Korm, thanks for caring to share your workflow around DT and drawing a diagram.
The first thing your diagram makes me think is of my own user experience with DEVONthink. I grew frustrated with it until I realised it is a sort of backend for files that I should process with specialised apps, as your diagram shows. This seems obvious, but it wasn’t to me at the beginning. Now I am satisfied with DT, and happy to use its additional features to process files when I don’t use other apps.
If I interpret correctly your diagram, you index as external to DT only the files of Ulysses and mind mapping apps. If this is so, it escapes to me why.
I also understand that you place files created with MindManager in DT, but I don’t understand how they can be linked to Windows OS -I take it is not with DT hyperlinks.
I’ve had a closer look at Curio after this post of yours. I take it that, unless you are indexing external files to DT, you probably are connecting via DEVONthink Pro Office server to Curio for searches. I haven’t tested how this works, but I do wonder if you are entering all tags anew, since Curio doesn’t seem to import DT / Apple tags -as a side note, neither have I managed to transfer DT / Apple tags into Scrivener’s keywords.
Curio is certainly more interesting than I had previously thought. But I am too concerned about the functional preservation, duplication and size of its files. My quick run of the app has given me the idea to test for project management a combination of two apps I already have: Scrivener and Aeon Timeline. They won’t offer the freer board placement of Curio, but crucially rtf is better for work preservation than exporting to plain pdf. These two apps integrate extremely well, though they can’t be open at the same time. Aeon is richly featured and Scrivener is no less, with cork board card and outline views, split window, templates, saved searches (collections), revision snapshots, notes for each document, viewing of many file types in the Research folder, syncing of Draft files to an external folder indexable by DT, good export options, access in iOS…
Regarding Scrivener, I don’t get how you link documents in DT to it. I wonder if it is putting their file location links or their hyperlinks in Scrivener’s Document references (in the Inspect panel on the right), instead of importing documents from DT to Scrivener’s Research folder (in the Binder on the right panel), where they can be better worked with in Scrivener.
As for Ulysses, I understand from your diagram that its files are indexed in DT. Since Ulysses stores its files in its own database -the main reason why I don’t use this app-, I take it they are external files, with which Ulysses can work albeit with crippled features. I used iA Writer, but nowadays I use more and more Typora. It writes individual files manageable with DT, it has an outline side panel, live preview and supports tables, diagrams, flowcharts, LaTeX cells…, and it can export to html, opml, LaTeX…
As for Tinderbox, I have several problems with it. First of all, its user-unfriendliness and rather poor visual presentation of information -the latter being important for information management. I tested it enough to grasp a fair number of configurations, yet I am puzzled at the trouble its users put up with to achieve basic functions such as export to html or the arcane steps presented by its most prominent users in order to achieve functions that to me seem pointless with regards to the management of information, and again visually poor. What I most dislike is not being able to view graphically all the connections to a topic without further ado, if they are not of the same hierarchy. Also, I think its hierarchisation of topics serves a different purpose to that of mind maps, what will curtail exports from apps such as MarginNoteX and iThoughtsX. Yet, for Tinderbox I guess I could do with an already optimised file and tools to use it with DT, since I suspect my initial assessment might be wrong.
I just wish I could use ConnectedText but, as much as I regret it, having my notes in Windows unlinked with my files in DT for Mac is not an option.
As for mind mapping, text in iThoughtsX mind maps is not indexed by DT. NovaMind’s is, and this app includes an outline view of its mind maps, although no preview with QuickLook. Nowadays, I prefer iThoughtsX for various reasons.
For outlining, I have NeO and OutlineEdit. Unlike OmniOutliner, NeO files can be both viewed and searched in DT.
Last but not least, MarginNoteX. I wish it could export to a format understandable by other pdf editors, so that I could limit my worries about work preservation. But there is rather a lot to like about it. The killer feature for me being the ability to hyperlink to its highlights. I am yet to find a way to automatically paste its annotations with hyperlinks into iThoughtsX and TinderBox. I also wonder if its #tags can be converted into Apple / DT tags.
By the way, I have an issue with the rendering of letters of your script. I get: “multilingüe - anotación sintáctica”, where DT’s Create Table of Contents correctly renders “multilingüe - anotación sintáctica”
This is not much of an issue, because I can just follow the manual procedure you have explained in this post. I still think it would be much more user-friendly of DT to come up with modifier keys like Command-drag several files for hyperlinks, Option-drag for alias…