Hi,
I am not so happy with the devonthink widget -
can you get rid of the background, or make it customizable
is there any way for me to somehow synchronize my information. after i press the take note button, my text is transported to the devonthink database - but how do i get it back? what if I want to add to it?
can you make the widget resizeable?
more fonts please
The widget is intended only as a quickly available means of entering a small note into DT Pro. Any further editing or formatting should be done in DT Pro.
to me, having a widget serve as a conduit is a necessary feature. if I need to enter a quicknote, it is much easier to go into the dashboard then it is to load your program. that said, I do need a few more features, and I don’t think I am asking too much. If you are not willing to do this, i will take my business elsewhere.
If you have the Services menu installed, you may add a note to any Devon product (Note, Think, Think Pro) by this method:
Select the field you want to copy.
Select Services: and the Devon product
Select either Append or Take, Plain or Rich as you wish.
The same method works for any copy you type into TextEdit.
This will open the Devon software, but you may park it on the Dock when not in active use.
The Services software is a free download from the Devon home site.
Good comment, Howarth.
The Services features to copy selected plain or rich text, e.g. from TextEdit to DT Pro are automatically available in Cocoa applications.
And of course that technique provides far more control (fonts, formatting) than does the little widget. I’ll confess that I hardly ever use widgets and keep very few of them open. Keeping rarely used widgets open merely steals RAM (and perhaps CPU cycles) from more productive uses.
Yeah, I have a system-wide keyboard shortcut for the services option if I want to use it. And of course there’s the handy dandy groups panel that you can have minimized at the bottom (or wherever) on your screen, and that you can maximize and then drag and drop something wherever you want it.
Also, there is a little program called Sidenote that is great for taking notes and then getting itself out of the way. You can use the above methods for dragging it or copying it into DT. I have it set up so that my entire Sidenote collection of notes is automatically synced in DT—a system that others on this forum helped me set up. It’s extremely cool, and there is not even any copying or dragging involved with this method. And I have a pop-out window that is there for any notes I want to take, which I can append, etc.
All kinds of nifty options for getting things into DT Pro without having to make it active (i.e., it can stay in the background). The widget is just a little quickie way to get something into DT. If you want more than that, there are several ways to do it that are quite effective and useful.
I agree with you, Bill, about the widgets. I have one widget active and that’s it. They eat up too much CPU time and mostly RAM. Even with my 1.25 mgs of ram, I need every bit of it!
Alexandria
Hi, Alexandria:
You have 1.25 milligrams of RAM? How did you weigh it? 
Very funny, Bill. I knew I was leaving off the ‘e’ in ‘megs’ but I was, er, tired after all that intense writing for my dissertation. 
Alexandria
vgoklani: As an obcessive-compulsive note-taker, I’ve been dealing with this problem for decades, ever since I started using computers that didn’t require punched cards . Like you and Bill and Alexandra, I’m not wild about the widgets. I prefer to keep DEVONthink Pro application open or, when not needed, hidden via cmd-h. Here is how I manage note-taking:
I prefer the Three Panes view. I have all my saved web-pages and topical files hidden in sub-groups. New information found on the web or via email, is saved by selecting the text and using the Services option “Take Rich Note”; I have DT’s Preference>Import options set to save those rich-text notes to a folder called *New.
At the top level of the DT database I keep replicates of the *PIM files that I frequently consult or add short “notes to myself” (diary, expenses, todo, etc.) At the bottom of each of those files I have a table of links to old diaries stored elsewhere in the database.
So, in my scheme of things with the three-pane view, you see
on the left my collection of subject groups.
in the file-listing pane at the top of the window, there’s the list of the files that I add notes to; all I have to do is click on the file name (diary, expenses, todo), insert the cursor in the text pane below and start typing which is faster than a widget.
The only problem I have with the scheme is maintaining the focus on the top level. This can be gotten around by clicking in the blank area below the subject folders or by the practice of opening groups in new windows. Even if I change the view or lose focus, these replicated files are easy to spot because their names are automatically highlighted in red.