Formatted and rich text notes seem to have only minor differences — why does DT support both?
Formatted notes are basically HTML. RTF is completely different and not even close to HTML.
Why do you think they are nearly the same?
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From the manual:
Formatted Notes: allow to write simple formatted text including embedded images that can be viewed on any system with just a web browser. While the range of formatting options is smaller that that of rich text they are much more compatible to today’s standards.
They look nearly the same. They’re both formatted text.
If you put a formatted note and RTF in front of a non-technical user, they would have to look long and hard to see the difference.
Why is it important to support both HTML and RTF document types? How does that benefit the user?
I guess that this has to do with legacy support. I think formatted notes came first, and rich text came later, and DT continues to support both as part of its support for future-proofing. However, if that’s the case, why did DT even bother supporting rich text when it already supported formatted text? Maybe to permit support for third-party rich text editors?
Where do the notes come from, and what does the user ultimately want to do with them? Some tools handle RTF better, some tools handle HTML better, and therefore some workflows will be more easily accomplished with one or the other.
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why did DT even bother supporting rich text when it already supported formatted text?
Your timeline is backwards. RTF has been around a long time and was supported early on.
I guess that this has to do with legacy support.
No, it’s not legacy support. RTF is not a mobile-native format. It never has been. What do you think Evernote’s .enex files are? They’re certainly not RTF(D). They’re HTML. We didn’t make formatted notes to compete with Evernote, but (1) as a format for converted .enex files and (2) as a mobile format that could be viewed in a standard browser.
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Then the answer to my question is that rich text came to DevonThink first, and formatted note support was added later to support converted .enex files and as a mobile format that could be used in a standard browser. And that both formats continue to be supported for compatibility with different external tools.
Is that correct?
Yes, that’s correct.
What format would be your preference?
My choice is formatted note (html). It seems future proof with support from web browsers
Microsoft stopped updates to the rtf specification in 2008
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HTML is not formatted text. It is a markup language, loosely related to xml and very loosely to sgml. Both of which are not „formatted text“ either.
Formatting HTML is done with CSS.
Just because things look similar on the surface does not mean that their implementations are similar
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Cool, I’m learning from you guys 
I converted this rtf:
Need kitchen
Processor
Panela pressão
Fondue Rechaud
and got the (formatted note) html below. Cool to see the - meta name=“DT:isEditableNote” content=“Yes”
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html dir="auto" lang="en">
<head><meta name="DT:isEditableNote" content="Yes"/>
<style>
<!--
body { margin: 1.5em; }
div { padding: 0px; margin: 0px; }
.sheet { font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; }
table.sheet { background-color: #FFFFFF; margin: 3px 0; border-left: 1px solid #999; border-top: 1px solid #999; border-bottom: 1px solid #999; }
caption.sheet { font-weight: bold; font-size: 24px; color:rgb(128, 128, 128); margin: 0px 0px 10px 0px; }
tr.head { background-color: rgb(188, 194, 199); text-align: left; }
tr.main { background-color: #FFFFFF; }
tr.alt { background-color: #EDF3FE; }
tr > td.row { border-bottom: 1px solid #ddd; }
th.row { font-size: 10pt; padding: 3px 10px 3px 10px; border-right: 1px solid #999; }
td.row { font-size: 10pt; padding: 3px 10px 3px 10px; vertical-align: top; border-right: 1px solid #999; }
.info_top { align: left; font-size: 9pt; border-bottom: 1px solid #999; margin-bottom: 10px; }
.info_bottom { align: left; font-size: 9pt; border-top: 1px solid #999; margin-top: 10px; }
@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
body, table {
color: #fff;
background-color: hsl(0, 0%, 16%);
}
a:link, a:visited, a:active {
color: hsl(218, 100%, 72%);
}
table.sheet { background-color: #000000; }
tr.head { background-color: rgb(68, 62, 57); }
tr.main { background-color: #000000; }
tr.alt { background-color: #130C01; }
}
font.font0 { font-family: 'Morandi'; font-size: 19.0px; }
font.font1 { font-family: 'Morandi'; font-size: 16.0px; }
-->
</style>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
<meta name="generator" content="DEVONthink 3.9.8"/>
<title>Need kitchen.rtf</title>
</head>
<body>
<div align="justify"><font class="font0">Need kitchen
</font></div>
<div align="left"> <br/></div>
<div align="justify"><font class="font1">Processor
</font></div>
<div align="justify"><font class="font1">Panela pressão
</font></div>
<div align="justify"><font class="font1">Fondue Rechaud</font></div>
</body>
</html>
Indeed
Then I colored “Panela pressão” red, and of course the formatted not html changed to"
<div align="justify"><font class="font1" color="#ff2600"><i>Panela pressão</i></font></div>
Now, to some more serious questions.
I do love rtf, but the thing with character runs kind of makes working with it a bit hard, e.g., via Applescript.
The formatted notes (i.e., html) in DT make the taking notes experience I think as easy as rtf.
So to refer to @DTLow question above, is there anything against using it more widely?
I know it was introduced as a great way to deal with pesky Evernote files.
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If you want future-proof and tool agnostic, why not go all the way to Markdown? “Human-readable alternative to HTML” is one of its reasons for existing.
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Yep, I am going that direction - thanks for mentioning!
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I prefer wysiwyg editing/viewing; without looking at the underlying coding
Also, markdown is missing some html features; for example the tab key doesn’t work
I’m a bit sorry for slightly hijacking the thread, but I believe (hopefully) @Mitch_Wagner won’t object.
Yeah, I’ve been trying to get used to the edit/preview (I’ll age myself: design-time / runtime switching. I’ve been trying some code editors that let you see both side-by-side, helps me.
One funny thing, links copied from DT paste beautifully in DT’s md edit mode, but some other markdown tools don’t necessarily behave that nicely.
At least one very well known app, when I paste the DT link it doesn’t format it as an md link, just pastes the DT url.
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What are you trying to accomplish?
While the first part of the sentence is true, what has „the tab key“ to do with HTML? HTML is mostly agnostic re white space.
So, how does the tab key „work“ for you in HTML?
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And it’s a good format for clipping web pages as external resources like scripts, stylesheets and images are embedded if possible.
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