From PDF/RTF links to Wiki-links

DEVONthink Tips
1

I want to use a Wiki editor but all my notes are in RTF with PDF links in it. I have two questions.

  1. Which Wiki-editor takes direct pasting from PDF/RTF links (Copy Page Link) or drag-and-drop?

  2. If there is none, is there any way to turn these DT links into Wiki links for Wiki editors that use brackets [[ ]]?

2
  1. You don’t mention what Wikis you’re thinking of using, so it’s not possible to give an exact answer. But here’s a few considerations
  • On Mac, a common Wiki is VoodooPad (now owned by Plausible). VoodooPad can import RTF files (with all links intact), or you can paste a DEVONthink page link (Copy Page Link from the contextual menu of a PDF) directly into a VoodooPad RTF document. VoodooPad pages are either RTF, Markdown, Plain Text, Images or Javascript/JS Talk – I recommend using RTF if you want easily-pasted links. I do not believe you can copy/paste the contents of an RTF file from DEVONthink into VoodooPad - but this is easy to test. Importing the RTF files seems the way to go.
  • On Windows, there’s ConnectedText. Standard DEVONthink links (“x-devonthink-item …”) do not work in ConnectedText – because neither Windows nor Parallels recognize URL schemes like DEVONthink. I’ve worked with this repeatedly on a Windows 8.1 installation of ConnectedText 6, running in a Parallels virtual machine on my Mac. There’s a way to work around this but I find it generally annoying and time consuming - and potentially unsafe because you need to link directly to the file inside the DEVONthink database package. Page links are not possible.
  • You might find this researcher’s thoughts interesting and helpful.
  1. Sure, a script is possible. But see the limitations, above.
3

I am looking into an option that allows me online and offline use. Dokuwiki seems a strong contender. VoodooPad would not be an option for me. ConnectedText is much better, but difficult to interface with DT links as you explained. It works offline as well.

I am not sure yet how I can link my RTF files into a Wiki, but DT links can be made to work as shown by the organognosi website you suggested. I have all my PDFs indexed in DT, none in packages. This was a precautionary step I took, so now I think the Wiki will be able to better “grab” it from my file system. From what I anticipate, I will have to stop working with DT links and transition to a Wiki altogether. After all, the strongest feature in DT is searching and matching results from your database. It’s not a link manager or editor like Wiki.

DT links work in Textedit, Scrivener, and OmniOutliner, which is useful. But I want to increase the level of productivity by transitioning to all-accessible platform for research and sharing.

4

Good. I was assuming (wrongly) your documents were stored inside the database rather than indexed. External documents work best with Wikis, IMO.

Yes. I never do note taking or composition of drafts or final work products with DEVONthink. Ever. Some people do and love it. (Bill DeVille will jump on here and tell me I’m all wet.) For me, the editing limitations of DEVONthink drive me to distraction and wasted hours.

5

@korm: You’re all wet. (Jumping in for Bill) :mrgreen:

Actually, I do almost all my writing in DEVONthink nowadays. I will occasionally use TextEdit but I write daily in RTF files (gasp) in DEVONthink. But as korm points out, YMMV. The nature of what I am writing about and for may make this easier than some other uses may. Cheers! :smiley:

6

For a good while I used RTF for all my notes in a separate database. That served me well, but now it has become unpractical. For my goals of note taking I hit a brick wall like Korm, he knows what I am talking about. From what I am experiencing, the power of a Wiki editor is matchless, which makes a nice complement to DT.

7

@ korm: No, I won’t jump on you, or even kick you. :slight_smile:

I do my note-taking and drafting within DEVONthink because my information resources are at my fingertips in that environment. For example, I can select some of my deathless prose that explores a concept, Control-click and use See Related Text to see what others may have written about the topic. Sometimes that leaves me satisfied with my exposition. Often, I’ll find that I’ve still got some work to do, and the exercise has led me towards ways of improving my draft. Yes, I could do something similar if I were writing my draft outside DEVONthink, but it would take more time and effort. By drafting within the database that holds my information resources, I can open suggestions produced by See Related Text as new tabs to my draft, explore them and jump back and forth among the tabbed documents without losing scrolling position in any of them.

Editing those rich text drafts? No, I agree with you that rich text inside DEVONthink doesn’t cut it. I’ll copy/paste chunks of my drafts into Pages for editing and polishing. Why Pages? Copy/paste of a chunk of draft that includes images such as graphs is easy to do into Pages, and hair-pulling in MS Word. Where footnotes or endnotes will appear in the final version, I’ve included the necessary information in the rich text draft.

8

Maybe it’s the CRIMPer in me, but interfacing ConnectedText with DEVONthink better would be a great result, IMO – both CT and DT are wonderful products and would enjoy playing well with one another. :slight_smile: I’ve intended to take a look at doing something about that – hello, Python …