Your favorite format for notes?

Yep. I had seen that as well, but I’ve been using it for quite a while so I wasn’t sure it would ever get out of beta. :slight_smile:

Thanks for clarifying for me.

@tudoreynon, @arasmus, no problem, sorry I couldn’t actually prepare them better for sharing by writing explanations for each of them (would take some time since there are over 60 macros and shortcuts, I think). Also apologies for the bits in Portuguese here and there.

I don’t think you’ll need them, but here are the text factories used by some of the macros:

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That was great. One has to work a little bit what Keyboard Maestro macros are for usually and how they work. Play with them a bit. Really thanks again.

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Longest. Beta. Ever :stuck_out_tongue:

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Shortest. Memory. Ever. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I have no idea what you’re referring to :roll_eyes: :stuck_out_tongue:

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My bread-and-butter notes format is RTF. I’m not comfortable with the “double-think” that’s needed to master MD.

Plus, 95% of my database are captures from websites, which are also made best as RTF in most cases, to get pictures, diagrams etc. along with the text.

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I have to admit, the biggest thing I miss about Evernote/OneNote is the wealth of note formatting options (and convenience of use). I use RTFs for my text notes in DevonThink, but I do miss features like tickboxes, paragraph styles, horizontal lines, etc. Paragraph styles in particular would make formatting far easier.

Of course, the gold standard would be Microsoft Word-level formatting within DevonThink, which would definitely save a lot of time on my academic writing.

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O que? Didn’t notice.

As always, best efforts are highly appreciated!

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Honestly Andreas it becomes second nature very quickly. If you start on some apps they will sort of highlight the markup. Ulysses is a the best one I know of for doing that. You can just use the title markup at first and progress from there. It really is easy.

Yet another vote for Markdown. It’s future proof, can be edited in all kinds of software, and is incredibly light on disk space. I even capture web pages as clutter-removed Markdown when possible, partly because HTML captures tend to be so bloated.

Would love if DEVONthink had checkbox support in markdown, but other than that it has everything I need.

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FWIW, I’m probably writing something like 95% in Markdown, 4% in LaTeX and 1% the rest. One tool that I’ve found to be very useful is Marked, it makes it easy to translate to various formats. For writing mostly BBEdit but also Bear and Ulysses,

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most of them are Markdown, either directly in DT or using 3rd party app iA Writer - this was the most “annoying” part of moving from Evernote to DT - DT holds documents, Evernote creates documents :slight_smile:
If there is a need to have a more “complex” or “beautiful” note I’m using Pages, Numbers or Keynote - works well on iOS, too (after finding the way through all the groups and sub-groups and sub-sub-groups in the Files.app accessing DT databases and then the document…)

@BLUEFROG and I have had this conversation many times. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: And while I can see the value of MD for some forms of notetaking, it doesn’t work as well for me as RTF does.

The visual cues of my text formatting (e.g. bold, italic, highlights) are a key part of the information contained within my notes. Being able to see that formatting immediately and constantly is a part of my writing process, making it easier for me to write, read, and edit.

So if I have to edit the text separately from viewing it (like in DT), it becomes much too clumsy, and having the text littered with HTML-style tags adds too much visual noise for me. MD editors like Typora which let you edit and preview at the same time do make MD more useful. But this means relying on yet another app (with an unknown future, and which hangs constantly for me) to make my notetaking work. Whereas good ol’ WYSIWYG rich text editing just works.

As for the argument that MD is more future proof — sure, it’s raw text. Then again, RTF has been around since the late 80s so I really doubt support for it will vanish soon.

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I agree. While I can see the advantage of using MD in some circumstances, it’s not for me. Too much time managing text instead of just writing text.

Unfortunately RTF is not a solution even with the Devonthink universe – it’s basically view only on DTTG (and there are very few RTF apps on iOS to use as external editors – or there were when I last went round the ‘which format’ loop and those didn’t work well. Perhaps that’s changed?). You can’t even convert any clippings to RTF in the app. Not being able to annotate your notes is a pretty serious drawback on a device made for annotation.

So whichever format you use there are significant compromises, and which you prefer depends on which compromises cause more frustration… I usually feel the ability to clip/write on iOS and Linux / Emacs is more important – for a few months – then I go through a phase of liking the ease of linking of RTF in DT3 and I swap over, only to get frustrated with the uselessness of the format on iOS and swap back again.

Yeah. You’d think by now someone would have invented an open, simple, and WYSIWIG text format. Why (says the non-programmer) is that such a hard thing to do?

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I suspect there are thousands of programmers who could devise an open simple wysiwyg text format – the problem is getting everyone to agree which one of them is the best. It’s a typical human problem, not a technical one, I think. (Speaking as a typical human who can never agree with anyone…)

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+1 to Markdown:

  • Light editing & capturing - DT3 & DTTG
  • Content-wise writing & complex editing: iA Writer for iOS and Mac. iCloud folder of iA Writer documents is indexed in appropriate database Inbox, then replicated where needed (you should replicate a group - if you don’t want to repeat the same replication scheme on a per-file basis). You can start a quick note in iA Writer for iOS - very handy, then you can automatically find it in DT3 and continue. And vice-versa. All changes sync on the fly, you may even edit in parallel in DT3, iA on the Mac and iA on the iOS

RTF

I use it almost exclusively as an Annotation to any DT Item. The main reason - is the ease of use for RTF links to pages of PDF, topics of OmniOutliners docs, web pages, BusyCal events, Airmail letters, other DT3 Items and etc. I have a short script which converts any address to RTF wiki-like link with the speed of a shortcut.

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Oh, I’ve just forgotten one other good use of RTF: when I drag an e-mail from Airmail to DT3 it automatically dismantles into a nice RTF (body) and all attachments (if any). This RTF stays connected to the original email in Airmail, so you can just answer directly from DT, or go to this email in Airmail.