I have been using DEVONthink for 3-4 years and am very happy with the product. Today, I listened to David Sparks interview David Roth on the MacPowerUsers podcast about NotePlan. By searching this forum, I see that NotePlan has been occasionally mentioned in various threads.
Quick question: Does anyone see value in using DT and NotePlan together? Right now, I limit my usage to BBEdit (for editing markdown files), saving them in DT, and I uses\ Apple Notes, Calendar and Reminders respectively. Does NotePlan duplicate features of DT that I have missed? Any thoughts would be appreciated!
Noteplan is a very different application than DEVONthink, not in the same category at all.
And I would test it out but it requires creating an account. I shouldn’t need an account to create a note or a plan. However, on the face of it I see no benefit or detriment to using both.
Why are you using BBEdit for Markdown editing then saving into DEVONthink, instead of just creating and editing Markdown in our app? I love BBEdit for many reasons but I wouldn’t think to use it for Markdown composition.
Thanks for the response, esp. re: your observations of NotePlan. I probably will forgo any additional fragmentation of my workflow, and stick with DEVONthink for data storage and the Apple apps for notes, calendar, and reminders.
Regarding BBEdit, I produce a religious journal each month using BBEdit and use Pandoc to convert the markdown files into PDF ePub, Docx, and TXT formats. This conversion process occurs at the terminal level using a shell script to perform the conversions via Pandoc.
BBEdits search and replace capabilities, including its RegEx functions, allow me to automate 100s of individual editing steps which are necessary to convert various manuscripts into the master document, and standardize the articles according to our style guidelines. I use Marked2 (by Brett Terpstra) for quick and dirty previews of the master document.
For simple markdown files, creating them directly in DEVONthink works just fine. However, for more complex work, BBEdit has become my main editing tool.
I’m not convinced you can really do a comparison between the two apps, they do completely different things.
I know NotePlan often positions itself as a knowledge management system, but it isn’t really. It’s just a really great planner and task manager. DT is a database system that is really good at knowledge management.
I use NotePlan and DT, and am in them all day every day. NotePlan is my task manager and where I manage my projects and day-to-day. DT is where I manage my knowledge and research (and life admin).
They don’t really intersect, except: I archive old notes that were in NotePlan into a DT database. This includes old months, and notes relating to completed projects. I do this so that NotePlan only has current work. Because NotePlan is based on text files, it is very simple to move those files to DT when you want to.
None of this requires a special integration. I use markdown for NotePlan, and markdown for DT, so everything just works.
You don’t actually need an account for NotePlan (or at least I didn’t when I started using it a couple of years ago). You can just use iCloud to sync, and the files are stored natively in your file system. There is now a browser version of the app, I assume you’d need an account to access that (security and all), but that’s a newer function and I’ve never used it.
This makes sense. Currently, I use a post-it note on my desk for the 3-5 tasks that I need to perform each day. This system works better than the software solutions that I was using (Things 3, TaskPaper, etc.). It is always visible, easily updated, and allows me to focus on WORK rather than PLANNING to work. Apple Calendar and Reminders have improved over the years so they are serving their respective purposes for long term, date oriented commitments.
Thanks for all the comments on NotePlan. The latest Mac Power Users podcast focused on this app, and it sounded intriguing, but do I really need ANOTHER software solution?
NotePlan and DevonThink work very well together and are both wonderful apps with keen developers. I use this setup since NotePlan 1.0, about 8 years ago. All you have to do is to replicate the NotePlan folder containing the daily notes (1 markdown file per day) in DevonThink.
In this way NotePlan becomes the front end for the calender notes, that are quickly to manipulate and syncing well to apple calender and Iphone. All notes can be searched and edited from DevonThink, where you can use the advanced features like “see also”.
I highly recommend this setup, if you have a strict time scedule to follow in your life.
Did you intend “replicate”, or “index”. It seems “index” makes more sense with regard to working back and forth between an app and DEVONthink.
I have forgotten to mention, that NotePlan has an unique and well-thought search feature: Search results do not show the full document, but single lines with a bullet (* or -) at the beginning. This allows easy task management. The “data element” of NotePlan is each line of a note (Markdown document) with a bullet.
If I understand correctly, you are saying that NP and DT compliment each other, with the former excelling at Calendar/Scheduling/Tasks functions, and the latter excelling at as a database storage for your data (which includes access to the markdown files that are used within NP for scheduling via the indexing ability of DT)?
I have been experimenting with Noteplan, but probably will stick with Devonthink.
The best feature I think is the daily note that brings in your calendar and reminders into one markdown note. I know Devonthink can create a journal note (and I use this), but is there anyway of bringing in the reminders and calendar entries?
However, on the face of it I see no benefit or detriment to using both.
