Two For One Windows

Support tickets sometimes present new ideas. And sometimes they rekindle old ones from the back burner. I recently had a ticket from someone who wanted to open a document in two windows at once. Out of the box, DEVONthink will open a document in a new window, but only one. The only other option is to view the document in its own window, as well as in the main database window. That would work but it didn’t seem as elegant as I wanted it to be. So, about half an hour later, another custom AppleScript script was finished — one that would open the same document in two windows, placed side by side on the screen.

The client wanted to view a PDF in two windows so he could look at different non-consecutive pages at the same time. Perhaps, you want to open something you’re writing so you can edit in one window while looking at the document without the changes in the second window. Another example is Markdown. I do like writing Markdown in DEVONthink. However, the only way to see the rendered HTML is to switch the view (see View > Best Alternative). This is fine but for on-the-fly editing I wanted to edit and see it rendered side by side. This script allows me to do that with one window in Editing mode and the other in rendered mode.

The script also opens two selected documents side-by-side and if you have a document with an associated annotation, the annotation will attempt to be located and opened with the original in side-by-side windows. Hopefully this comes in handy in ways I may not have even imagined!

DEVONthink Pro and Pro Office owners, install the AppleScript directly within the application from Scripts > More Scripts.