Managing User Notes in a version control system

[Steven S]

I'm about to start building a pretty large User Notes module. In order to protect my sanity, I plan on managing my incremental changes in a version control system.

 

(1) My initial investigation into User Notes indicates they are stored as binary files with an .amynotes extension. Since version control systems handle text data much better than binary data, it would be preferable to be able to save my User Notes as a text file. However, I see no ability to import User Notes into Accordance from a text file, as there is for both User Tools and User Bibles. Just in case I'm missing something, I thought I'd ask, Is the binary .amynotes file the only option for end users to persist a User Notes module outside of Accordance?

 

(2) If the answer to the previous question is yes, then is the binary .amynotes file cross-platform? My initial assumption was that it is cross-platform, but then I read the Cross-Platform User Notes/Tools Files article in the help system. I think that article is stating that User Notes are cross-platform as of Accordance 10.3, but I'm not sure I'm reading it correctly.

[jlm]

You can import User Notes from a directory of RTF files, and RTF is just text in many cases (not if you embed an image, but Accordance wouldn’t import that anyway). So you could have one RTF file per note, and version control those files. You would have to do your editing outside of Accordance and periodically import the notes.

 

Because Accordance uses Apple’s RTF parser, and that doesn’t support every type of formatting that Accordance’s notes editor does, some formatting, e.g., small caps, will not be available with this workflow.

 

If you want to edit your notes in Accordance, then the .amynotes file is the only thing you can put under source control, because there’s currently no export for notes. This is a cross-platform format, which can be synced to Accordance on other devices.
 

If you want to work outside of Accordance, you could also use something like a markdown file that contains the text of multiple notes and is split up and converted into RTF files by a script. This is what I do.

[Steven S]

Thanks so much, @jlm! I totally ignored the Import Notes Folder command because I assumed it simply imported a collection of .amynotes files. I obviously missed the help topic on importing RTF notes, as well.  I appreciate all the extra suggestions; your approach sounds like an excellent plan.

[jlm]

@Steven S, here’s a post in which I explained my method: