I believe - subject to Jim’s confirmation - that we have an answer.
I used to use TextEdit for almost all my notes (BBEdit for coding, Pages for DTP etc); but the constant instability (of this latest version) means I have to rethink that. If you don’t get such crashes, you’ll be OK, I’m sure. But it might be wise to keep in the back of your mind that there are sturdier options. Good luck!
Actually, it should still be available in DEVONthink but I am out to dinner so I can’t post more in-depth at the moment.
Bon appetit!
OK, I figured out how to introduce my own bullets. WRT the screenshot above:
Then, DT will show the new bullets as options. And I am able to use them as bullets, including nested ones.
HOWEVER – they start disappearing from the dropdown of options after a few usages of bulleting, and after a restart of DT they are entirely gone.
Would anyone (such as @BLUEFROG or @cgrunenberg ) be able and kindly willing to offer guidance on how to make these “stick” in DT? Thanks in advance.
Update on this, for anyone who cares. Making bulleted lists is a key part of my note-making workflow, and pretty much my main activity in OneNote, intended to be replicated in DT.
At least for now, I’ve given up on trying to get better bulleting in DT via RTF, and have switched to markdown.
@dayknito - certainly Jim and/or Christian will be the ultimate authority here.
In the meantime, may I offer some thoughts:
.Good luck!
@mksBelper – thanks so much for taking the troubel to respond!
Sure, I did realize that, and was certainly able to create and work with bulleted lists in RTF.
That’s a good question, and made me think. So I went back to the RTF files in which I was trying bullets, and examined and played with them again.
I can now identify what I don’t like about the experience of working with bulleted, heavily nested lists in RTF – and here of course, is a list – I seem to think in lists 
The default ‘-’ that DT/RTF puts in as a bullet is too bland for my tastes – creates insufficient visual distinction (for my tastes) between list items, as well as between different levels of indentation
I found that constantly going up to the menu dropdowns to try and add variety to the bullets between levels of indentation was getting exhausting and seriously interrupting my thinking. I hadn’t recognized this element of what was bothering/affecting me, so thanks for making me think.
[I’m coming from OneNote, where once I selected a bullet style from the dropdown, the style was maintained without effort from me, across any number of levels of indentation – and with automatic, helpful, distinguishing variaiton across levels of indentation.]
Continuing to be more comfortable with markdown, after using for a couple of hours…
Thanks again for your help and input!
My pleasure: glad it helps .
Yes. I hear you. Definitely. If you use (and think in/with 
) lists, it’s going to be a few seconds and two operations. Completely understand; I must have just got used to it.
Obsidian (and - as you say - other Markdown-based software) will definitely help here. For unnumbered lists you just use the hyphen and for numbered '1. ’ in situ. It becomes automatic after a while. What’s more Obsidian’s multiple level of indentation actually works while TextEdit’s routinely fails. (I feel bad criticising a native Apple app so heavily - I always use the built in (Mail, Photos, Pages, Numbers, Safari etc) when I can.)
It also seems (haven’t looked closely) as though custom bullets in Obsidian is easy .
Yes. Please forgive me if you already know, but DT 3.7 significantly increased its support for Markdown.
Any time, @dayknito! Good luck.
@mksBelper – thanks so much once again.
One question: In my investigations of DT in the last few days, I have frequently seen mention of the use of external editors (e.g., TextEdit for RTF; Obsidian for markdown). I have found myself wondering about why the use of an external editor is worth the tradeoff of added complexity – additional windows to juggle; moving away from an all-in-one software experience. Now, my text editing needs are simple – lists all the way down – so perhaps it’s simply that my use case doesn’t benefit much from an external editor. I suppose I’d have to try it to really know.
But do you have any thoughts on this? (benefits of using an external editor)?
I have only started using DT in the last two days (and markdown of any kind in the last 2 hours!), so DT 3.7 is all I know, and I hadn’t realized that it incorporates substantially greater markdown support. This greater support may well be contributing to my feeling little need for an external editor…
@pete31 – thank you very much for this! I had not come across this in my searches about customization of RTF styles. It’s good to know that shortcuts would probably improve my RTF bulleting experience considerably.
I understand what you’re saying
I too am new to DT (a month or so). But I see this question slightly differently. I see DT as a repository for all manner of date and files (from web bookmarks to text to PDFs, images and database files).
Because the majority of such applications have their own filetypes and are launched according to the way macOS ‘knows’ about, say, a PDF; and can be instructed to launch, say, either Preview or Acrobat (etc) when double-clicked on, DT can’t handle every conceivable filetype and its associated environment.
Yet DT can store all such files. So it hands the job of working in, say, a Pages file to… Pages.
Because DT makes such an excellent job of seamlessly supporting work in most Mac file formats it may appear to users who come to it (DT) anew as though it ought to provide more of an all-in-one experience than it is designed to, and - I believe - than it really should.
Organising, searching, categorizing and corralling (such) files is DT’s primary job.
I too wrestled with what to Import, Index and leave untouched by DT when I first came to use it.
I spent time thinking and testing. In the end I believe I’ve got it about right.
I’d have thought that your process might benefit from being as follows:
Just to throw in a wrench/spanner, are you familiar with OmniOutliner
Please do keep coming back here. You’ll get all the support you need, I believe !
@mksBelper – thanks for the continued discussion and input.
Sorry if I’m misunderstanding/mischaracterizing, but I interpret your comments as follows:
You are pointing out that the core functionality of DT is file and data management [acting as a database of data items, perhaps…?]. It is explicitly not aimed at document creation.
Now of course there are a lot of different outputs (“documents”) that people might want to generate from the contents of their data: a report of some kind; financial accounting documents; a thesis; a family tree…
While DT can support such activities by keeping the underlying data organized, DT neither can nor should attempt to provide the means for the varying information processing flows that these varying outputs require.
Therefore, the best way for soemone to take advantage of DT’s data management capabilities is by using it in conjunction with the most appropriate tool for the specific output that they want to generate from their data.
Is this reasonably consistent with what you meant?
If so: I have been aware of (1) above as I’ve investigated DT, but hadn’t really thought about how (2)-(4) follow from that. So, this is helpful for me to think through (assuming I’m not completely misunderstanding you).
My use case is primarily to make structured notes. I find that I need these, in order to keep on top of “stuff” [professional notes; notes on my digital work flows; notes on hardware and software setup for various devices that I maintain and manage; notes on personal healthcare information.] I don’t want to keep track of innumerable files with these notes, so I need an interface that puts all of this information into one UI. And I need to be able to continuously sync this information between computers, and with client-side encryption.
I’ve been using OneNote + Dropbox + Boxcryptor to achieve this, for several years (running Parallels on MacOS just to be able to use Windows OneNote, which lets me keep my OneNotes on Dropbox + Boxcryptor). What’s pushing me away from OneNote is the increasing difficulty of maintaining information in an encrypted form, as Microsoft pushes everything to its unencrypted OneDrive. And Parallels + Windows Onenote will probably never work with M1 Macs.
So now, I’m looking to use DT + Dropbox + encrypted sync stores instead. Being aware of (1) above, I’ve been aware that my intended usage of DT is probably a suboptimal utilization of its abilities.
So why DT at all for my use case? Solutions that are probably better suited to my note-taking activity (Curio; Scrivener; OmniOutliner) do not offer the possibility of continuous syncing + encryption. (Curio and Scrivener do let you put their databases in a cloud sync service, which can be encrypted with something like Boxcryptor. But they insist that you should not open the database on a particular device until all syncing is fully complete and until all other devices have closed their databases. Having to wait to use device X until I know for sure that all other devices have synced and closed their databases is a deal-breaker for me).
So that’s what leads me to DT: Zero-knowledge encryption as well as continuous syncing. Plus of course, enough document creation ability to let me make notes, and have them all organized in a UI so that I don’t have to hunt through directories for individual files.
As it gives me those things, I have figured I’ll try to make it work for me, with the hope that it gives me enough creation ability for the kinds of “documents” I want to create. I’ve had the feeling that I may over time find myself using DT in broader ways as well . But from thinking about all of this (thanks to your input), I am beginning to wonder whether even as of right now, I may be doing myself a disservice by not trying one of the hitherto-disdained-by-me “external editors”!
Sorry for the long ramble – I’m sure that’s much more information than anyone wanted – but it was useful at least for me to think through all of that!
You can create “foreign” file types via templates, see How to create a new document, for some application, within the current Group?
I can see this being very useful (eg., managing creation of a new spreadsheet from within DT) – thanks once again!
You’re welcome - that’s what it’a all about .
In a nutshell! Exactly.
Bearing in mind, though, that I too am relatively new to DT and may have yet to discover ways to integrate - as @pete31 illustrates.
You’re not. And I agree, I think it would be a very good way (for you) to go.
Thanks, @dayknito. That makes it really clear. DT is, I’d say, the single best tool available for the organisation, categorisation, display, and searching/retrieving of data. It excels at allowing you reliably to group, subgoup, tag, label and put your data into the most granular and transparently meaningful hierarchies you’ll ever need.
I’d have said it was infinitely superior to the OneNote + Dropbox + Boxcryptor setup you have been using.
May I suggest that you keep posting here on this forum for best practice and others’ experience of synching (à la Dropbox); and of how to manage individual notes with customizable formatting - especially in list formats, which means DT’s growing support for Markdown.
I can’t help feeling that Obsidian on these last two needs may be a better fit. But Obsidian is not a conventional document management system with the sophistication of DT.
Which is why I’m veering towards thinking that Obsidian with DEVONthink may be your ideal blend.
No. But DT-indexed Obsidian Vaults might. And Scrivener integrates well with DT.
Have you found any system that avoids this?
I can see how that is the ideal. Not sure that DT on its own can do all of that seamlessly. Others will know.
I agree. The apps which created the docs are definitely the best way to edit them. But most of these work so well ‘from’ DEVONthink that I don’t believe you’ll be disappointed. It’s the transparent synching and encrypting that worries me more now.
Not at all!
@mksBelper – thanks again for the thoughts.
Actually, my OneNote + Dropbox + Boxcryptor system does (avoid this). I have had everything open all the time on multiple computers (including Windows machines) with no sync problems, for multiple years.
Hmm… my understanding is that DT’s sync to/from Dropbox is designed to handle databases being open on more than one device – and that it is therefore a system that avoids having to shut down databases and/or DT on one device before using another. The sections of the manual that discuss syncing talk about how changes to the database from multiple devices get “merged”, and make no mention of having to shut down on other devices…
But perhaps I’m assuming too much… and of course it may not work as well as it’s supposed to. Testing syncing has been very much the next item on my list!
Always welcome .
I can see why - once you’ve had that working - you mustn’t give it up, Yes.
== DT synching==
The experts (here) will be able to help, I’m sure: I have no experience of it - yet: I shall need to synch between my desktop and portable Macs soon. But I don’t mind not having two copies of DT open at once.
I sense that what you need is more of a groups, teams system where - perhaps - the least ‘obstructive’ element is the (Markdown) editor itself?
It may also well be that Jim and/or Chris will tell you that DT can do that admirably. I hope so .
I also sense that you’re clearer of the relationships between and roles:
I was confused at first: I came from EagleFiler which could fail at times if you edited a file (e.g. a BBEdit or TextEdit document which was ‘housed’ therein but relied on the app which created (and was intended exclusively to edit/modify) them.
Jim helped me a lot; including explaining how I no longer needed to ‘Update Checksum’ manually if I kept a file in DT and opened it in DT but actually worked on it in another editor. That such transclusion was even possible to the degree it is in DT seemed too good to be true. And that it would work as well as it did was a shock. Now I take advantage of it without thinking.
Remember, too, for files where you want to keep the originals in another location than DT’s own (internal) database, you Index them. This is likely to be the case with Obsidian.
Yes. If you haven’t already come across ‘Taking Control of DEVONthink 3’, you will want to take a look. It’s free and makes a remarkably useful adjunct to the official manual. It was sponsored and is ‘authorized’ by DEVON Technologies. It covers multiple users well.
Thanks. Yes, that book was actually the first thing I looked at whan I made a preliminary investigation of DT a few months ago. The book says (p. 210):
DEVONthink can sync any or all of your databases with any number of other Macs and iOS/iPadOS devices, and it’s safe to make changes with the database open on more than one device— DEVONthink knows how to merge your changes quickly and intelligently.
If I hadn’t seen that back then, DT would have been off my list of candidates and I wouldn’t have been coming back now for further evaluation.
Of course, things can work better in theory than in practice, so this remains TBD!
EDIT:
Also, thanks for highlighting the value of “transclusion” and indexing. These have been nebulous-to-me features that I now think I should look into more seriously.
Good. That ought to re-assure you. It does me :-). I have total faith in that last sentence.
Of course! It’s the same for me - everywhere. Sometimes I just wish all ‘innovation’ (= ‘things to have to keep up with’) would cease - just for a year 
. Know what I mean?
Sure, I hear you! Thanks again.