@ryanjamurphy The link to teh script I got is here: DEVONlink - Integrate Obsidian and DEVONthink - Axle
Ah, sorry, I failed to update the comments on that script. You can just write the vault name instead of the vault ID.
I’ve updated the script at the link you posted to make this clear, if you wanted to redownload it!
I have been roughly working this way since 2005 with DevonThink. I started by tucking things of potential interest and relevance into DevonThink and sometimes lightly annotating them in a comment (tags didn’t exist in DT then and they didn’t understand why they would be helpful). When DT added the ability to index, monitor, and update its contents by pulling in what is in and then what is new in a folder of text (later markdown) files that was incredibly helpful.
DevonThink has been brilliant for retrieving things from 3 to 15 years ago that are relevant to work, writing, expert witness work, mentoring grad students, etc. as much of what is gone from the internet around a certain subjects I have tucked away and searchable. I also have ALL of my ~70k PDFs, text / markdown notes, and documents in one DevonThink database (it shouldn’t work, but it still does).
About a year ago (June 2000) I put Obsidian on top of my text / markdown notes. Having the capability to interlink notes, drafts, presentation outlines, exploratory braindumps on subjects, articles, as well as concept pages and domain pages with booklists and notes on books and much more. I had more than 2k to more than 3k text / markdown notes (which DT had indexed and included in its own collection), but they were all distinct and not connected. Obsidian, over time has allowed me to interconnect these disparate ideas to move from one chunk of information to other related ones and synthesize new ideas. But, using tags I can easily aggregate concepts and ideas that have that tag on them. I use tags as hooks to aggregate and interlinking as bridges.
This works insanely well as I can now find what I am looking for much faster and make use of it far more easily.
The piece that is bumpy for me still is the crosslinking easily between DevonThink and markdown files in Obsidian. The issue is I work on my laptop and my iPad with Obsidian, but mobile DevonThink can’t work with my full DevonThink database / corpus. I have a couple techniques for connecting them on my laptop, but I need to pick one.
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My struggle is maintaining the links in both. Wikilinks work well in Obsidian but are fragile in DT. And index note links in DT work well, but they are not recognized as links in Obsidian
Wrap them in <angle brackets> if you aren’t putting them in a markdown-formatted link.
Edit: sorry, Discourse syntax hid the angle brackets part of that sentence when I hadn’t code-fenced them.
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There are two ways of making in link in DT.
Either a wiki format like [[…]].
or a DT indexed link like […] (x-devonthink-item://…)
Obsidian only recognizes the wiki format, but those are fragile when used in DT. Is there a way to make the index link recognizable as a backlink in Obsidian?
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Yes, wrap them in angle brackets:
<x-devonthink-item://5B7C9A13-4AB5-49E5-9609-B70D003A194A>
Or format them as a markdown link:
[some file](x-devonthink-item://5B7C9A13-4AB5-49E5-9609-B70D003A194A)
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Thanks. I use the latter. But my concern is that Obsidian then no longer sees them as backlinks or outgoing links. Also, they don’t show on Obsidian graph. This format makes Obsidian treat them as external links.
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@ryanjamurphy Sorry this drags on. Cannot make work the new script either. Name of my vault is “MAIN VAULT”. Is the space in between words? I also tried to add the path.
d’oh, sorry. I forgot to fix the last ObsidianVaultID variable there, on the fourth-last line. Fixed and reuploaded to the site. Hopefully it works now!
Thanks Ryan! I am sure that will do it. Did not see it myself.
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Hello Ryan,
A way to use DT3 and Obsidian is just what I am looking for. But I am a NOOB.
I am reading your directions on DEVONlink - Integrate Obsidian and DEVONthink - Axle Is the AppleScript that you mention already in the plugin (the instructions are outdated?) or am I missing something?
The download button for the script is at the top of the page.
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I am retrieving this thread to try to solve a rather tedious (but central) issue with the integration between DEVONthink and Obsidian: the handling of missing files.
Managing notes from Obsidian but having them indexed in DEVONthink I often find myself deleting them, however they don’t disappear from DEVONthink but simply shown as “missing files”. My idea is to perform an automated cleanup of these. There is an internal verify & repair function but it is very slow and inconvenient, and still forces you to delete them manually.
My guess would be to create a smart rule in DEVONthink to spot the missing files and trash them, but I have not figured out how to do that. Any help?
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How do you index Obsidian files in DT?
Sorry for late response, in DT you need to go into File> Index Files and Folders and pick folder with Obsidian
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Thanks!
With PDF coming to Obsidian natively, I said goodbye to DT. Happy to be with one app.
