<snip>

Me: here’s a suggestion: create a group at the top called *inbox. that way it will always sort at the top of the list. then go to preferences>import and at the bottom where it says “new notes:” select this new group. that way whenever you import something, it automatically goes there. i also have an applescript that imports emails into that box.

then, get in the habit of doing all your work inside that inbox. then once you get a project underway in your inbox you can later move it to a different group. in other words, work first, organize later. but that doesn’t work if you don’t corral the work into one place.

if you set that up, i have another workflow idea that could help you. but you’d need to try that first. the second step requires the first. 


Him: I’ve done my preliminary work according to your direction for the Devon class. *Inbox is in force with all info currently in it. 


Me: not all groups. just current groups. and current documents that aren’t grouped. once you are done, there should be no ungrouped documents in your top hierarchy. They should all be corralled inside of the *inbox group. 


Him: Actually, no groups at all. I’ve just been throwing stuff in willy nilly until I get around to dealing with it. You’ve now forced my hand. 
not all data. just current new data. 


Me: the thing that drove me nuts was that everytime i created something new, it sorted it alphabetically in the whole file structure. 
4:05 PM 
Me: so i needed a place to corral new stuff until i dealt with it later. 
Him: I used to have very specific groups; numbered and named before the crash of 05. I have a hard copy list of those groups. 
that allowed me to clean up my overall file structure. 
I like it 


Technorati Tags: devonthink, mac, wiki

Me: the next thing to do is create a document called “*current projects list” inside the *inbox

Him: a text document?


Me: yes. or rich text.


Him: preference?


Me: i always make things rich text because it gives me more options if i ever decide to use them.


Him: rich text.


Him: done. It went to the top of the text files but under one safari doc and one pdf. 
hmm… i wonder why it did that.

Me: here’s where the magic comes from. i learned this trick from a wiki program (voodoo pad lite) and realized i could do it in devon.


Me: we’re going to pretend you don’t have groups yet for any projects.


Him: technically I don’t


Me: ok.


Me: inside *inbox create 3 different groups. “sermon writing” “sunday evening” “men’s ministry” and i don’t mean nested inside each other. 
3 separate groups. 
now go back to your *current projects list. 
type: 
on the first line: 
sermon writing 
second line “sunday evening” (no quotes) 
3rd line “men’s ministry” 
4:10 PM 
click <apple> <s> and tell me if the text for those lines were suddenly underlined. they may or may not. i don’t know if it will automatically create wiki links to groups or if it only does that for file names. 


Him: nope 


Me: ok. then highlight the text for the first line, right click, select “link to” and mouse to “sermon writing” inside your *inbox 
once you get the hang of creating links, the world is your oyster. 
..because you are no longer bound to the structure of alphabetical or date sorting. you can sort things willy nilly. 


Him: Previously I had everything in a numeric system. Didn’t love it or hate. Just used it that way. 


Me: the problem with numeric is when you want to put something in between 1 and 2. 


Me: i was doing that too to try to keep things sorted. i do this now instead. 


Me: i write my sermons hyperlinked now. 


Him: Actually I used 100 for the group name and then 101, 102, etc. for each file name 
4:15 PM 


Me: you can also do this. 


Me: create a text file and name it flibbergooten 


Him: where? 


Me: inside *inbox



Me: then go back to your *current projects list and type the line flibbergooten inside the text document. 
after you’ve typed it inside *current projects list, press <apple> <s> 
you’ll have automatically created a link to the new document you created. 


Me: you can go in the opposite direction too. you can type some phrase, highlight it, right click “make link” and it will make a link to a file that doesnt’ exist. click on the link, and it will create a new file inside of your current group, usually *inbox, linked from that document. 
and you can move these linked documents and files anywhere you like and they are still linked. 
so what this allows me to do is keep a running projects list. but eventually, i sort the groups back into the main directory and out of the inbox. this keeps the inbox clean, and keeps the groups organized. when i need to work on something, i don’t need to remember where i put it, or scroll to it, i just click in the link in the projects list. 


Me: anyway, this completely changed the way i work. 


Me: for example, when i’m writing a sermon, i create a group called “20051030 sermon”for 2005, october 30th. sometimes i add a subject to it. btw, indexing by date is done best by using year, month, day, that way all documents with that naming scheme will automatically numerically sort by year, month, day. If you do it the traditional american way, of month, day year, it will sort by month, but then with the new year, it’ll get all thrown off. 
my first document is “*outline 20051030″
then i start creating text documents for sections as i work on them, but i don’t try to organize them. i just make them. 
i then use the *outline file to create links to the sections of the sermon and i work on each section independently. *outline becomes the outline, with all the content in the separate files. 
then i just cut and paste the completed text into apple pages when i’m done.

Did you know that since Mac OS 10.3 the Mac has a built in converter for Word .doc documents?

This means that Textedit can open Word documents much like Wordpad opens them in Windows.

This is fabulous, because I have been trying to migrate everything over to either Apple Pages or Devonthink. One reason is that i can sometimes wind up have upwards of 16 applications open including memory hogs like Microsoft Word. This can be a problem with slowing other apps down and winding up with memory warnings. So i’m trying to not launch word anymore except when absolutely nothing else will do.

I just did a “get info” on a .doc document and changed the default application to open it with to Textedit. Voila. All my .docs open with Textedit. Low memory. Less bells and whistles. Wonderful.

Technorati Tags: devonthink, mac

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Lifehacker. Very fun.

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Metablogs. Blogs about bloggin

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Yes, I keep groups(folders) for everything I put in Devon. At first I had broad categories filled with subcategories and subsubcategories. But following my study of Getting Things Done (great book btw) I decided I wanted a flatter file system. So I moved everything out of the broad categories. It’s easier for me to find things this way. Devon technologies says that if you use subgroups, in order for the search to work the best, you should not mix groups and documents in the same group. Documents should be kept in their own subgroup.

You mention being dissatisfied with your groups. I understand this. If you read in the blogosphere, and are familiar with del.icio.us you may have come across the word “folksonomies.” A folksonomy is a personal taxonomy: in other words, how you choose to tag/label/categorize/group your own material.

There is a movement called “The semantic web” which has wanted there to be a formal taxonomy for information using metadata so that it can be accessed more accurately then through google, et al. Del.icio.us created a phenomenon by allowing users to tag their bookmarks with any word they chose (only one word, so Getting Things Done becomes GTD or GettingThingsDone, called camelcase in Wikis) and then tags and user bookmarks are available to anyone who wants to see. Folksonomies are also the aggregate of everybody’s tagging. Needless to say, semantic philosophers and researchers are having a hayday with this phenomenon.

Using Devon, I’ve become aware that I have an initially unconscious folksonomy and that I am capable of a conscious folksonomy. By this I mean that I naturally tag/group devon and del.icio.us entries with whatever whim I fancy. But over time, I have the ability to go back and analyze my patterns and make conscious changes to how I’ve stored things and how I will change my tagging/grouping habits in the future.

An example of this is that the Bible is present in my devon database a lot because of sermons. I have had to think through how I would tag scripture references so that I would always have access to them in search. I realized that I needed to do three things consistently. The first is that I have to spell out the entire reference, without using abbreviations. So, Ephesians is always Ephesians, never Eph. Next, in documents that have a scripture reference, I have to annotate each verse, not a collection of verses. So, Ephesians 2:1-3 becomes Ephesians 2:1 Ephesians 2:2 and Ephesians 2:3. The final task is to include the actual text of each verse. This makes the scripture that I’ve used in devon immediately accessible either by verse number, or by text search.

In many ways we are becoming our own librarians. But the beauty of a folksonomy approach is that we develop our own catalog system in a way that makes sense to us.

My most recent hack has been saving links to my Devonthink when I am doing offline reading. I spend most of my mornings at either Barnes and Nobles coffee shop or at a country restaurant in Buhl, Idaho studying and sifting through emails and feeds from weblogs on my laptop. Unfortunately, neither place has free wireless so I am working offline. While doing this, I often discover links to webpages that I am interested in visiting when I get back online.

I created a group in Devonthink for this purpose. I labeled the group “*Internet.” By putting the asterisk at the beginning, the group is automatically sorted to the top of my list. Then, when I find a website I want to visit later, I copy the URL and create a new link in my *Internet group. Then when I am back online I can go through each link and decide if it’s worth keeping or not. If it is, I post it to my del.icio.us account or import the webpage into Devonthink Pro (I’m a beta-tester). This has really helped me “catch” a lot of webpages that I would otherwise have missed

I also use a program called MacSword for Bible study. It has many modules to download for commentaries, Bible translations, dictionaries, lexicons, etc. A windows version can be found

While using it recently, I discovered that if I pasted a copy of the text from Macsword into Devonthink, the hyperlinks to the verse in MacSword were still alive in Devon. For example, if I pasted the text of Ephesians 1:13 into Devonthink, there would be hyperlink verse number preceding the text. If I clicked on that hyperlink, MacSword would launch and that verse would pop open.

It didn’t take long to realize that I could type in a link in Devonthink, make it active, and it would always jump to MacSword. This is a remarkable feature. To do so, you type sword://KJV/Ephesians20%1:13, and then from the Devonthink menu, click “Make link.”

The next step is to hopefully have an applescript that will take the text “Ephesians 1:13″ or “KJV Ephesians 1:13″ and automatically turn it into a Macsword link. I’ve asked the techies at Devon-technologies for help, and maybe they’ll have time.

Hope this is useful to more people then myself. I think it’s a great tool for infomanagement and for linking to the Bible from within a document.