I’ve used SOHO Notes for years but I got DTPRO Office for the OCR translation on scanning. I can take my scanned doc from DT and drop it into SOHO Notes. I’ve been trying DT as my organizer instead of SOHO Notes but I must admit I find it very confusing. I read the manual and still find it confusing LOL.
DT seems to have a lot of functionality but its confusing to access it. Between these two programs where SOHO Notes is simpler does anyone have an opinion which one would be better to work with. My info mgt needs are probably not that complex but I log tons of notes. I must admit I really like searchable PDF’s that you get from DT.
I’m obviously biased (see signature), so I won’t offer my opinion as to which is better
But if you can list/describe some of the things that you find confusing, perhaps I can explain why they exist in their current form, or help with workarounds or suggestions to make them a little easier. If nothing else, it’s possible that your input will be useful to DEVONtechnologies as they continue to develop DTPO.
Just as one example, I often have a couple of notes that relate to each other. Jumping between them helps me understand the problem etc. I’m not sure how you easily link notes except I did find the annotate command. Yet, sometimes I’ve created the two notes and I realize they are related. Is there anyway to easily relate created notes to each other.
That’s a good one I agree, that would be a handy feature. I’ll pass it up the chain.
I’m not aware of any built-in method to do such a thing with non-TXT/RTF documents. One possibility (although this might not fit in with your general usage scenario) is to insert the name of a related record into the comments of each file and use a script (kept in your DTPO scripts folder) to open a window for the related document.
For instance:
tell application "DEVONthink Pro"
set theSelection to the selection
set theComment to comment of item 1 of theSelection
if the length of theComment is not 0 then
set theDatabase to the current database
set theDatabaseRecords to search theComment within titles
if the (count of theDatabaseRecords) is greater than 0 then
set theFirstRecord to item 1 of theDatabaseRecords
open window for record theFirstRecord
end if
end if
end tell
Depending on how else you want this to behave, you might do something like:
tell application "DEVONthink Pro"
set theSelection to the selection
set theSelectionTitle to the name of item 1 of theSelection
set theComment to comment of item 1 of theSelection
if the length of theComment is not 0 then
set theDatabase to the current database
set theDatabaseRecords to search theComment within titles
if the (count of theDatabaseRecords) is greater than 0 then
set theFirstRecord to item 1 of theDatabaseRecords
set the comment of theFirstRecord to theSelectionTitle
open window for record theFirstRecord
end if
end if
end tell
which sets the comment of the referenced document to contain the title of the current document, ensuring there’s always a bidirectional link.
If you want multiple documents to be linked to multiple documents, the best way is probably to keep all of those documents in a group together – or keep aliases in a group together – and then modify this script to open up a window for the group.
Does this method work okay for you? I understand that it probably seems a bit hackish… and another user or developer might have a far superior solution… but it’s the best I can think of right now, in lieu of the function actually being implemented in DT
Thanks. I’m glad you’re going to pass this a long as a feature request. This is where I must admit I find DTPRO confusing and complex. I appreciate you writing those scripts out for me but I know nothing of AppleScript so it adds to my sense of wow this is a bit more than I can chew. The other thing you mentioned is non-text/rtf docs. Often I find I’ve written out a note in SOHO and then I’ve created say a pdf doc from a Safari page or I’ve created an image note and I realize that these notes are related to my written note. This is where I use their linking feature and bounce from one note to another. Where its most handy is when you’ve created this a while back and forget these relationships. By looking at the attachment pane I’ll notice I’ve got something linked to something else so its helpful in rounding out my info gathering and it saves time as I don’t have to manually look for what items might be related.
I used Soho Notes for a long time. It is nowhere near as powerful, and as useful, as DT. You don’t have to be a technical wizard to get a lot out of DT. I found that SN is fine for the odd notes but the more data you build up in your database the more that you will appreciate DT.
