Back History: I’m writing a series of ten big books. Lots of characters, storylines, text, et cetera. Been working for ten years. Sanity–;
MediaWiki: What I’ve been using for a couple years now. Or, really, MediaWiki + EasyTimeline + GraphViz + dozens of other extensions. Works well, capable of almost anything, completely bewildering to track since it’s not very hierarchical, and in general a real pain in the ass.
DEVONthink: I love it. Been using it for a week and enthusiastically switched over my MediaWiki the other day. Handled the import of 1047 documents like a pro, and I don’t mean prokaryote.
What I Want: I don’t think I’m the first to request any of these features, or at least features like these. I just want to add my voice to the list. Here goes:
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GraphViz support. GraphViz is a fantastic open source tool for plotlines, storylines, genealogies, all sorts of things. Current integration (with the command line tool as well as the OS X version is basically non-existent. Import a vector graphic, with the WikiLink functionality in a text layer on top of it? If this was available only as a plugin, I’d still pay for it, and I think a lot of other writers would too.
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Timeline support. I’m not crazy about EasyTimeline, and I don’t think many people are. But some kind of timeline mechanism would be fantastic.
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Template support for sheet/record display. I’m sure you have something like this in the works, but I’d love it. Even if the sheets were just HTML with a little markup sub-language to show DT where to display the values. Anything. AN-Y-THING.
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The Smart Groups are clever and heroically extensible, for those with a little Applescript chops. My problem is that I’d like a way to specify variables for the scripts. Right now, I use the contents of comment fields in Groups as variables used in order to find documents containing those same words in their comments. Kinda kludgy. Or, alternately, a “real” smart folder-esque arrangement?
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I’d like to be able to add fields (metadata?) and values to a specific group or file more-or-less on the fly. I don’t know how possible this is, or how it would affect database size, or anything like that. I’d like to be able to say “Hmm, this was written by Mark Twain” and add an author field and type in the value. Or add a copyright date field.
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Import a URL (whether from local drives or the intertubes) as a PDF, with an automator action to match. I have a tremendous workflow to accomplish this very act, and I’m not sure why.
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More labels? I’m not sure if I’m missing something, or if I’m the only person who would ever use these, but I’d love to have about twenty labels. If they’re dependent on the numbers and types of labels in OS X, I guess I’m just flat-out screwed.
That’s pretty much all I have to say right now. I have other ideas, but they’re a bit more involved…
Any thoughts?