Home

Glossary

 
 Application Icon Templates
 

DEVONthink Personal comes with a number of pre-fabricated templates for general use. Use them to add e.g. a task list, a quote, or whole group structured, e.g. for project management, to your database.


Managing templates

Templates are regular files stored in the Finder in the folder '~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink 2/Templates.noindex'. Navigate to this folder in the Finder to manage your templates, rename them, organize them in sub-folders, or delete them.


Pre-fabricated templates

DEVONthink Personal comes with the following pre-fabricated templates which can serve as examples of what you can do with the template feature.

General use:

  • Annotation: Adds an annotation for a selected document. The annotation is put into a group named 'Annotation' in the database's root level and contains a link to the annotated item. This template links to the current page of a PDF document if possible.
  • Note: Adds a new note. If the clipboard contains text it is automatically inserted for you; if it contains an Internet address (URL) it is added to the note's link list.
  • Phone Note: Adds a new phone note. The current date and time is automatically inserted.
  • Project: Adds a simple project group structure including an 'About this project' document. The smart template ask for a project name, retrieves your name, department, email address, and phone number from your address book card and adds all this information to the 'About this project' document.
  • Task List: Adds a simple task list.
  • Web Browser: Adds an HTML document that allows you to use DEVONthink Personal like a regular web browser. Open this document, enter an Internet address into the address field and click the Go button to visit the web site.

Accounts & Passwords:

  • Online Account: Adds a document for storing online account details.
  • Serial Number: Adds a document for storing serial numbers.

Addresses & Dates:

  • Address Book Card: Adds the card selected in Address Book as a rich text document to your database.
  • iCal Event: Adds an iCal event you have copied to the clipboard (!) as a rich text document to your database. You need to copy the event to the clipboard because iCal does not provide a mechanism to retrieve the selected event.

Classifications:

  • Decimal Filing System: Adds ten groups for the decimal filing system using in many companies in Germany, Europe, for filing (scanned) paper documents.
  • Dewey Decimal Classification: Inserts a group with sub-groups that builds the first levels of the Dewey Decimal Classification. Use it for databases that contain knowledge spanning many subjects.
  • Library of Congress Classification: Inserts a group with sub-groups that builds the first levels of the Library of Congress Classification. Use it for databases that contain knowledge spanning many subjects.

Education:

  • Cornell Notes (Pages): Adds an Apple Pages document that allows you to write down notes in Cornell style.
  • Cornell Notes (rich text): Adds a rich text document that allows you to write down notes in Cornell style.
  • Quote (from clipboard): Adds a rich text document for a quote or citation. The clipboard content is automatically inserted and if it's an Internet address (URL) it is automatically made clickable.
  • Reference (from Bookends): Adds the reference selected in Bookends to your database.
  • Reference (from Endnote): Adds the reference selected in Endnote to your database.
  • Reference (from Sente): Adds the reference selected in Sente to your database.

Office:

  • Apple Numbers/Pages document: Adds empty Numbers or Pages.
  • Microsoft Excel/Word document: Adds empty Excel or Word documents.
  • OpenOffice Calc/Writer document: Adds empty OpenOffice documents. This smart template checks whether OpenOffice is installed or not before adding the document.

Registers:

  • 1—31: Adds 31 groups, numbered 1 through 31.
  • A—Z: Adds 26 groups, named A through Z.
  • Days of the Week: Adds groups for the days of the week.
  • Months: Adds groups for the twelve Christian months.

Search:

  • PubMed: Runs a query in PubMed and adds the resulting documents formatted as rich text documents to your database.

Smart Groups:

  • Email ... Videos: Adds smart groups selecting documents of a given kind.
  • Last ...: Adds smart groups selecting documents modified within a given period.
  • Large Documents: Adds a smart group selecting documents larger than 5 MB.
  • PDF (not searchable): Adds a smart group selecting all PDF documents that don't contain machine-readable text.


Template Packages

Besides the more complex smart templates DEVONthink Personal supports template packages. They are folders with the file name extension '.dtTemplate' and contain one or mutiple folders, one for each supported language. This way you can let DEVONthink Personal import the files in the right language depending on the system language.

In addition you can use the following placeholders in your file or folder names of your templates packages as well as in contained rich text, plain text, HTML, or XML files. During import they are replaced with actual data.

  • %time%: The current time
  • %date%: The current date
  • %shortDate%: The current date in short format
  • %longDate%: The current date in long format
  • %monthname%: The month name of the current date
  • %weekday%: The week day name of the current date
  • %day%: The day number of the current date
  • %month%: The month number of the current date
  • %year%: The year number of the current date
  • %username%: The user name
  • %fullUsername%: The user's full name
  • %organization%: The user's organization from Address Book
  • %emailAddress%: The user's email addresses from Address Book
  • %host%: The host name
  • %databaseName%: The database name
  • %databasePath%: The database's path
  • %clipboard%: The clipboard contents as plain text
  • %styledClipboard%: The clipboard contents as rich text
  • %clipboardLink%: The clipboard contents as clickable rich text link if the clipboard contains a valid URL


Smart templates

Most of the pre-fabricated templates are 'smart templates': They are not simple files but actually AppleScript packages that are executed when you select it the in the Data menu. These packages contain both script code as well as the actual templates that they insert into your database. This has a number of advantages:

  • The script can choose a localized template for your language; also possible using a template package.
  • The script can add information to the pre-fabricated template, for example the current date and time or data from the Web.
  • The script can act intelligently on data on the clipboard: If it's a simple text it adds the text, if it's a URL it adds it to a different area of the document and makes it clickable.
  • The script can check if a certain application is installed, e.g. OpenOffice, before adding a document for it.

← File Formats

Web site export templates →