DEVONthink for Notes

Please review the two attachments and share

your valued thoughts. Thank you!

Again? This topic has been discussed ad nauseam here, imo.

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I am sorry, but thank you for responding.

No worries! Your question is okay to ask. And sometimes, it can be easier to start afresh.
What are you doing now?

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This has actually been discussed quite often. But this applies to many topics, so no need to apologize. It also happens quite often that someone comments that they don’t want to comment. Which leads to the question of why someone would go to this effort if it’s not about offending others.

On to the actual topic: Why you shouldn’t create notes in DT is a mystery to me. Conversely, I understand very well why you wouldn’t want to save other documents in Obsidian :slightly_smiling_face:

If I had to decide… wait, I did have to decide, and I chose DT for everything. I have never regretted my decision.

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Given that Markdown and RTF are wonderful but not exactly desktop publishing, I don’t mind Devonthink’s built in editor at all. It’s great for transclusion, which I like, and turning on the Inspector in separate edit windows is really cool.

I’ve used Obsidian. It’s nice. I don’t know there’s anything I can get out of Obsidian that I can’t get out of Devonthink, tagging, smart groups, and custom metadata. It would be nice if custom metadata could be local to a Devonthink database, not global.

New and shiny things will always get my attention. In terms of practicality, I come back to DT when I stray.

The fact it’s about as reliable as gravity plays a role in my thinking, too.

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I use Obsidian for note-taking and have previously used Logseq as an outliner. I index both of these tools in DEVONthink. Although everything is saved in DEVONthink, the workflow still feels a bit cumbersome. My aim is to transition to using DEVONthink as my primary platform for all my notes and information management. One tool! After reading FrankT’s post on this topic, I’ve decided to make the transition to using DEVONthink as my main note-taking and information management platform.

I personally want to thank everything for their valued thoughts on this topic. Have a great week.

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Having everything in one place is exactly why I chose DT.

Can you explain that in more detail? I have become an “expert” at overcoming such problems :joy:

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The cumbersome part is having to index Obsidian and Logseq notes into DEVONthink, rather than creating and managing them directly within DEVONthink from the start.

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Okay, at least this problem seems easy to solve :slight_smile:

You’ll probably encounter others. If you’ve worked with other apps for a long time, there’s always something that DT does differently. Then it’s a matter of finding a way that’s as close as possible to the workflow of the other app.

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Is this a comment on Note Taking, or Note Storage/Organization?

In my opinion, Devonthink is a great tool for note storage/organization
As to note taking, Devonthink has integrated editor/formats, and external editors are supported

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Yes, but it’s the simple little things/differences compared to other apps that can drive you to madness.

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99% of my notes are generated in DT. For probably two years at least I have tried to maintain a Daily Note indexed from Obsidian into DT, but the habit has never stuck. This is probably because I also keep an Activity Log for all my Projects so maintaining the daily note is extra work. I have a smart group that gathers all those activity logs I hit in the last 48 hours to see what I did. Maybe I can figure out a way to automatically transclude those for the overall daily view… not sure if that’s possible though, as I have not played with transclusion enough.

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Could you please share with me the setup for the “smart group”?

I am not near my computer but the settings are something like:

Kind: markdown

Name: contains 2 - Activity Log (every file has this with a client name at the end to differentiate)

And then modified is last 48 hours (or 2 days or whatever it is in the settings)

I can give exact settings when back home.

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Greatly appreciated!

No problem.

I use both Obsidian and DT synergistically, probably because I’m expert in neither, but there are strengths of each that I prefer and they work very well together. Yes there is some overlap functionally but there are also complementary aspects. I could choose to focus only on one, but right now I don’t have any issues with using either as needed. Currently, I prefer note taking and linking in Obsidian. I use Dataview and Bases quite a bit there as well. In DT, I use the AI and some scripting which assists my overall workflow as well as all the document management. I can search, edit, create in either.

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This is probably because I also keep an Activity Log for all my Projects so maintaining the daily note is extra work. I have a smart group that gathers all those activity logs I hit in the last 48 hours to see what I did. Maybe I can figure out a way to automatically transclude those for the overall daily view… not sure if that’s possible though, as I have not played with transclusion enough.

Interesting! I’m replying relative to the daily note/activity log thoughts you have rather than Obsidian/DT here as I use both together. I use the “Today” note in Obsidian for my inbox, that is mostly dictated, and to keep track of where an idea originated and initiate actions. When actions are created, they link back to that today note. I don’t have activity logs for my projects but have kanbans for them (also in obsidian) which I guess is perhaps akin to an activity log? I index the Obsidian vault with DT and was just thinking about using DT to parse out the today note items into the individual Kanbans for me via DT scripts. I was thinking of just flagging each of my dictated items with a tag, as I create them, that the DT AI/script/rule could then parse out and put in the proper kanban. I already use the DT AI to clean up my dictation so I thought it might be straightforward to do, although I’m not very good with scripts and smart rules. I also already have an overall Obsidian note that looks across all of the Kanbans to give me that overall look across projects which I think is similar to your overall daily view?

Yours sounds far more complex than mine. Haha. My smart group literally just pulls together the MD files. I’m proficient enough creating those but very much a scripting novice, as I have never set aside time to actually learn it. I’d like to eventually, as I’m sure I could come up with useful ways to employ them! The activity logs are just so I can scan dates and remember real quick when something happened. Actual project/task management happens in omnifocus.

Figuring out a way to pull together specific date entries across activity logs would be useful. Though I don’t know how feasible that is at this point.

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