Hello all. I have a workflow as follows:
- I annotate a PDF using PDF Expert on iPad;
- I export the annotations and clean them with a BBEdit text factory;
- I add the resulting text as a note to the reference in Sente;
- I import the reference to DB using Sente6ToDevn73 script by RobTrew.
I have a group with all the annotations (1 file per reference) and I filter it using a Smart Group, looking for several expressions. For example I have a Smart Group that looks for the word “informal”.
That Smart Group shows me all the annotations that have that word on it, but it doesn’t provide for a quick visual feedback on where it is. My question (finally!) is:
– is there a way to automatically highlight the word “informal” in all the references that contain it? The ideal would be: 1) I click on the Smart Group named “Informal”; 2) a script processes all the annotations inside that smart group and highlights all the “Informal” words and saves that modification to the RTF file.
PS: I am trying to remake the Sente “Hotwords” feature into DevonThink.
Thanks for the help.
Thanks for replying. But I’m really interested in making those highlights permanent, i.e., saved to the RTF file itself, avoiding repeating the search process altogether…
Ok! Managed to create something by using an Automator APP and BBEdit (which I use for Webdevelopment) and its Grep Search and Replace capabilities!
You basically select an RTF file from the DEVONThink interface and run the Automator APP from the Scripts menu. The APP gets the RTF file from the selected record in DEVONThink, opens it in BBEdit, gets the content of the file, processes it with GREP Search & Replace expressions replacing contents, saves the file in BBEdit, and then closes the document and BBEdit, and displays a “Done” notification using Growl
All you do is select the record and click on a Script! All is done automatically and you return to DEVONThink with the file processed.
BTW, I use this for formatting the RTF using its syntax (color tables, font color … etc) but I guess it can be used for any GREP search and replace purpose, for all those that own DEVONThink and BBEdit. There’s a whole new world into DEVONThink with the help of BBEdit text processing ability!