Silly(?) question about Drafts >> DTTG2 (live-links)

DEVONthink To Go Tips
1

When I’m casually browsing the web on my iPhone, and come across recreational/frivoulous stuff I want to keep for later - I prepend the link of that page to a flagged file inside Drafts.app.

Been doing this for ages, so it’s kind of a catch-all for stuff that I’ll probably never read - but hey! 8)

When opening that file in Drafts - it appears to be an ‘ordinary’ text file.
When when you tap on the ‘link’ icon on the bottom left, inside Drafts - they are automagically switched to ‘live-links’ that can be tapped on to launch in Safari etc.

I’m trying to work out how to get that page, with live-links - onto my Mac…

Now I know next-to-nothing about what is going on in the background here, so I’m not sure if this is complex or fairly simple - but am hoping someone might have ideas.

When I “share” the file from Drafts to DTTG, regardless of what format I use for the text file [Rich text/formatted/plain/Markdown], the links remain text.

When I “Open in” from Drafts to DTTG, the links are live, when I view them inside DTTG2 - and remain so.
However, as soon as I sync back to DTPO, it shows up as a text file, with all links in simple text.

The ‘workaround’ over on the Mac is easy enough, since I can simply select the url text-string, and use Popclip to open it up through a Google search >> alternatively Alfred etc. could make short shrift of getting where I need to.
But the thought of having one long, ever-increasing “text” file with live-links neatly separated throughout, is far more appealing. :smiley:

Suggestions? Can this be done?

2

You could use a Drafts action like “Copy to Clipboard” and paste that into a document in DTTG, or get more creative and make (or borrow from the Drafts community) a custom action that does what you want.

But why clip to Drafts? Why not clip these to DTTG as bookmarks?

3

Thanks korm. But I’m not necessarily sure that the issue lies with Drafts. The links are active when I view the DTTG2 document I’ve created from Drafts into DTTG2 - it’s the sync that subsequently ‘kills’ them off.

That’s what I’m wondering about - what the underlying magic is that has them ‘live’ over on iOS, only for them to be toe-tagged over in DTPO…

Yes, I could - but as mentioned, I’ve been doing this for long now, and prefer to keep (these types of) things in a single ‘text’ document.
I periodically ‘archive’ the text document, and start afresh.
I will often clip 5/10/15 into it per day - and like keeping them all contained in one document, rather than having to clean up my Inbox on a daily basis, purely for these (very frivolous) links…

I treat it as my local ‘Instapaper for brain-dead stuff’, that I most likely will never look at again, and simply get left for OneDayMaybe. 8)

That said - anything remotely interesting, work/general interests etc. does get put into DTTG2 - these just aren’t them…

To illustrate >> here be some grabs of the 3 stages:

Original appearance in Drafts:

Drafts >> DTTG2 001.PNG
Drafts >> DTTG2 001.PNG750×1334 89.4 KB

After tapping the ‘link’ icon:

Drafts >> DTTG2 002.PNG
Drafts >> DTTG2 002.PNG750×1334 91.5 KB

Inside DTTG2:

Drafts >> DTTG2 003.PNG
Drafts >> DTTG2 003.PNG750×1334 92.1 KB

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Just to close the loop - this is the same document after the sync to DTPO:

Drafts >> DTTG2 004.png
Drafts >> DTTG2 004.png1044×413 37 KB

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Drafts files are plain text files. The “Link” button in Drafts merely uses Drafts’ markdown rendering engine to temporarily make link text into a clickable link. If you send the plain text file to DEVONthink then it is a plain text file there. It’s just a local feature that Drafts is doing in the background, and has nothing to do with either the file that is exported from Drafts, or the way DEVONthink / DTTG operate.

Over here, reproducing your technique (to the extent I understand it; there are some missing “links” so to speak), if I clip a link to Drafts, then from Drafts, Open In … DTTG2 (Import with DEVONthink), I get a plain text file with a clickable link (because DTTG2 is providing that clickable-link service to you), and when I sync with DEVONthink on the desktop I also get a plain text file with a clickable link (because DEVONthink is providing that service to you).

“Providing that service to you” means the links are only clickable in DTTG / DEVONthink – if you open the file in, for example, TextEdit the links are not rendered as clickable because normally in plain text files in OS X they are not clickable.

FWIW, I’m not seeing anything broken here. There must be something else in the process that is disabling your link? Not sure what that might be, though.

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korm - many thanks for you efforts. I’m very sheepish in saying that I neglected the “import” part… I fixed this over on the iPad - when round-tripping from Goodreader to DTTG2, but it completely slipped my mind to do the same in my sharesheet on the iPhone… :blush:

That said - I’ve just tried this again, and there is no difference. Using Open In… DTTG and then Import with DTTG leaves me with clickable links in DTTG >> but upon syncing, I am still left with ‘dead’ links in a plain text file…

So, beats me.
Will try with some newly created documents/links - maybe something in my existing file in Drafts is messing with the sync process.

Will pop something up if I manage to get it to work.

7

Aha – I figured it out. I tried this again with the article from The Guardian in your images. Two things happen when the text file gets routed from Drafts to DTTG2 to DEVONthink. First, it seems that DEVONthink on the desktop is interpreting the whole string as a link, which fails. So, the fix to that is to place (in Drafts) a return between the end of the web page’s title (“million miles from Earth | Science | The Guardian”) and the beginning of the link.

Second, it seems for longish or “complex” links, that DEVONthink on the desktop doesn’t immediately see the link qua link – you have to (again) add a return to the end of the link (“16m-kilometers-from-earth”) – when you press return the link text becomes a clickable link

So, you can do both of these fixes in DEVONthink on the desktop – as annoying as it might be – but at least neither of us is crazy :mrgreen:

8

What wizardry is this!! :laughing:

Would never have occurred to me to try, despite this being the trick I’ve used before with pesky links in Outlook etc.

Thanks a bunch - this opens up all sorts of doors using Drafts as an entry point, should the need arise

Relieved that this ended working as I thought it should, and that there wasn’t something in the sync, quashing things.

9

A few final points, for the benefit of someone who might stumble across this in the future.

1.) As korm suggested, hitting Enter/Return immediately after the link in the plain-text file back in DTPO, does indeed turn it ‘live’.

2.) Saving the file does NOT keep them live though.

In other words, moving ‘away’ from the file, upon your return, they will have reverted to the plain text format again. :neutral_face:

This also means that clicking on a live-link - and having DTPO open it in the built-in browser - hitting the back button, returns you to plain links.
Opening the link in a new tab [built-in browser] retains the links in the original - but as above, only for as long as you remain active in that file.

In my instance - since I wanted these links to remain active - I did the following:

Copied all, and pasted them into Word.
Using the quick-record feature in KM, I was able to quickly move through literally several hundred links, and convert them all to ‘live-links’.
I then saved as the Word document into PDF format, and simply imported that back into DTPO.

I now have a PDF of hundreds of ‘articles’ with headings, and just below, live-links to those articles, that I can click on at leisure - have DTPOs built-in browser take me to the page - to then download, should I want to >> and a click on the “back” button, takes me back to that original file.

I essentially have a giant-internet bookmark file. 8)

It’s a bit of a work-around, but only takes a few minutes - and for me, it’s worth the time.