Hello,
New(ish) to DTPO and really loving it. A couple of questions, though.
Firstly, footnotes. If I have footnotes in an rtf document that I import, where do they go? They seem to disappear. I’ve never been fully aware of what happens to footnotes in OS X text editing (they don’t seem to appear there), so I guess it’s the same issue. But I have lots of footnotes in rich text articles that I need to hang on to. Thanks.
Secondly, split pane editing. Is there a way to edit two documents in split panes simultaneously? As far as I can tell, using three panes doesn’t give me this functionality; it just shows me information in one pane I don’t need. I’m looking for a way to do what Scrivener does in this respect. Thanks again.
Hi, Benjamin.
RTF: DEVONthink uses the rich text code that’s “built into” OS X. This is essentially the same as TextEdit. This version of RTF does not support footnotes.
Perhaps you are using Nisus Writer RTF files, which can contain footnotes. But footnotes in such a document will not be displayed in DEVONthink. And if you edit such an RTF file in DEVONthink, it will be saved as an OS X Cocoa RTF and the footnotes will be gone forever. This is a case where it may be safest to Index-capture RTF files produced by a word processor that has added proprietary code to the “standard” RTF file type. One cannot edit Index-imported documents inside the databases, and can specify the appropriate external application to do edits and saves.
This kind of problem results from the fact that there are different “flavors” of RTF, but all the flavors use the same file type identification.
Split screens: Not as such, but when I’m editing a document I’ll often have two open views of it. One view will be the “master” – the document selected, for example, in the Three Panes view. I’ll open the second view by double-clicking on that selection so that the document also opens in its own window. What’s neat is that I can do an edit, such as the turn of a phrase in the document window, but it isn’t saved yet. So I can compare my new version to the previous version, which is still displayed in the text pane of the Three Panes view. If I decide to keep the changes, I’ll click in the document window and press Command-S to save them. At that point, after the Save, the version in the Three Panes view is updated.
And of course I often display two document windows side-by-side when working in one of them.
Hi Bill,
Thanks for you reply. Shame about the footnotes. I’m actually using Word .doc files that I’ve saved to RTF (since the import screws the formatting otherwise).
Indexing (only) isn’t going to help me because I need to be able to edit the documents from within DT.
And thanks for the advice about open windows. I have tried that, but I’ve noticed that you lose your place when you save, unlike Scrivener. I guess this is because the overall length of the doc changes. I’m hoping this might change along with remembering your place in an open doc, which is apparently down for v2. DT is great, but there are some very simple interface issues that need addressing, like these and also the fact that if I close a DB, and then open it, I seem to lose the viewing information regarding how my directory structure was positioned, that is, sub-groups that I had ‘open’ within groups are now closed.
The Platonic app calls!