Could DT users recommend me a lightweight text editor that is capable of creating links within documents? I like the ability of Pages to easily create clickable Table of Contents, but don’t want to use Pages for my longer DT notes, as when browsing notes loading up the preview of the file can take a surprisingly long time (on my fairly underpowered macbook) compared with the instant preview of .rtf files created in TextEdit. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
I use DEVONthink’s built-in rich text editor for notes and also at the draft stage of writing projects.
My approach to a draft that will have sections or chapters is to create a TOC note and to create a new note for each of the intended sections or chapters, that’s linked to from the TOC note. I use Item Links from the TOC to the linked notes.
That makes it a simple matter to rearrange the order of sections, insert new ones in progress, etc.
When I’m ready to move the draft to a more capable word processor I usually use Pages. Especially if images or graphics are in the draft material, I open each section or chapter from the TOC note, press in succession Command-A and Command-C to copy that section or chapter to the clipboard, then Command-V to paste it into a Pages document at the cursor insertion point. Everything including mixed text and images transfers to Pages in this way. (A lot more work would be required to accomplish this in MS Word.)
My TOC note usually gets cluttered in progress, as I use it to remind myself of the purpose and objectives of the project, comments about the status of the sections and what changes may be needed in progress, etc.
In the draft sections I use markers such as “ffff” to mark material for a footnote and “eeee” to mark material for endnotes, etc.
Keeping the draft in sections in this way means that each section will load immediately, and improves my own focus on the section I’m working on, as well as the focus of See Also (which I use a lot for ideas).
This works for me, but there are any number of approaches and tools that can be used, so by all means choose an approach that works best for you.
Thanks for that Bill. I’d still be interested if anyone knows of a faster-than-Pages editor that allows for linked tables of contents, but I’ve had a go at what you suggest and it seems like a very workable alternative. As you suggest, there might also be side benefits to keeping notes small. Cheers.
Together with DevonThink I have been using Papyrus http://www.rom-logicware.com/.
it is not lightweight, I suppose, but very powerful for links, hyper-office links etc. and capable of creating editable pdf-documents. Might be worthwhile having a look at it.
Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll have a look at those two programmes.