I’m trying to build a workflow for headers in RTF documents; H1, H2, H3 … similarly to markdown. I save a style style as a favourite with font size, say, 36 then try to apply the style to a piece of selected text and the text size doesn’t change. What am I missing here?
It might be useful to describe what you did in more detail.
Yes, please provide more information on the issue, including any useful screen captures. I’m not seeing any issue defining or using a style in rich text.
I can confirm that. If I save a style like @kimaldis does, i.e. a bold heading with a large font size and then later look at the style definition (paragraph menu, show styles, favourites), the style has no font name nor size, only the attribute “bold”.
In my case, it’s an RTFD, though.
More investigation shows that the underlying “TXT.rtf” file (i.e. the RTF document proper) doesn’t contain either a stylesheet (at least according to Rich Text Format (RTF) Version 1.5 Specification) nor a reference to the style itself (i.e. I can’t see\sN anywhere in the document). Rather, the paragaphs all use explicit styling with \fN\fsN etc. Not what one would expect.
Aside: Looking at the RTF spec is like time travel back into the dark ages. What a shame that this mess is still around.
Thanks for that. I can cofirm that this is also the case with TextEdit. So it looks like an Apple problem. But even so, Devontech have to take some blame for using it at all. The idea that text formating should be done in this way is plainly ridculous, especially in this day and age; it’s positively archaic.
You’re right, it’s a mess. It’s galling, though, that I headbutted against this in DT ten years ago - it’s almost certainly the reason I dropped it for something better. I did put together a workaround then using, well, Applescript, which is a whole other story. I do remember, though, that I ground to a halt at pretty much every turn trying to put together something that allowed me to do basic formating, a la Markdown. Like, for example, use an external RTF editor that works. but then … images don’t transfer.
I like DT, very much but not being able to work quickly and easily with formatable text documents is really, really frustrating. And yes, I know Markdown but it’s rudimentary and the preview is too slow in updating to be useful. Besides, when I came back to read my documents, I don’t want to read the markdown, I want to read the formatted text. Don’t get me started on bullet lists
</rant>. sorry
You can, of course, use any editor that you prefer or don’t consider archaic and still save the files in DEVONthink. Ten years is a long time to be on the receiving end of head-butts! 
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I shifted to another note taking app so I was only headbutting for a week or so
Yes, I’m just messing with Pages, which seems to be working quite well.
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Yes, I frequently use Pages as a) I’ve let my Office subscription lapse, and b) it allows integrating text and images really well–something people (cool-kids) seem to wish that Markdown would allow. Enjoy.
We have been over the pros and cons of files formats here quite often. TL;DR: there’s no silver bullet. Every format has its strong points and its weaknesses.
You must figure out what’s important for you and then choose the format that comes closest to that. And bear in mind that it will have it’s weaknesses, too.
Personally, I’d stay away from RTF. But that’s just me.
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