I’m new to DTPO and I’m specifically eager to hear from academics (especially historians) about how they move from note-taking in DTPO to writing in, say, Scrivener or another word processing application.
Do you sort your notes inside DTPO? Do you export them in some way? And if you do export them, what happens to the metadata in each DTPO note?
Thanks so much!
P.S. I’ve read the popular posts online about historians’ DTPO workflows. They give me a great sense of how to organize a DTPO database, but they still leave me wondering how to move from note-taking inside DTPO to writing outside of it.
Hi. I’m a historian (medieval Japan). I also use both Scrivener and DTPO. However, I’m afraid my response won’t be of much help. I take notes, collect research materials, and organize everything in DTPO. I write in Scrivener. For me, it’s easy to keep the two separated.
I do write a lot on the iPad (Scrivener synced with a Dropbox folder accessed by Notesy), and I index those text files using DTPO. I do this because I want the draft to appear in searches within DTPO. Here is a post I wrote about indexing, and it shows my database in the last screenshot – I mention the post, because it probably is not one of the “popular” ones you’ve read
Obviously, in this scenario I’m under-utilizing Scrivener, which can also be used to collect research. I have found Scrivener adequate for such things, but much prefer apps like DTPO that specialize in managing my data.
By the way, I wrote my dissertation using a similar combination of Evernote and Scrivener.
I moved everything out of Evernote, though, when I began to need more robust security (teaching = handling sensitive data about others) and I discovered that, despite the terrible reviews, DEVONthink on the iPad actually works well-enough for my needs. Up until that point, I’d only used DTPO sparingly for its AI. Overall, the workflow with DTPO is a lot smoother – I’ve used it for writing articles, and I am also writing a book with it. I miss Evernote’s searching, especially on the iPad (the search grammar and saved searches meant less organizational legwork for me), but the tradeoff has been worth it.
Hi,
Although I am not a historian, I am involved in academic writing. Accordingly, I feel website organizingcreativity.com could be beneficial for you as it was from me.
To make long story short, take a look at the attached photo. Particularly Circus Ponies Notebook, an intermediary app between DTPO and Scrivener has been quite important to me.
Hope that helps
