The Omni Group
These forums are now read-only. Please visit our new forums to participate in discussion. A new account will be required to post in the new forums. For more info on the switch, see this post. Thank you!

Go Back   The Omni Group Forums > OmniFocus > OmniFocus 1 for Mac
FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

 
OF and raw information Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Peter:

I saw that you took a look at the Together Forum, and if I understand your request, you are looking to be able to copy items from OF to Together for archive/search purposes. I am not aware of any way to do it, but I will take a shot a script. If that fails, it might be worth a request to the Ninjas.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by peterlemer View Post
so Dennis - any chance of a screenshot of your folder hierarchy?

My Documents folder is a mix of my main category folders and all sorts of stuff that my various apps put there, plus customised folders and alias folders that are my personalised Dock folders.. Quite a long list - not very well structured.
I suppose I could post a screenshot when I get back to my Mac (traveling with my iPhone right now), but I can tell you my Documents folder is pretty ordinary. I don't have any magical filing techniques or anything. :-)

I also suffer from the same problems you do with apps placing their support data in my Documents folder. I thought they weren't supposed to do that. Isn't that why we have a Library and Application Support folders? If I didn't explicitly create it, don't put it in my Documents folder!

Anyway, I agree it's a pain moving those app-created folders, so I just tend to leave them as well. But if you have too much clutter in there, why not create a single folder at the top level of your Documents folder, or even at the top level of your user account (i.e. at the same level as your Documents folder), and call it something like "Project Notes", "Notes", "Project Support", "Private", or whatever. Then create a clean folder structure in their for all your reference material. You could also put a link to the folder in your Finder sidebar for easy access.

Also, in Finder's preferences in Snow Leopard (last tab, I think), you can restrict the default search scope to just the currently-selected folder. I find this to be really helpful in getting narrower search results.

If that's not enough, try hitting Commad-Shift-F (rather than just Command-F) to initiate a Finder search; it'll search only filenames instead of doing a full content search. Between these two tricks, it's pretty easy to narrow things down to just what you're looking for and almost feels like you're working in a PIM. :-)

Hope this helps.

-Dennis
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by wdiadamo View Post
Peter:

I will take a shot a script.
thx wdiadamo, please let me know how you get on :-)

peter
 
all nice ideas, Dennis - I will take the test notes I've placed in eaglefiler and together and place them as text files in a new* ( work in progress) folder heirarchy, see how that feels :-)

peter

* User/Documents/<SPACE>PETERS DOCUMENTS/

Last edited by peterlemer; 2009-10-05 at 07:59 AM..
 
Toadling,

How do you handle getting info from a web site?
Are you copying it to a text file and filing it in your reference folder?
Or printing it to PDF?
Or is the answer, there is no standard, depends on what the content is?

One feature I like of a PIM app (such as Evernote and others) is a script or feature hat copies the web content to an entry in the app.

When I think about using the Finder to manage all this I get hung up on how to get web content nicely into a Finder system.

Just curious how this is handled...
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Russell View Post
How do you handle getting info from a web site?
I would follow a workflow that's very similar to using a PIM:
  1. If I'm only interested in a selection of text, I'd use a system service provided by BBEdit to open a new text window with the current selection, which I can then save as a file. I'm not sure if TextEdit offers a similar feature, but TextWrangler is basically a free, lite version of BBEdit.

    It's also very easy to create system services with Automator in Snow Leopard, so you could probably make your own for your editor of choice.

    Another option is to drag selected text to the Dock icon of your favorite editor to open it in a new window, then save it as a file.

    Yet another option is to use your favorite app launcher, like LaunchBar, to grab selected text and send it to an editor of your choice.

  2. For saving entire pages, I'd typically print to PDF for cross-platform compatibility and Preview's annotation capabilities. I often use the Readability browser bookmarklet to get a nice printing view for sites that don't provide their own.

    In Snow Leopard, Quick Look finally works on web archives, so I've started using those more often as well.

  3. If I'm only interested in the address of the site, I'd just save it as a bookmark in Safari.

Having said all that, I must admit that I still have a soft spot in my heart for the simplicity and elegance of Yojimbo (which I've used on and off since its initial release in 2006). In fact, after Curt mentioned Shawn Blanc's review of Yojimbo 2, I read the blog post again and it convinced me to try the app once more. About a week later I upgraded my Yojimbo license to version 2, and so far, I've been very happy with it.

My immediate observations on Yojimbo 2 (which may or may not hold true for other PIM apps) are:
  1. Generous tagging of my data, coupled with the new Tag Explorer in Yojimbo 2, is revealing interesting connections between items that I might not have found in my old file system method.

  2. Other than tagging, there's not much that I do in Yojimbo that I couldn't also do with my old file system methodology. But as John Gruber has pointed out, Yojimbo is all about reducing friction, and in that respect, the app is very good.

  3. Shawn Blanc points out that he'd been frustrated with Yojimbo in the past because he tried to use it as a Finder replacement. I think I've had the same problem. Blanc writes, "This is not the same as your tried and true System for saving and finding things. The System is for everything. Your Anything Bucket, however, is for everything else. And you need both."

So I have no plans to completely abandon my "tried and true System for saving and finding things" that I've described elsewhere in this thread, but rather to supplement it with Yojimbo. We'll see how things go in the coming months. :)

-Dennis

Last edited by Toadling; 2009-11-12 at 03:38 PM..
 
Toadling,

Thanks for the reply!

Reading about your process and system has been very helpful to me.
I have been using Evernote for almost two years now, but found recently that I wasn't using it much. I started to consider why and realized there was too much "friction" to using it; apps were slow on whatever platform I used and that made creating a new note a chore.

I've exported everything from Evernote to Yojimbo and that was an awful experience since Evernote has its own database and entry formatting. I won't be touching Evernote again. I had a script to export the data from Evernote to Yojimbo that helped immensely but still took me a good 12-16 hours of effort to complete as I had 1.6 GB of data and close to 3,000 entries in Evernote.

I've started filing items using folders in Finder and I'm really liking it so far. I've used folders before, but I haven't used them intelligently. In the past they would become just another place to dump files for me to look at sometime. Part of the process is definitely using it and going back and "pruning" everything to the way I like it. Right now I'm working to reduce places where files can accumulate and gather dust.

That's one of the attractions to Yojimbo is that I enjoy using the app, it is quick and has a few powerful features, more of a laser focus if you will. So, I have to say I, as well, have a soft-spot for Yojimbo right now. I just have to keep that in check as I seem to have a soft-spot for all PIM apps.

I'm wanting to simplify my system so that I will use it more as the more work it requires will work against me using the system (AKA more "friction"). Right now I have a gut feeling that Yojimbo could serve a great purpose and help me use my system more, I just don't know exactly how it should fit in with everything else. It's like having a gear you know is important to the machine, but not knowing where it needs to go.

I've got some ideas on how things should fit together and I'm working those out as I use the tools. The systems engineer in me is screaming to create an OmniGraffle document showing the process. :) I'll have to draft that up soon...

Thanks again Toadling for describing your process, I have found it very helpful. Anything else you want to offer about your system and process would, I'm sure, be helpful as well. :)
 
Toadling and others,

How are you using Yojimbo with your existing system of folders in Finder?

Is Yojimbo for the important data, miscellaneous bits, or both?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Russell View Post
How are you using Yojimbo with your existing system of folders in Finder? ... Is Yojimbo for the important data, miscellaneous bits, or both?
I'm using Yojimbo for both important data and miscellaneous bits -- basically any random notes that aren't tied to a specific project. My decision making process is not clear-cut though and certainly requires some discretion on a case-by-case basis.

One of the big determining factors is that I don't think Yojimbo is a good Finder replacement. So I've been trying not to dump everything into it. Instead, I only use Yojimbo for notes, which are usually text-based, but can occasionally be PDFs, web archives, bookmarks, or even images.

Regardless of the original file formats, though, I consider all of these items to be generic notes. I do not use Yojimbo as a repository for all of my PDFs, images, web archives, etc. I use the filesystem and Finder for that.

This is contrary to a lot apps that are often labelled as Yojimbo-competitors (e.g. DevonThink, Together, EagleFiler, etc.). I think those apps are really trying to accomplish something different than Yojimbo. They serve more as a front-end to the filesystem, managing/organizing files, rather than being a traditional, free-form database like Yojimbo.

These file-managing "Yojimbo-competitors" seem like they might be better for storing and organizing everything, if that's what you're looking for. Yojimbo, on the other hand, seems better-suited as a simple note collector.

-Dennis
 
this was a really great thread - now we nearly 18 months on - I wonder if the panel is still here, and where you are now with non-current-project information storage?
Is it Finder, Yojimbo, Things, Evernote, other? ( I'm evaluating 'Hit List' which allows sub-notes)

pete
 
 


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
More information jjlucsy Bonjour sync 2 2010-03-23 09:04 AM
Getting information out bashosfrog Applying OmniFocus 3 2010-02-22 08:01 AM
Why no iPhone Information? blewis OmniFocus 1 for Mac 2 2008-04-24 07:52 PM
SSL Information obeythelaw OmniWeb Feature Requests 1 2007-06-15 01:08 AM


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 08:37 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.