No dip for either of you Wiki Rogues because I can’t replicate this link problem. My laptop has only one button. To paraphrase Yoda, there is no “left-click” or “right-click”… there is only “click.”
The only time I can get it to create and link to a new document (rather than link to an existing one) is when I’ve not selected the exact title of the document. For example, the source document says "Brown, James A. " but I typed and selected “Brown, James A.” (no space after the “A.”).
Little things like spaces can make or break my Wikis.
[1] Yes, DEVONnote does lack the Lookup service that’s in DEVONthink. So you can’t directly “link” to a DEVONnote file or initiate a search from another application.
But there’s always a workaround: Select and copy to the clipboard a text string from another application (e.g., Word or Ulysses), go to DEVONnote and paste the string into DN’s search field.
[2] Now let’s handle a case in which you want to link a text string in one DN note to another DN file.
First, go to DEVONnote > Preferences > Editing. Check the box for automatic Wiki linking, and select “Names and Aliases” and “Don’t link to groups.”
Now there are two possibilities concerning the text string that you wish to link to another DN note:
[a] The selected text string is exactly the name of an already existing note in your DN database. Use Format > Make Link to establish the link. That’s it. You now have a hyperlink between the text string and a DN note.
[b] The selected text string is NOT exactly the same as the name of an existing note. Example: You want to link the string “alternative hypothesis” to a DN file named "Big Bang Theory.
You can do this in two steps. First, select the string “alternative hypothesis” and use Format > Make Link. This will create a new DN file named “alternative hypothesis.” Next, type or paste in the string “Big Bang Theory.” Select the string “Big Bang Theory” and use Format > Make Link. Summary: now you’ve got a hyperlink that leads you quickly to your “footnote” document. Actually, this trick can be used whenever you want to “footnote” two or more references for a term.
NOTE: The procedures in [2] are identical for DEVONnote and DEVONthink.
I missed his note about the differences between the two buttons. I have only a single button on my 17 in PB and I have the same problem he describes prior to his note. I’m now convinced that it is not just me but that there is some sort of bug that is coming up under certain circumstances in DT.
There are definitely a number of bugs that affect Wiki links. As this is a recent feature in DT that is probably to be expected. Unfortunately it is also quite frustrating. I too have experienced the problem mentioned above as well as some others (which I have reported in the Feedback forum). The only reason I have not reported this issue is that I haven’t yet been able to make it happen consistently enough to be able to provide a proper bug report.
Hmm, it seems it’s time for a new mouse: Type the text you want to link to another document. Select it and right-click (Control-click for one-button-mouse users). In the contextual menu, select “Link with” and in the sub-menu the document you want to link the text to. That’s it. Okay, that’s not a Wiki link but a normal link. But it’s linking text A with document B.
I know, and I appreciate both your suggestions and your criticism. It’s all about making our products better – which is what we all want. And we know that our products are extremely powerful on one side but also require a steep learning curve on the other side. And we’ll address this as we’ve already solved our personnel situation. So, we’re more people now with more time to spend on the manual, the web site, etc.
And: we have a GREAT user community that is even more helpful than a dozend DEVONtechies! So, thank you!
Unfortunately yes, this has nothing to do with the mouse or right-clicking or control clicking. I detailed the problem I am having in the forum Troubleshooting > Link Bug in 1.9.1 (first post). Now both rmathes23 and psmyth have chimed in on this Tips and Tricks forum with exactly the same problem. If you read our three posts maybe you can tell us what we are doing wrong (if it is us) or determine what the coding problem might be.
I proposed just an alternative way of doing it. Regarding the Wiki link “voodoo effects”, I will hand over this thread to Christian who knows much better than me why these effects appear and what to do against them.
OK, cool. Thanks for the help and for getting this info to Christian. BTW, even with the few problems that I’ve had I’m working DT more and more into my productive workflow with great results. I’m still trying to optimize my usage processes and I keep thinking that there are probably many combinations of things I could do with it to improve my workflow even more.
FYI, I did have an odd crash earlier where I selected 7 or 8 rtf files, and grouped them. I got the spinning rainbow and it just never went away. Processor usage was at 100%. I had to force quit but after restarting DT it worked perfectly and showed no errors.
For us one-button folk, a plain click is a left click, and a control-click is a right click.
I swear by a shareware utility called SideTrack, which lets me left-click by tapping my TiBook’s trackpad, and right-click by hitting the click bar. It also adds vertical and horizontal scrolling to trackpad gestures. (Note: The DEVONtechnologies folk tend to swear at such modifications, because poorly written ones can interact badly with DEVONthink. But I’ve had no problems using SideTrack.)
I’ve had no problems with Wiki links since my early experiments – but some of those were very frustrating. Typos and added or missing spaces can make all the difference.
If a Wiki link misbehaves (it acts like a compound link to different documents, depending on where you click on it), try selecting the whole string, using Format > Remove Link. Press Command-S to save the change, then select the string again. It will probably work properly now.
The best way to learn DEVONthink is to start using it, experiment and ask questions. I’m by no means an overall expert on DT. There are still lots of features (especially in DT Pro beta) that I’ve not grasped yet. Nevertheless, DT has become the most valuable tool on my computer.
I think I figured this out, at least with what was happening with my wiki links getting ‘broken’.
I tried Bill’s advice. Removing the link didn’t work, it actually stayed a link, but now a discretely fragmented one.
So, I tried deleting the file and replicating the problem. Happened exactly the same way.
So then I had an idea. When I created the first link, I typed some text, hit return a couple of times and then ON THE LAST LINE OF THE DOCUMENT created the wiki link. When I do that, I seem to be able to create the problem at will.
But when I put at least one carriage return after where I want to insert the wiki link, then go back up one line to insert the link, it seems to work fine and I can’t get the link to fragment and ‘break’. It seems stable even after repeated clicks.
There seems to be some kind of bug with DT reading the link if the link is at the ‘end’ of the document. If it’s followed by a carriage return (so that there’s an editable line beneath it, whether that line has anything in it or not), then it seems stable.
So, for those of you with the same problem, see if this makes any impact. Seems to be working for me.
Note: I went back and tested with simply adding a single space after the link and that seems to restore the link’s integrity as well. Looks like DT simply doesn’t like it if the link is the terminating entity of the doc.
Wierd. Unfortunately mine was happening with my link on the first line and even after I had done a return and added other lines of text (which were waiting their turn to become links). But this is all very interesting. Just a while ago I turned the wiki links back on and created a link to another document with exactly the same name. I did this by copying the name of the rtf to which I wanted to link, pasting it into the blank rtf text field, selecting that copied text and telling it to make link. I then hit return and added some text notes. It was after that that the link worked maybe once then failed (after saving and all of that) by bringing up a blank rtf rather than the rtf that had exactly the same name. I deleted the entire thing (linked text, subsequent line of notes), pasted the link text back, didn’t add the additional line of text, relinked it with Make Link, saved it, quit automatic wiki and it is working.
Don’t ask me what’s going on, I’m just an old country chemist, lol.
I got in the habit of adding a space and/or carriage return after the link string, because of an earlier bug that wrongly carried over the underline format to text typed after the link. Perhaps that’s why I’ve not been having the “split link” problem.
Thanks to Bill for his clever workarounds regarding Wiki and static links. I will use them when needed, but they do require some extra steps that would be eliminated if a future version of DN could add the ability to link any text in DN to ANY Devon note.
Oops, sorry, Eric’s right. When I tried this before, the contextual menu didn’t offer me that option. I realized yesterday that it’s because the devon note I was using as my main file was actually an imported rtf. At least I assume that’s why it didn’t work; it does work with the notes I created in DN.
Still, it would be nice if “Link to” would work with such imported Devon notes, inasmuch as I’ve already written about half the chapters in the book and am importing them into DN, but not a major problem. I guess the workaround here is to create a new note in DN, then paste in the rich text from the original Word or TextEdit file. It only adds a step more than using an imported file. And it won’t be a problem with newly created Devon notes in future. These linking features will be a great help to me once I figure them all out!
Yep, tried again, and got the same contextual menu: cut, copy, speech, font, set writing direction, etc, but no “link to.” Then I tried it with some other devon notes, and for some reason, the same thing happened with notes that I made using the Services menu (take plain note).
So now I’m really confused – it looks like the rich text notes I made using the Services menu DO offer the full contextual menu (with “link to”), but the plain text notes made that way don’t. And the rtf of a column I wrote in TextEdit then imported into Devon doesn’t offer the full contextual menu either, while columns I wrote in a new Devon note DO offer the full menu. I haven’t tried every single Devon note in my collection, but this seems to be the pattern of those I did try.
Again, this isn’t a big deal at all for my uses – the workaround is simple. But it does explain why I was having trouble making links earlier. Am I doing something wrong?
Plain text documents don’t support Wiki/cross linking and therefore you have to convert them to rich text documents (via “Format > Make Rich Text”). In addition, do you use Mac OS X 10.3.x? Because the “(Insert) Link To” commands are not available using Mac OS X 10.2.x
