Then I remembered seeing an article on how to make a full-screen app in cocoa… That way I can do all my research, notetaking, and organization of larger writing projects in DT, then when I just want to focus in on one document and write I can clear away all distractions. I’ve looked all over for something to use in the meantime … looked at Ulysses and found even it to be needlessly complex for what I need: a minimalist text editor w/ full screen mode that will just get out of my way and let me write. I agree that full-screen mode is indispensable for really getting some writing done (especially for people for whom the coolness of their OS itself is a constant distraction ) … I sincerely hope that the DT developers will add a full-screen editing mode to a future release! I just made a little hack to TextEdit to make it do full screen … read on… I use Ulysses for actual writing (and the full screen mode is indispensable for serious writers). easily add a bibliographic reference for eachc note)? Could this be done with some sort of hyperlink / Wiki-style link. But how can I incorporate bibliographic labeling (i.e. Another MAJOR advantage of DEVONThink is that it allows me to incorporate other documents into the note-taking database (Word docs and pdfs of original docs). It isn’t as competent an outliner as HBN, but it’s a lot more robust and can easily export. I resorted to using SpellCatcher glossary entries for this, but it was a pain to update the SpellCatcher glossary every time I added a new bibliographic entry. It’s very competent abilities as an outliner solved many problems, but it’s not really robust, and it did pose the problem of how I could automate the bibliographical labeling of each note. But the records couldn’t be rearranged or reorganized, and it’s not that easy to export them (but not impossible, either). I initially used FileMaker Pro for this purpose, since you can design a FileMaker Pro database with lots of nice fields for searching, AND you can cross-reference it to an EndNote-generated bibliography database (I type the number of the reference in FileMaker Pro, and the author and title appear in the particular FileMaker Pro note record. I’ve been searching for the best note-taking program for a long time. Ability to import tab- and paragraph-delimited text files seems utterly essential. I greatly admire the whole premise of DEVONthink, however, and in theory would like to move my whole writing life to it. That seems very unwieldy and I hope I’m wrong about that. I’m brand-new to DT, but the column-style browser view leads me to assume (actually, fear) that each record would end up becoming a Group, with each field being a child item of the main text. I could send you tab-delimited records, too, but I can give examples of what I would want delimited by the tabs in each record: 1) Title or headline for the record, 2) Text of record, 3) Date of creation, 4) Mod date if possible, 5) Status of record (used, available, high quality, normal quality), 6) Type of record (Idea, Dream, Journal, etc.). Suggestions for doing the equivalent in DT are welcome. But I would flag it as “family” in its keywords – and probably attach many other keywords, too. For example, I might make a note about my father and never actually use the word “family” in the record. I assign keywords to each entry, so that I can search not only for literal text but for other concepts I’ve flagged for the record. I search it constantly while writing – particularly while writing fiction. For years, I’ve maintained a databased “writer’s notebook” – originally in HyperCard, then migrated to Filemaker. That’s not (yet) possible but if you could send me an example file (tab delimited), I’ll check if it’s possible to add this to one of the next builds. the HC stack can be exported into a tab delimited text file, but I don’t think Devon can import that file and turn each card into a separate note. The last thing that would really help on my book in progress would be the ability to import my hundreds of hypercards into DT or DN without pasting each one into a new note.
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