Contextual menu RTF capture loses URL?

I prefer to capture material from the web as RTF documents in DTPro using the contextual menu command “Save to DevonThink.” However, I have noticed that this method doesn’t always bring the URL of the web page along with the captured text. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t.

It seems to me the behavior is happening in DTPro and doesn’t have to do with the particular website being captured from. What I mean by that is that if I return to a website where I previously had clipped material that arrived without a URL, and re-clip it, it will arrive with the URL the second time around.

By “with the URL” I mean that the URL appears in the Inspector as well as in the header bar of the viewing pane when the document is viewed in DTPro.

I have not tested extensively with RTF capture via dragging to the Sorter or the Services menu command (those are not my preferred methods) so I don’t know whether the problem occurs with those methods as well.

Is this a bug? If not, might someone tell me what I’m doing wrong or direct me to previous comments addressing this question?

Thank you.

If you wish to capture rich text of the selected area of a Web page (viewed in Safari, DEVONagent or DEVONthink’s browser), the correct contextual menu option would be under the Services submenu, ‘Take Rich Note (DEVONthink Pro Office)’. The source URL will be captured into the document’s Info panel.

This is equivalent to dragging the selected text/images to the DEVONthink Dock icon, or into a database view window, the Sorter, or Groups & Tags.

But it’s faster to select text/images and press ‘Command-)’ to capture the selected material as rich text to DEVONthink. If you have set Preferences > Import - Destination to ‘Select group’, a HUD will display to choose the desired destination.

Note: Rich text cannot be captured via Firefox or Chrome, as neither understands the rich text Service.

Thank you for your response, Bill.

I’m sorry, on re-reading, I wasn’t really clear. By “contextual menu,” I meant the menu that appears when I select text and right-click.

Instead of “Inspector,” I should have said Info panel.

When I drag a text selection to the DevonThinkPro dock icon, it is imported as a web archive, not as an RTF.

I prefer not to have the Sorter or Groups window always open, because I work on a small screen and find that they tend to get in my way.

Calling the Services menu using Command-) is certainly an option; however, it is overridden in an application that I use quite often by another menu item. Yes, I can change the shortcut, but, out of inertia, I have not, because the right-click contextual menu option was available and did what I wanted.

These are the reasons, in other words, why until now I have preferred to use the contextual menu that appears on right-clicking when capturing rich text.

So, my question is really about why the right-click contextual menu option doesn’t always capture the URL along with rich text.

May I ask the following? Is the right-click contextual menu option the same as the Services submenu option, but only accessed in a different way? If it is, then I think that the problem of losing URLs would not be solved by using the Services submenu.

If the right-click contextual menu option is not the same as the Services submenu option, is the former working as expected? Is there a reason that it sometimes captures URLs, sometimes not? As I’ve said, I find it very convenient and would like to be able to use it.

Edit: I might also add that I have not tested the other rich text capture methods enough to know whether they also sometimes lose URLs. In other words, it might be a more general problem than the one I framed in the original post. I wanted to be specific, but maybe that wasn’t actually helpful.

Which version of Mac OS X do you use? DEVONthink installs its contextual menu item only on 10.5.x as these plugins are deprecated by Apple since Snow Leopard.