I’m not using DT to it’s full potential by any means, but after doing some reading I feel like my suite of applications is being used “improperly.”
Generally, I’ll bring PDFs into DevonThink, organize it in a folder if need be, and then read it through Skim. What I love is that Skim hilighting and sticky notes appear in the DT PDF display window. Also, I like having all my PDFs in DevonThink where I can best apply DT’s powerful AI search engine.
When I write a paper, I open up Sente and create a new library particular to that paper. I’ll then bring PDFs that I find useful or relevant from DT over to Sente, where their bibliographic information gets plugged in and then ready to go. And of course, when the paper is done, Sente does the bibliography heavy lifting.
What’s strange here is I’m not storing my PDFs in any way shape or form in Sente. Can anyone make a persuasive case to have my PDFs in Sente, and not DT per se? Plus, I fail to see how having DT index Sente’s files is the same thing as simply housing one’s PDFs in DT in the first place.
Sente is a bibliography application designed to keep references; DEVONthink is an information manager designed to keep documents. So to use both to their full extend, you could use DEVONthink to store the actual documents and use Sente to store references. With the next beta of DEVONthink you will also be able to conveniently add links to Sente references to DEVONthink via a smart template.
I am trying to set up a Sente - DTPO-workflow and tested the template in DTPO. Although Sente is open, I get an error message that it is not open (ver. 6.1.12 (6.1.12)).
I still do not know neither can I estimate what the template will do and how it could help, but I would like to get it running to see.
@Maria & @DarumaBlue Sente and DT(Pro, Pro Office) work very well together once you have the Sente to DEVONThink v.18 script working (web.mac.com/robinfrancistrew/Sit … think.html). It only takes a few minutes to write the correct pathways in the script, but once done, it allows you to export your notes directly into folders in your .dtbase.
Workflow: Once I go through the annotation of an article in Sente, I will export the notes to an author folder in DT; this will often have subfolders: LastName, FirstInitial, Date. Select the destination folder in DT, return to Sente and run the script, and the notes are exported to it. The notes appear with the citation delimiters, {Name Date@Page Number}, as a rtf which can also be inserted into a wp doc.
With larger scanned texts, chapters or full books, I include these in the appropriate folder, but usually exclude articles that I have annotated (you can also link back to it via url to the Sente folder so that it stays ready-at-hand).
Sente’s basic strengths are collection or retrieval, annotation, and its formatted bibliographic outputs of wp documents. Between retrieval and the final product, in the research/analysis phase of the workflow, DT.