Hi folks, what kind of integration/workflow it is actually possible between DevonThinkPro, Bookends and Scrivener, and Mellel?
Can you share your experiences?
Thank you very much !
I can speak to most of your question:
- I use DevonThink Pro to capture all research for book projects, nonfiction articles, and short fiction. I use the AI capability to refine research results and grouping, and to establish connections.
- I then export research that has made it through that first culling (which basically means that I’ve decided it is relevant to the book/article/story outline) to Scrivener so that it is easily accessible while I write the initial draft and later revise.
(Note: I also annotate some of the research with notes to let me know that, should I decide to go more in depth on some specific point, additional related information is available in my DT Pro database.) - Once I’ve completed final revisions, I export it to Nissus Writer Pro (I know, you mentioned Mellel, but there are a lot of similarities) for final formatting, refinement of tables (if it’s that type of work), etc.
- Sorry, but I don’t use Bookends so I can’t comment on that.
Hope some of this is of interest and/or help.
I too do not use Bookends, so I cannot comment on that.
However I implement a similar workflow than the previous poster. First I gather everything relevant in DTPO in a sub-group of the project (“reference material” … mostly replicas). Once the “research” (in my case that is searching through all documentation and 5+ years of emails) is done, I export the folder/group into Scrivener.
I know that I could also write in DTPO, but the Scrivener is much more powerful when it comes to the writing workflow. That is, since I am most productive if I write completely out of order and unstructured. I just write down many little pieces (one or two paragraphs) until I have a collection that represents about 90% of the final content. Then I take a good long look and start to bring those pieces in order, writing “glue” to make them a whole.
The resulting drafts are then exported as RTF and formated in Word (not my choice, but required / official internal format for storage) and finally printed into PDF.
If you work like that, you really do not want to change even a comma in Word. Do every change in Scrivener and export / copy & paste it into Word. Otherwise you end up with an unmaintainable mess.
I realize that the abilities of DTPO are very close to Scrivener. The reason I use Scrivener is the feature that let’s me very easily compile drafts out of my pieces.
The resulting PDF is of course imported into DTPO and the Scrivener package also lives inside the database.
/Sven
BTW: Both DTPO and Scrivener have a fullscreen writing mode. A feature that seriously increases my productivity since I am distracted very easily.
See my comment at this address on workflow using DTPO, BE, Scriv and favorite word processor.
http://www.devon-technologies.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4945&highlight=
-bob
I only can comment on DTP and Mellel.
I do all my “thinking” in DTP with all sort of character notes, places, maps, story lines etc and do the writing in Mellel. So far nothing special. Regularly I export my text from Mellel as OPML and import into DTP. That gives me a whole structured version of the text (if I use Auto-Titels within Mellel), each scene a document each chapter a group. So I can search my text with DTP’s excellent and fast search. Search for two names and you get all scenes where these characters meet. Search for an event and you get all text passages related to it alongside all your notes about it. That’s great. Unfortunately Mellel ist not jet scriptable so I have to do the export/import manually.
I heard that the developers are working on Mellel support within DTP. I am looking forward to it. May I be so bold wo bring up two revolutionary thoughts? First: it would be great for my workflow if I could get a structured view of a Mellel-document within DTP (like I get now with the OPML export/import). Second: (fasten your seatbelt) It would be even greater, if DTP could use the Mellel text engine and palettes as an alternative to the cocoa text engine.
Yes I know that is beyond possibilities, but a nice dream.
I would like to do my writing in DTP as well. The main reason for not doing it, is that there is now decent style handling within DTP (the emphasis is on decent here 
The cocoa text engine is not made for serious formatting work.
Johannes