatted rich text.
Furthermore, with the preferences set to ‘Import>Destination>Select Group’, I am taken back into DTP Office, i.e. Safari goes into the background. This adds to the time and slows things down.
When I am clipping data I want to be able to replicate what happens when I use the current ‘Take Rich Note’ service. With a single click I expect to capture a formatted Rich Text document to the inbox of my current database, in the background. Then do my next capture, and so on.
I was expecting the Safari Clipper extension to be able to do that. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to do so, and what you’ve suggested hasn’t had that effect either.
Obviously I can carry on using the ‘Take Rich Note’ service. With a single keystroke it does exactly what I need. It would be nice to have the same functionality available from the Safari Clipper extension with the added ability to select ‘Rich Text’ and tag content before sending it to DTP while Safari remains in the foreground. It is THAT capability I am seeking, as I often clip 1-200 items a day, sometimes many more, within seconds of each other.
Perhaps I should add, my workflow is as follows:
Grab pages/links of interest into Instapaper as I spot them
Got to Instapaper and open typically 50-60 articles in separate tabs
Then on each tab in turn:
Apply ‘Readability’ bookmarklet to so that it is nicely formatted
Select text to copy and Use ‘Take Rich Note’ service to capture formatted page into the inbox of my current DTP database.
Greg - when you say “it works for me” are you saying that you are able to take a Rich Text note using the Safari clipper extension? It doesn’t work for me - I just get a plain text clip. Have I misunderstood?
Safari 5.0.2 DTPO 2.0.6
I cannot take a RTF note via the Clipper-only with the Services menu command. When I said both were working for me, I was talking about the Clipper and the bookmarklet. I understood rollo to say that the bookmarklet broke after changing his import destination preference, but then perhaps I did not understand what had stopped working for him?
The clipper and bookmarklet both stopped working for me. But they recovered once I quit and restarted my browser.
You’re confirming my thoughts. Neither the clipper or the bookmarklet will capture formatted text. I would love them both to capture formatted (rich) text in the same way as the ‘Take Rich Note’ service. That’s all.
It surely can’t be hard to add that functionality? I’m just astounded that it wasn’t incorporated a long time ago. OK I could have said something about it before, but I really didn’t imagine it would take forever to incorporate seemingly such a small thing. And I thought lots of other people would be screaming for it too. I’m only speaking up for it now because nobody else seems to be.
Would this be useful for anyone else? If so, why not add your voice?
It doesn’t bother me that it is missing from the Clipper because I expect I would never use it. I’m so accustomed to typing cmd-) for so long to capture RTF notes that I would have a hard time re-training myself. I do understand how others would find it useful to be included in the Clipper.
It clearly doesn’t bother me too much either, Greg, as you and I seemingly operate the same way quite happily. Would be nice to be able to tag items though, so would like to see RTF capture in clipper. Can live without it. But it would be nice to have it
I suspect that the clip to RTF is what I need for my issue as well. I posted another thread on that as I an new to DT so maybe I’m just missing something.
This is exactly what I am looking for too and was glad to see it posted here. A Clip RTF bookmarklet would be extremely useful (and necessary) for me for the same reasons Rollo mentioned in his first post.
Just guessing, but as “Clip to DEVONthink” is provided both for Safari and for Firefox – and one cannot currently clip rich text from Firefox – the RTF option may be omitted for compatibility reasons.
Like others, most of my Web captures are in rich text, so I use the Services keyboard shortcut “Command-)” to capture selected text/images as a rich text document from a page displayed in Safari, DEVONagent or DEVONthink’s own browser (I don’t use Firefox when I’m doing captures).
I second the request for a Clip to RTF option in the browser extensions.
What I want to add is the question why the clipping to RTF via Services does not always contain all font information. For example, I clipped from Safaria part of a posting in this very forum that contained italics and plain text.
The taken RTF note in DEVONthink contained of the text, the font, even the green background but not the italics! So I could have used a plain text note as well as I don’t care for any colours and fonts. But I do care for content, and italics and such are (or more precise: can be) semantic content of a text.
The text is copied in the Lucida Grande typeface, which does not support italics. This issue isn’t a DEVONthink clipping/Services menu problem, as you can see the same thing by coping the above italic text and pasting it into TextEdit. I don’t know if this is due to WebKit, the Web page itself, or what, as I can copy or clip text on some sites and the data is not formatted in Lucida Grande.
