Issues clipping articles from newspaper websites

DEVONthink
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I am experiencing problems while clipping newspaper articles from a website. My format of choice has always been PDF-one page. Recently, any attempt to clip an article (especially from NYT and WaPo) end up with just a bookmark. Sometimes converting that bookmark into PDF from within DEVONthink works, most of the time it doesn’t. At some point, I thought that converting into formatted note worked better, but now it doesn’t.

This is really crippling. Most of the documents I store on DEVONthink are newspaper clipplings.

I’m assuming this has to do with new protection on the corresponding websites, but I would be very grateful if a workaround could be worked out. I am a paying subscriber to those papers.

[I’m using DEVONthink 3.5.1 on a Mac running MacOS 10.15.6]

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for some sites (and i do not read either of these) i find better success to print the articles to PDF, saving to DEVONthink. some sites i think have CSS styles or something that the browser has a little difficulty with.

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Welcome @FrancoisH

I am not a subscriber to either of those sites and discussion of clipping pay walled sites has been discussed often on these forums.

I would suggest you add a bookmark in DEVONthink, then log in, browse, and try clipping in our app.

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Thanks rmschne. Your solution is a last resort that allows to save the document no matter what. But the result is usually quite messy, and that’s precisely to make it better that I so much appreciate the PDF-one page, clutter-free. And it used to work really well, until recently. :frowning:

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That’s a great idea, and I have tried that by displaying the page on the built-in browser and login in and all. Somehow it didn’t work, but maybe I should persist in that direction!
One thing I didn’t mention in my initial post: I wish DEVONthink would tell me that the clipping didn’t work, and tell me why. Instead, I clip as PDF or note, and it seems to work, and only when I look it up do I see that only a bookmark was stored…

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Another thing I noticed is if I ensure my mouse cursor is on the text, it works better than if elsewhere. I’ve not looked deeply into that since just doing a “print” works for me. For one of the news sites I read and save, I’ve noticed that I have to set the page as landscape as again, I suspect the CSS styles don’t work perfectly.

There is so much variability in web sites these days (including some sites that don’t want you to “print” and save!).

1 Like
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Intriguing! I’ll give it a try.

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FWIW, I can clip from the NYT to DT using “Clip to DEVONthink” and the settings “PDF (one page)” and clutter free. I get a reasonable PDF with images and text. Basically I also get the same result clipping as markdown. Clipping to “PDF (one page)” without “clutter free” results in a garbled page with overlapping text in places. But in no case do I only get a bookmark.

(also on DT 3.5.1 and macOs 10.15.6; the “Clip to DEVONthink” extension reports Version 3.0.3 in the Safari preferences)

PS If you want to PM me a link to a specific article which doesn’t work for you, I’ll try it out.

Do you have - and more importantly have you recently changed or added - an adblocker or similar? I wonder whether that is causing a problem…

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Thanks for a breath of optimism! I am working from Firefox (and DT extension 1.5 from January this year). I haven’t thought of trying from Safari. I have setup Firefox with quite a few privacy enhancers, which might indeed interfere. What bothers me most though is that converting a bookmark from within DEVONthink wouldn’t work. And even more bothersome is that the issue is intermittent. The latest article I unsuccessfully tried to clip this morning (and which motivated my initial post) is now converting smoothly into PDF and formated note…

I’ll keep testing to see if I can determine a trigger or a set of conditions that makes it work, or not.

Thanks for everyone’s useful and immediate support on this forum.

1 Like
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I’d like to add that Save PDF to DEVONthink 3 works with Safari’s Reader View too. And I guess with every other browser’s too. The result is not the same as clutter-free but definitely with less clutter. And sometimes even better. Sometimes not, there is no one solution for all web pages.

Another thing: Print to PDF/Save PDF to DEVONthink 3 respects the zoom you set. If you zoomed a page up for easier reading that might cause a messy result.

2 Likes
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Thanks—that’s really clever. I tend to forget how pleasant it is to use Reader view (articles are so densely larded with adds now, including animated ones!). I’ll try for sure.

I noticed that converting to PDF from within DEVONthink also keeps the column width. That’s problematic cause I’m working on the smallest MacBook at the moment (12" screen!) so the preview window in DEVON is minuscule, and the PDF can be weird…

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