Problems saving web items into DevonThink Pro

DEVONthink Tips
1

I think I need Your help: I find saving info from web pages from time to time inordinately difficult and cumbersome; probably because I do something wrong or in a clumsy fashion.

As a web browser, at the moment I use Camino (after switching from Mozilla). From time to time I would like to save items from a web page as RTFD (styled text with figures included), Take as an example the web page atpm.com/12.02/atpo.shtml from which I would like to save the text and figures about Mori. In order to do so, I could select all the text and figures and copy them. Switching to DTPro results in an unstiled RTF text without figures if I use New>With Clipboard and a blanc page when I use New>RTF; pasting in this blanc page gives unstiled text without figures.
If I try to use the Services menu for DTPro, the RTF menu is always grayed out, I can only choose plain text.

The only way that I can think of to save the web page is to first swith to DevonAgent, load the web page in DevonAgent, and use the command Data>Add to DevonThink>Selection. Only this results in an RTFD with styled text and figures.

Any remarks? Suggestions?

2

Do you have Mori installed by any chance? It grabs the default service shortcut (command-shift-0) from DEVONthink.

I uninstalled Mori due to the conflict… there’s probably some other way to resolve it but that’s the route I chose.

3

No, not at all. I just gave that web address as an example. Could have given countless others…

4

Hi, Zeus1:

Sorry, but Camino just isn’t written to be OS X Services friendly. All you can get is plain text.

I use DT Pro’s browser for most of my Web captures. I’ve built a large collection of bookmarks for the sites that I routinely visit such as scientific journals, government agencies and news sources. I use DEVONagent as well, with several tabs set for sites that update frequently.

Both DT Pro and DEVONagent browsers are speed demons for capturing information from the Web, compared to Camino or Firefox. Reason: Convenient contextual menu options allow capture of rich text, HTML or Web Archive formats. You will have more options and will get more done/time unit with DT Pro or DEVONagent for captures from bookmarked sources.

You can import your bookmarks from Camino, Firefox, OmniWeb or Safari into your DT Pro database by choosing (in DT Pro) File > Import > Bookmarks - browser selection.

Note that I’m emphasizing speed for capturing information from Web pages. The DT Pro browser can’t download files from VersionTracker (DEVONagent can). The DT Pro browser can’t handle some Java stuff. But those limitations rarely have anything to do with capturing information from, e.g. scientific journals, government sites, news sites, etc.

Example: Copy the URL for APTM to the clipboard, go to DT Pro and save the bookmark by pressing Command-N. Navigate to the article of interest. The text and images are in a central column. Select that material, control-click or right-click and select Capture Note. That saves the text and images as an RTFD file into your database. If you are using OS X 10.4.3 or later, the format of the text will be pretty faithful to the Web page, including most tables.

5

Well, you might just drag the url from Camino’s adress bar to DTPro, and use the “capture” of DTPro? this does not solve the problem, but at least, you don’t need to open DA?

Alb

6

I followed Bill’s advise (never before imported my bookmarks), and I must say, this is a lot easier and faster. Thanks!

Just wondering: does the “Take rich note” command in the Services menu ever work??? I have never been able to use it (always grayed out).

7

No, the Take rich note Services menu in Camino doesn’t work and will remain grayed out. Camino isn’t a Cocoa program.

8

TXS.

It seems the “perfect” browser does not exist. What I am looking for is a browser that 1. is fast, 2. is stable (Safari keeps crashing), 3. lets DT and DA do their job , and 4. lets me safe scientific references in EndNote or RIS format directly into EndNote (like Mozilla).