Lew Friedland
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Hello all. Am launching a topic here for those of us who (mostly) write in an academic mode, use Tinderbox, Scrivener, some other bibliography manager (Endnote, Bookends, Zotero, Sente, etc.) and often/sometimes a database like Devonthink. There have been a number of great threads here on academic note taking, organizing/writing a Ph.D., with great contributors like Derek, Jean, Russ, and of course Marks A and B.
I anticipate three kinds of discussions here that have floated through academic writers' questions on the forum.
First, the basic issues about tools and organizations: which ones, how do they work together. The new Scrivener integration is a huge advance for many of us, but, for example, those of us who use Zotero because of its openness to the web and groups might want to figure out how to get the same or similar drag and drop capabilities that are now built into Bookends (at least I would).
A similar question, one that's been scattered through bits of the forum: how do people manage PDFs, other files, and how to link them in a TBX document? For example, I add new PDFs to Devonthink, use this for storage and exploration, but when I actually start to write notes and use them, these go in TBX. What is the simplest way to link notes in TBX to a document elsewhere?
The second kinds of questions have to do with the kinds of code use issues that crop up among many of us. What are the most important bits of code to learn to unlock Tinderbox's full capabilities? This is, of course, as much a question of how to organize academic files in TBX and take notes as it is one of the "right" codes. But that's the point: these issues get tangled up and sometimes it takes someone writing in a similar vein to help untangle them.
Finally, there are other basic questions of note taking and writing craft. For example, how to other users take notes on books and longer documents? Do you use a single container for a book and then go "vertical" with containers within containers for chapters? How to avoid losing one's place if notes on books become buried (note to Marks, I do know that agents search deeply, etc. But I use a lot of maps so having first level display is part of how I use TBX which is an ongoing paradox). Or, I have at least 75 Tinderbox files. Does it make sense to consolidate those that are substantively related for a larger project? If so, what's the best way to do this?
So, fellow academics and non-fiction writer, let me know if this is a thread that seems useful or not and we'll see if it's worth continuing.
I'll throw out two starting questions: how do you link Zotero or other bibliographic DBs entries in TBX files?
How do you use TBX with PDFs?
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