I used to be fond of DevonThink, but as I am increasingly using my iPad for reading, DevonThink Pro becomes less and less useful, to the point were I am considering alternatives.
The main problem is that it is very tiresome to get documents from the iPad into DevonThink. The problem is most urgent for Instapaper. All my troubles would be solved if DTTG would support the Instapaper app, but unfortunately this $15 app doesnât do so.
I know several ways to add papers I have read with Instapaper on the iPad and deemed worth saving to DevonThink, but they all are very tiresome.
One way is to transport the page from Instapaper to iCab Mobile, apply the readability service, save it as a webarchive to dropbox and import the file to DT Pro. I use Hazel to automate the latter step, but it remains very cumbersome.
Another way is from Instapaper to GoodReader to DTTG. Apart from its tiresomeness it has the disadvantage that I the page with which I end up in DevonThink is cluttered with irrelevant info, adds and links, instead of the neat pages I have on Instapaper.
A third way is to e-mail the page from Instapaper, open the mail in Apple Mail, copy it, switch to DT Pro and create a new document with the content of the clipboard. I have tried to automate this process with scripts and rules but that doesnât seem to work.
A fourth way is to send the url from Instapaper on the iPad to OmniFocus on the iPad, sync OmniFocus, click on the url in OmniFocus on my Mac, apply the readability service and save a PDF to DevonThink Pro. This is often the easiest way, but not what I want.
Itâs not DTTG that doesnât support Instapaper, itâs Instapaper that doesnât support DTTG - or anything other than the âShareâ destinations that Instapaperâs designers decided to interface with. Instapaper does not support the normal âOpen InâŚâ feature of iOS â it if did then it might be possible to interface directly to DTTG.
Perhaps the issue should be raised to Instapaperâs forum?
That said, given Instapaperâs current capabilities, it might be an efficient workflow to âShareâ from Instapaper to Evernote, and then use some of the standard Evernote/DEVONthink import scripts that Houthakker has posted here in the past.
Another option is to email the text to yourself, and import those emails to DEVONthink. (In fact, this is what Instapaper does with Evernote â it emails the article to Evernote, which imports it.)
A third option is to send from Instapaper to GoodReader, then open a WiFi connection in GoodReader and download everything to DEVONthink (create a bookmark in DEVONthink that opens GoodReaderâs Bonjour address - it will be an active connection whenever GoodReaderâs WiFi server is activate â then any document you click will be added to DEVONthinkâs download queue and you can download all of them at once.)
Thanks Korm for the response! The last two weeks I spent much time trying to write AppleScripts to import e-mails in DevonThink Pro, but as I said in my original post that seems not possible. Iâll try your first and third options in the future! I will also try my luck at the Instapaper forum.
In the mean time any suggestions remain welcome. I am a bit desparate
I subscribe to the RSS feed from my Instapaper account in DEVONthink Pro Office, so all of the articles that I save to Instapaper are automatically imported.
Iâve set up a folder âTo DTâ in Instapaper and subscribed to the RSS-feed of that folder in DT. When I want to keep a document after reading I move it to that folder, otherwise I delete it. Works nice.
Iâve also tried Kormâs suggestions but found them more cumbersome than my own OmniFocus way (the Evernote road has the additional disadvantage that it turns everything into HTML).
I am now trying to find a road from âMr. Readerâ on the iPad to DevonThink. I can send documents from Mr. Reader to the Instapaper âRead laterâ folder but that is inefficient as I have to handle it in Instapaper although I already read it and decided to keep it. I have not yet discovered a way to send urls from Mr. Reader to my âTo DTâ folder directly.
Abandon the Instapaper app on iPad and login to Instapaper in iPad Safari. If you have the DEVONthink to Bookmark bookmarklet among your bookmarks, then you can easily send a bookmark of the current page youâre viewing at the Instapaper site to DTTG. Later, sync to the desktop and convert these to PDFs or webarchives, or whatever. (Unfortunately, the other more functional bookmarklets ⌠like save to PDF ⌠donât work on iOS ⌠but see [3] below)
Login to the Instapaper site in DTTG itself (via a bookmark). Browse and collect new bookmarks for pages you want to keep, as with [1] above.
Login to the Instapaper site in ReadleDocs, PDFExpert, iAnnotate or GoodReader (a few among many options that are better at capturing browsed pages than DTTG). When you find a page you want, save it as a PDF in one of those apps. You can transfer these PDFs to DTTG, or just sync the app back to the desktop (method varies by app).
If youâre couch surfing and connected to your local network, use Printopia to print directly to the DEVONthink inbox (or wherever) on your desktop.
The last is my own favorite ⌠printing from Instapaper on the iPad results in very nicely formatted documents. The PDF-reader options in [3] can be useful if you want to annotate the thing you just saved as a PDF.
Unfortunately, Mr Reader doesnât offer any Print or Open In options, but one can send to Instapaper, FWIW
Mr. Reader Supports URL schemes, so all we need to know is the url scheme for DTTG2 (it seems that it has changed from DDTG1 - which is somewhat documented here in the forum - as I canât get it to work with the new version)