Using EF to handle copyflow

I’m a freelance writer and I’ve been looking for an app that will ‘file’ for me all the elements that go into a project – a lot of individual docs, notes, emails, web pages and graphics if done conventionally.

How would I best use EF for this? How will EF handle different iterations of the same text doc if saved e.g. by keystroke or drop box i.e. will it update or will I be saving lots of different text files and run in to problems retrieving the latest version?

BTW I am finding the whole saving thing quite difficult. Tried to save some text from a pdf last night and just couldn’t get it into EF at all.

My previous experience of Michael’s work – esp SpamSieve – tells me this is worth persisting with. Not aware of another app that will do this. Yojimbo is great for web pages but can’t handle graphics, for example.

I think EagleFiler should work for that.

I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “drop box” since EagleFiler doesn’t currently have a drop box feature. EagleFiler saves the files in the library as regular files. If you open one of those files (through the Finder or by double-clicking it in EagleFiler), then you are editing the file in the library. When you save it, you are therefore updating the version in EagleFiler. This is the normal way to work with documents. Is that what you want? If you want to save multiple iterations of the same document, then you would be creating new files instead of updating the existing one, and therefore you would need to add each new file to the library.

I’m happy to help you, but you’ll have to tell me more specifically what you tried to do and what didn’t happen as you expected. If you have a PDF file, you can drag it into EagleFiler. Or, you can open the PDF in Preview, select some text, and press Command-% to import just the selected text.

I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “drop box” . . .

Sorry, I meant “drop pad”.

No I didn’t want to save all the different versions – updating on save would be fine for me. I just want to keep everything in a searchable database.

Also . . .

I couldn’t make this work. I was trying to take a section from EaglerFiler’s instructions on how to import (part of a .pdf page). Tried the Cmd-% and various other approaches – didn’t work for me.

Was EF open at the time?

I’m a freelance writer myself and am using EagleFiler precisely this way. It acts as my ‘umbrella’ file manager, replacing DevonThink Pro. I use it it conjunction with Mail, Scrivener, Word, Firefox and other programs to store and archive docs, notes, emails, web pages, graphics, audio files and other research material.

Given that EF is inherently very flexible, I would suggest you carefully read the EF manual and map out a strategy that matches your particular workflow. I played around with a test library for a week to figure things out (nice thing about EF is that it doesn’t lock you in; you can always change your system).

At the moment, I use separate EF libraries for each of two book projects, one for an idea scrapbook, and one for all of my magazine article projects. There is absolutely no reason I couldn’t use a single library-- it’s just personal preference to split them up.

I’d be happy to give you more details, but in general I just wanted to say, for the record, EF is ideal for writers.

OK, then you shouldn’t need to do anything special. Just edit the files as normal.

Were you using Preview, and did you have the text selected using the Text tool (rather than, say, the Select tool)? I suppose it’s possible there’s a keyboard shortcut conflict—in that case, see if choosing Preview > Services > EagleFiler > Import Text works.

In most applications, you could drag and drop the text directly to import it, but I don’t think Preview allows you to drag text.

The Import Text service should work whether or not EagleFiler is open. If it isn’t open, Mac OS X will launch it.

I had EF open and I was trying to get text out of Preview.

Maybe the difficulty is with Preview? Anyway I’ll soon find out what works and what doesn’t.

I’m encouraged that others are user EF in the way that attracted me – thanks for posting