Clip web page to DEVONthink as Markdown

DEVONthink Tips
1

This is a tip for Markdown junkies.

Brett Terpstra creates many useful things, include a Markdownifier site that will take a URL and convert it to Markdown with several output options. Check out the provided bookmarklets (and the API, if you’re inclined to developing your own tools).

For use with DEVONthink, I’ve been using a two-step processes. First, (install then) click the “Readability -> Markdown (raw)” bookmarklet. Then click the Clip to DEVONthink Extension and choose “Note” as the clipper option. This will put a Markdown-formatted plain text version of the pages into DEVONthink. (Don’t use the automatic title feature and put “.md” at the end of the title, else you’ll get an unusable title.)

For example, this page:

Will be rendered by Brett’s bookmarklet as:

[Permalink](http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/110175/the-curse-warholism# "Permalink to The Curse Of Warholism | The New Republic")

# The Curse Of Warholism | The New Republic

I AM SORRY TO REPORT that Andy Warhol’s throwaway sensibility is not being turned into landfill, at least not anytime soon. Toss Warhol’s stuff in the trash and it appears in recycling, invariably with a higher price tag. Half a century after he became the artist of the moment, Warhol is more with us than ever, now the throwaway with a takeaway in which many see the key to the art of our

Why do this? Mainly because you can 8) – something that interesting if you want to use plain-text in your writing. On the nerdy side, Brett offers a wonderful API, Ruby code, and other features that can be incorporated into scripts, services, and add-ons for DEVONthink.

2

Agreed and thanks, korm. Brett is a great source of info and proofs-of-concept that are often surprisingly useful. (Plus he’s a fan of OpenMeta so that gives him an extra gold star for me. 8))

(Edited for OS X’s annoying auto-correction). Sorry, korm.)

3

I think there will be quite a few more Markdown junkies since Korm posted this tip in 2012. It would great if DEVONthink would add an official bookmarklet for saving webpages in Markdown formatted plain text. My own two-step process is to use the new app “Keep Everything” which saves a web archive and a clean (no ads) version structured in Markdown. It does a very good job of creating the Markdown page. The second step is to copy and past the Markdown text into DT. A one-step DEVONthink bookmarklet would be a great improvement.

4

@khw that’s a lot of steps. Check out Brett Terpstra’s bookmarklets. Install then click the readability -> markdown bookmarklet, click the “copy markdown” button that appears in the upper right corner of the rendered page and, with that text on the clipboard, make a new text document in DEVONthink – command-n.

5

Thanks Korm - yes, your process is fewer steps and much neater, but I was finding that it didn’t work reliably, whereas the Keep Everything app seems to do a much better job. Here is an example (ironically one of Brett Terpstra’s posts): goo.gl/vylC3O

The bookmarklet just generates for me the following, and nothing else:

In contrast, Keep Everything renders the whole page accurately