The system that “works” is the one that is best. We can all spend to much time fussing with tech. I use DTPO to hold research and sift w/ seaching features… great for taking stuff from the web.
Use BE… love it. I have it hold all the journal articles I have referenced. Then index the BE attachment folder in DTPO so all articles are serchable.
Use Skim to read, note and mark my PDFs with out being destructive. Notes can be exported to rtf file. If PDF does not have meta-data (text layer) can use OCR in DTPO. The work flow on this is slow but it works. You end up with duplicate files and you must export back into BE the OCRd file. Fortunately most PDFs I use have text layer already. If making your PDF files serarchable is important DTPO handles that as good as anything I know about… OCRd PDFs can also make taking notes w/ Skim a little easier since you can copy the quotes you need… but won’t change the way you write and take notes on the PDF itself.
I write in Scrivener… very good. Good for taking book notes, Dump material found in DTPO into Scrivener… Skim notes… even my QT files in need for transcription… put them all in Scrivener and write. Split screen is great for referencing notes, articles etc as you write. VERY easy to organize and reorganize in Scrivener. Finish draft and export to word processor for final clean up. You can materials can be re-exported back to DTPO if you want your notes searchable and part of the database. That may not be necessary since most of your materials were pulled from DTPO and BE… just your final draft and any book notes you took in Scrivener. The web link for Scrivener is: literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html
I gave up Mellel (as nice as it is)… stick to Word. I have to trade final files with others and it was a hassel. My students hand in their work in Word… learning another WP wasn’t worth it.
I do not use footnotes but they have directions for export w/ footnotes. I only use APA in text citations. You can try for 28 days. It exports to Word just as you tell it to… like I said, there are instructions for footnotes.
footnote export works fine, import does not. Which hurts, if you want to recycle old thoughts. For straight one-way-workflows (Scrivener to Layout prog./Word), I really like scrivener and recently bought it.
For recycling old thoughts, I go back to the original Scrivener project, from which it is very easy to break out chunks and copy them around to new places. (In fact, this is one of the major attractions of Scrivener for me.) My final deliverables are in Word because that’s what my clients mostly want, but I do essentially all the work in Scrivener.
ObDTP comment: And yes, I’ve found that DTP and Scrivener complement each other very well. DTP is the massive reference data repository, while Scrivener collects materials by project.
I wish I had your discipline sigh. I do most of my writing work in scrivener, too, but even if I import something in word just to change the layout, I end up with unexpected proofreading, changing footnotes, changing sentences… Especially the footnotes in the final word versions are always a great deal more polished than the scrivener versions, and there is no way to get them back
UPDATE: All is well now, the “footnote-bug” in scrivener no longer exists. since version 1.1., imported word footnotes appear inline in scrivener. For academic use, the workflow between the DTPO, Bookends, Scrivener and Mellel/Word now works well.
Great discussion. Thank you. Let me expand it a bit. Can we go into output territory" I’d like your recommendation on software that fits the mix under discussion. Here’s what I need to do:
I would like to create my own Index for a biography I am writing. The contract calls for a professional “indexer,” but in this instance, I believe my knowledge of the material trumps a professional indexer. However, I am a humble person and indexing can be difficult.
Question: Any suggestions for the best indexing software?
Final copy will be produced in MS Word running on a MacBook Pro.
Great discussion. Thank you. Let me expand it a bit. Can we go into output territory, the final document? I’d like your recommendation on software that fits the mix under discussion. Here’s what I need to do:
I would like to create my own Index for a biography I am writing. The contract calls for a professional “indexer,” but in this instance, I believe my knowledge of the material trumps a professional indexer. However, I am a humble person and indexing can be difficult.
Question: Any suggestions for the best indexing software?
Final copy will be produced in MS Word running on a MacBook Pro.
I am interested in whether there was ever an answer regarding the best indexing software for these purposes. Any thoughts? Or do Nissus, Mellel, etc., indexing features match any indexing software out there?
I have found it interesting to see how different users are integrating various tools with DTP. I am about to begin writing a review article for a science journal and I am itching to try something different than straight ahead MS Word. I will purchase either Bookends or Sente. I am leaning toward Bookends because of the builtin server and the ability to map references to existing PDFs (I already have hundreds of journal articles as PDFs).
I typically see Scrivener or Mellel as the popular alternatives to Word.
But what about OmniOutliner? Is anyone using it their work flow? I already own the software, so it makes sense for me to try it. On the surface, the OO features that seem attractive to me:
Outlining features for reorganizing snippets, paragraphs, sections.
Columns to hold metadata, e.g., a reference code from Sente or Bookends.
Highly scriptable
Various export options, including XSLT transformation
On the other hand, I worry that I’m making this more complicated than necessary.
I take notes in DTP, outline and draft in Scrivener, and manage references in EndNote. For output I recently switched from Word '04 to Pages '08. It will export in .DOC or PDF, and in PDF, all web links are live. I tried Word '08 for one day and threw it out: too slow and bloated. OmniOutliner is fine, but for me Scrivener best handles the outlining task. This way I use at most four applications and that’s enough. For small writing tasks, I prefer Bean.
Hey, I just got rid of all the BE/DT sync problems, by getting rid of Bookends. I migrated my references to Zotero, which is more than enough for my simple bibliographic needs. After dumping the complete BE attachment folder into DT and deleting the dublicates, I found that my research process has just become faster: PDFs and longer notes go into DT, tagging is done inside Zotero. The main timesaver here is zoteros auto-import-function, so I do not have to switch between my browser and 20 empty fields anymore. Now I am prepared for the new version …
Maak: So does that mean you’re using Firefox rather than Safari? Personally I prefer Firefox as a browser, but it doesn’t play with DTP as well as Safari does (e.g., unreliable URL import, unless I’ve missed something). And I don’t like using two browsers – too much work. So I’ve stuck with Safari … with the result that I don’t keep any biblio citations at all! Doubtless I’ll regret it later …
I only use Firefox when I research bibliographies (“work” mode) and safari for all the rest (email, forum, internet). clicking the firefox icon costs the same time like clicking on the BE icon, but I prefer zoteros browser when I look up references, because it lives in a ‘real’ browser.There is also some sort of pdf viewer plugin available. The main advantage is that Zotero knows when I see a reference in a library database, and it is just one click to import it. This is definitely faster than BE’s slow “internet search” for references.
When I come across a pdf attachment, DT import works the same as in Safari (print dialog). I seldom keep my URLs in zotero, so I use safari for web capture. In the few cases where I want to attach an URL to a reference in Zotero, I just copy and paste the URL into firefox. Other than that, the workflow is straightforward: Capture ideas, thoughts and PDFs in DT, keep a separate, tagged bibliograpic database in Zotero. When I write something I mostly switch between Scrivener and DT for the research material, for the quotes I briefly switch to zotero to drag a reference into the text.