In trying to get rid of every siloed writing app, I am in the process of migrating every note-taking app to DEVONthink, as markdown notes. Having all notes, files, folders, pdfs, bookmarks with regards to one topic in one place has a tremendous value.
In this process I migrated 13k notes from Evernote, several thousand notes from Bear Writer app and notes generated in half a dozen legacy apps (Ecco Pro, AskSam, and many other).
Now I realize that the mobile writing experience in DTTG is not ideal, at least for me.[^1]. So I tend to keep Ulysses App (and/or iA Writer) as a note taking app, at least on my iDevices.
iA Writer keeps the notes in plain markdown format, Ulysses on the other hand saves the notes as Textbundle files albeit with opaque filenames. But I can add the paths of the notes of these apps as indexed folders to DEVONthink, so that the notes are visible in DEVONthink. Regulary I keep moving the notes generated in those apps into the appropriate (project) folders in DT.
What are your experiences regarding external writing apps? Do you start your writing in DT? Or do you start writing in an external app (Word, Nisus, iA, etc) and add them to DT? Or leave them in external folders and let DT index them?
Would be interested in knowing what others are using / doing.
Why I ask
My problem is this: Ulysses app is so comfortable to write with and organize my notes, that I tend to start keeping my writing (ideas, journaling, drafts for longer text etc) in it. And I don’t like the idea of having a parallel organizational tool. That breaks my intention to have everything in one place. And I am reckoning that some of the DT pros out there must have gone trough similar experience. I’d like to know what their approach is after several years of using DT.
[^1]: Syncing my databases takes forever and a day via local network, so my mobile notes always lag behind my notes on my Mac in DT3. Also, I cannot pinch-zoom some of my note-types (don’t know which). Finally finding and editing a note is slow, error-prone and not fun at all.