DTP & OmniOutliner

DEVONthink Tips
1

I want to use DTP (v. 1.1.1) to index OmniOutliner Pro files (v. 3.5). It doesn’t seem to want to do this? Or, do I just not understand what I’m doing? Any comments or help would be appreciated. BTW, I’ve suggestfully indexed other file types (Word and PDF files). Thanks, Leslie

2

DT Pro is not (yet) able to index proprietary file formats like the one of OmniOutliner. However, this might change in v2.

3

You can always export your OmniOutliner files:

  1. as RTF (or text, or HTML) file, so you have the OmniOutliner document as one RTF (text, HTML) document in DEVONthink.
  2. as OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) file, so headers in OmniOutliner will become groups in DEVONthink and notes in OmniOutliner will become documents in DEVONthink.
    Of course if you want to continue working with your files in OmniOutliner this is not much use :unamused:
    Louise.
4

Here’s another approach that fully represents the layout and content of your OmniOutliner documents – text also captured for searching and analysis – and provides a link to your original OO document.

While viewing a document in OmniOutliner (or any other application) set File > Page Setup as appropriate (page size, portrait or landscape).

Select File > Print and click on the PDF button. Choose the script Save to DEVONthink Pro.scpt" and then the group into which the document is to be saved.

Result in DT Pro 1.1.1: The PDF representation of the original file will be stored in the Files folder inside your DT Pro database. If you select this document in DT Pro, select the Actions toolbar button and select Launch URL, the original OO file will open under its parent application. Of course, if you modify and save that OO file, you can easily “print” the revised version into DT Pro. Either leave the previous version in DT Pro for historical reasons (version), or delete it.

Use for capturing “unknown” file types: This may be the best approach for those who use OO, Mellel and the like and who wish to be able to search and analyze the contents of their documents. Print as PDF has been available for a long time, but the addition of a link to the original file in the URL field of the Info panel now makes it even better.

As described, this is a 'one at a time" process rather than a batch procedure, although I suspect it could be scripted.

5

Thanks Bill,

This provides a relatively easy solution to a longstanding issue for me. Any chance that a similar solution might be scripted that linked to webarchives exported from OO and thus preserved the outlining features of dynamic html exports from OO? Just a thought.

6

Keep in mind that this doesn’t work for Mellel, as Christian pointed out to me in a post a while back, because Mellel doesn’t interact with the underlying applescript. Omni products do work, however.