I have over the years accumulated a number of text files each containing notes about ideas concerning my research. Notational Velocity has developed into a convenient to this information and I’d like to keep using it, but not as an alternative storage place besides Devonthink rather a convenient front end to it.
So far, this works well:
Put all those text files into NV
index this folder in DTPO
synchronize from time to time to keep track of new notes added within NV
What I haven’t been able to accomplish is how to add new notes or edit existing ones from within DTPO in a way that allows NV to see these. Whatever is modified or added to the folder that is owned by NV is ignored by NV and these does not seem to be an equivalent to DTPO’s sync command in NV. Or is there?
According to my experience this does not work without syncing to Simplenote. Although the simplicity is tempting I am certainly not putting my notes in unencrypted form at the disposal of a company with such fuzzy privacy terms. Yes, NV can encrypt your notes but syncing to Simplenote and encryption are mutually exclusive.
Over here, the technique suggested in the thread that Christian pointed to works just fine – cmd-d makes a note by making a copy of an older note, puts it into into the indexed NV data folder, and the note shows up instantly in NV. All without using Simplenote.
(To make this work, you need to configure NV to in Preferences > Notes to store and read notes in RTF format rather than a single database.)
It is in the group from within DTPO where your indexed NV notes are displayed that you select an existing note, click cmd-d to duplicate, and edit the name and content. This action (duplicating a note) cause it to remain as an indexed note and therefore be visible in NV.
Ah, now I got it, sorry for being a little slow. I kept trying duplicating a note I created inside DTPO which was of course invisible for NV to begin with so duplicating it changed nothing.
Once I duplicated and edited a note that was visible for NV all worked as described.