How do you take notes?

DEVONthink Tips
1

[I’d posted this in Usage Scenarios, but didn’t get many replies. Since pretty much everyone using DT/DN takes notes, I’m trying again…]

When you’re capturing clippings from web pages, papers, thoughts: What’s the best way to organize them? They don’t have “titles” per se; they’re free-form text.

I want to be able to see them all in a list, but I also want to take advantage of hyperlinks, styles, etc. at some point. Louise posted a script that will automatically set the title to equal the text; that’s one way. Is there a better one?

2

My clippings always start with a title or subtitle and therefore the Take Rich/Plain Note services use this as the name for the clipping. No extra step required to name them.

The only extra step is that I’m removing attachments & reformat rich text (via WordService’s Reformat service).

3

Is that a function of the type of sites you visit, or your workflow? For example, if you were me, and wanted to clip your answer to save it for later… how would you go about doing that?

My instinct was to select your post in Firefox, Command-C to copy to the clipboard, switch to DEVONthink, and press Command-N to create a new note from clipboard. That gives me a single flat text string; if I clip it right, I can capture the title of the thread, but it’s not in a separate field or anything on the clipboard.

(I also tried doing it through Services instead, but all the DEVONthink Pro services are greyed out.

4

I would select my last post beginning with “Re: How do you take notes?”.

Firefox is a poor Mac OS X citizen and doesn’t support services well.

5

I create a new reference in Sente for the article, copy the formated citation, and paste it in DT as the note title.

6

Ah, I see what you mean! When I use Services from Safari, it nicely separates the “Re: How do you take notes?” from the body of the text. Even the clipboard method works with Safari. Firefox must put some junk on the clipboard that confuses DEVONthink.

Do you know what it is that Firefox does wrong with the clipboard? I could open a bug; I’m starting to play with Firefox development, so I might end up fixing it in a year or two.

Interesting. I’m starting to think that I am one of the few people using DEVONthink for non-academic notetaking. I don’t need formal citations; I just need as much “context” as I can, so I can find the source later and see what I was thinking when I read it.