Hi there,
I’m just getting into the habit of storing useful web pages into my DT database, as opposed to a dedicated Read It Later service.
The main thing I’m needing to decide is what format I want to store the web page as, so I wanted to ask about the pros and cons of each.
I would think that if I want to annotate the web page later (such as with an Apple Pencil), I should be using PDF. However, what are the advantages of Web Archive?
Are there are any major differences when it comes to how DT treats each format?
Thanks a lot for the help
Web Archive is an Apple “special” format (basically a HTML copy) that they say on their developer’s documentation it’s depreciated. I can only guess why.
PDF is an ISO standard (Adobe made it so many years ago, ISO 32000-2). Unlikely to disappear in most people’s lifetimes.
IMHO, the issue isn’t really how DEVONthink “treats each format”. It handles both. You can read in the Handbook how to do things with each. The issue is what do YOU want to do with the documents you save?
I save more web articles that I probably need to, but I use them for future reference. For most I create PDF’s from the Reader view (works for most web sites) as it’s strips out all the junk. I just want content. I send that PDF to PDFPen where delete extraneous pages then I run the file through the “Create Optimised PDF…” to resample all images >75dpi to 75dpi. That shrinks MBs to KBs. I’ve learned 75dpi is good enough and I never need the high res. That reduced file is put into DEVONthink in which from there I do all the normal DEVONthink things. Someday I’ll automate this process, when I figure out how.