SUGGESTION:
Now what if you’re a scientist, a geek, a software nerd and DEVONthink appeals to you right, especially with the advanced AI and carry the world into your phone (I think it was on one of the marketing pages)
Now you come back to Earth and want to make your basic notes within Devonthink, the “FILENOTES” category - this is great, has text coloring size links diversity
BUT Add equations - NOPE..
Okay lets move over to MARKDOWN .. maybe I can put in my equations there..
What does this sentence mean? Which lines and which notes do you want to link?
Not to mention that “ugly” looking MD notes can easily be made to look like you want in preview (which may not necessarily be what anyone else wants, btw) by providing your own CSS for styling the rendered MD.
I’m a little confused. What do you want to achieve? You want your equation to be displayed inline? And modifying the look is not to difficult using css. I like this one ( Tufte CSS )
It certainly looks nice. But the code is at least five years old, and things have moved on since then. And even five years ago, something like html { font-size: 15px; } was a bad idea. As was/is body { width: 87.5%;}. Then there are styles for p.subtitle, article and bunch of other selectors that make no sense at all in the context of DT.
As a freely available CSS might be a good starting point, but I’d suggest that people look at the code and decide what they really need. And if what they see in the CSS might be written better in 2026.
Much of the CSS floating around in the Net has been written for specific MD formatters. What DT (or rather MultiMarkdown) renders to might be very different and not match the selectors in the style sheet.
Yes, I agree with you that it might not suit everyone. But Edward Tufte has put a lot of thought into visual presentation ( Edward Tufte - Wikipedia ) and my eyes like large font size
When you want to link to specific region eg of a pdf of document then you can “copy selection link” .. The post wasn’t about this detail but would be really handy to have it. It as least works with pdf.
What would be a great step forward is writing maths into Devonthink document in a more fluid fashion. Especially without the ugly scaffolding (this surrounding latex disappears when you press enter). This is exemplified in Bear, so you’ll get the point more clearly if you actually try the entry process of maths there.
If you get the chance to check the implementation in Bear, it manages to stitch everything together really well. Here’s how I was seeing that type of result within DT:
What would be great to achieve is:
(1) For one to be within the frame of “filenotes” as there is flexibility on how you can adjust font sizes, and color.
(2) To be able to be writing a sentence, a note, and then continue with an associated math thought by typing $ … bit of latex….$ and have it rendered just below the sentence text.
(3) Both the above preserve the fluency of thought .. to be able to write text and maths together within one document (Bear provides an excellent illustration of this goal)
With respect to using css - I haven’t been able to get within the frame of “filenotes” which would be ideal. Although filenotes is html based there seem to be some limitations.
the filenotes seem to respond well to magnification.. If I use the mouse “parting finger gesture” it works well, but the magnification setting is easily lost, when using the navigation keys . So I use the keyboard shortcut to magnify and preserve the large font size
You want Live Preview? I usually write using Side-by-Side and that is enough for me. I actually find the disappearance of the scaffolding annoying when writing.
I’m not sure what you mean here as this surely your own nomenclature.
We seem to be far from cleanly typing an equation into Devonthink file and having it rendered without the scaffolding.
That is an incorrect assessment. You have to type the same “scaffolding” in Bear.app as you do in DEVONthink. It’s no “cleaner” than DEVONthink in terms of input. The only real difference is the hybrid rendering hides the Markdown due to a preference being set…
This is a premature conclusion. I was not referring to the action of typing scaffolding in Bear. I was also not trying to highlight scaffolding as you have done in this post..
Bear turns off scaffolding - IN THE COMPOSITION WINDOW - by default (it stays for seconds while you’re typing latex or other) and for good reason with years of development to do it..
Note DT cannot turn off its scaffolding in the composition window .. it leaves an ugly trail. And has to use two screens. This is not the best I’m afraid - especially if you’re interested in the maths alone.
Here’s the side by side issue that I’m coming up against - and I’m preferring to do maths on the left window.
A formatted note is HTML. Nothing to do with markdown.
Perhaps you could take a step back and try to describe concisely what you’re doing where and what you perceive as shortcomings in DT. I for one don’t follow anymore.
DT Formatted notes is where I’d like development of DT to write equations in one composition window like Bear ( benefit = reduces writing distraction).
It could also be DT development of markdown. Either format would be fine. I just don’t want the writing distraction that currently irritates me when I want to make a note that has both maths and word.
You can see the DT two screen issue which is distracting for me writing maths, maybe not you
Why do I want this ? - I work in science. I’m forever writing in English and Maths. Separately.. I used handwritten notes and that is okay. But then Bear provided the first non distracting way of me entering them both, perfectly! Without being visually distracted. Really, that is a godsend! I just can’t do anything like it with DT.
Of course I already do. Keeping more with DT would be handy though as there are things bear doesn’t do. Call it computer ergonomics
BTW I’m not advocating Bear - I’m finding I’m having to illustrate with it, as it happened to solve a maths distraction problem me. DT currently is not good here. However it is wonderful in other regards and I’d like to move more of my activity to DT.
It was actually a marketing note within the DT webpage that got me here in the first place, and it asked why don’t you write more of your notes in DT? This maths distraction issue is why I dont.. (currently). So I thought I’d better make the suggestion. Maths after all is just another language like English and it would be nice to add it precisely, seamlessly.
You can add mathematical expressions to MD notes in DT. You could also use MathML in HTML or a Formatted Note. Or you could (La)TeX to begin with – there are several possibilities. DT is not a “math expression” app; it’s a document management system.
If there are other programs you can write your stuff more comfortably with, do it and store the resulting documents in DT. They try to accommodate many needs, but if I were you, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for a re-make of Bear’s “math experience” in DT’s markdown editor.
I was just saying in my other post - it was something on the DT website that put to me that I should be adding more notes directly within DT, and then I thought I can’t really get into DT what I want, despite all the formats and intelligence. I agree with you, it’s probably not going to happen. But I at least wanted to suggest in the hope that.
The most useful app I use for maths is Mathpix - but I still get most smiles from the Bear entry method
BTW I couldn’t get MathML to work on a formatted note… any pointers appreciated. It would help with some of my workflow.
I doubt that it works directly in DT, given that the documentation has this to say about formatted notes:
Bear in mind, the underlying markup in formatted notes can’t be edited in DEVONthink.
You could create a new formatted note and then edit it in BBEdit or something like that. But MathML is, IMO, not something one would want to type.
Perhaps you’re really better off with (La)TeX or whatever Bear does. I see why Bear’s approach looks appealing, but I don’t like it. Mixing markup and its rendering is definitely not for me.
I can’t comment on DT’s marketing blurb, but I wouldn’t have assumed that they position the app to help with havy math-biased note taking.
