Using Sorter and Take Note

DEVONthink Tips
1

I love using the Sorter and I’ve issued a hotkey for the “Take Note” action. I would prefer the “Take Note” floating box to appear, but when the Sorter is running, it won’t. Only the “Take Note” within the Sorter. I have to quit the sorter to get the floating box.

Is there a way to have the hotkey for “Take Note” initiate the floating box, rather than within the Sorter, while the Sorter is running?

2

That’s not possible. But you can also access the “Take Note” panel via DEVONthink’s Dock menu.

3

I have found a way to get a global shortcut key for the “Take Note” floating panel. What I did was put together the following Applescript:

tell application “Dock”
activate
end tell
tell application “System Events”
tell process “Dock”
set frontmost to true
activate
tell list 1
perform action “AXShowMenu” of UI element “DEVONthink Pro”
delay .75 # necessary to give user time to release keys
repeat 5 times # count number of items to the one you want
key code 126 # up arrow
end repeat
delay 0.1
key code 36 # return key
end tell
end tell
end tell

What the script does is selects “Take Note” from DEVONthink’s dock menu.

I used Automator to create a new service and pasted the above script into the “Run Applescript” action in Automator. I set the “Service receives” to “no input” and saved it. Then I assigned it a shortcut key in System Preferences | Keyboard | Keyboard Shortcuts. That was the hardest part: finding a shortcut that wasn’t already taken! I settled on “Ctrl-Opt-Cmd-Shift =“

There are other ways to run the Applescript, you could use a launcher application like “Spark” (shadowlab.org/Software/spark.php) or save it as an application and put in in the Dock for one-click access.

Hope this helps someone.

4

Christian,
Thank for the pointer to open the Sorter’s Notetaker from the Dock. Is that still the main way to access the floating box in the middle of the screen? If it is, and it’s not too much trouble, I wonder if you could implement the script by Integ below – or something like it – as an addition to the other items in the DTP script folder (the one that automatically installs)? Having a preference for the Notetaker to open in the center of the screen is arguably a minor deal, but it does a lot to reduce the friction of note taking for DTP. Just having a keyboard shortcut that could bring the floating window to the front would be quite useful and signals the importance of the user’s own notes to the references in DTP.

Thanks,
Linn

5

Thanks for the suggestion but there are no such plans as a future release will completely revise the Sorter and note taking anyway.

6

Very interesting, Christian. Can you estimate the time to the release and sketch the broad outlines of the revision? I need to make choices on current resources, including workflow, for note taking (outside of DTP, e.g., Simplenote) and think about transitions between note taking strategy for a big research project just beginning.

Thanks, Linn

7

Sorry but we can’t comment on timeframes and release dates. I would operate under the status quo for now and plan accordingly.

8

Thanks, BLUEFROG. I’ll especially ponder the part about how to plan accordingly. 8)