From www to txt

July 4, 2010 10:46 AM

I want to have a better way of keeping track of useful quotes from the internet. Ideally, I'm looking to be able to select text from a web page. Then for the selected text to be automatically pasted into a text file. Ideally, other information such as the URL and date would also be pasted in. Maybe with the data separated by commas (CSV) format.

I've had a search on this site and came across this post about capturing entire websites. But though useful for the 'scrapbook' suggestion that's not quite what I want. It all seems too locked in to be able to use.

So is this possible? If so, what browser should I be using, what programing language would you suggest I attempt implementation?
My OS is Windows Vista.

Thanks for reading.

posted by 92_elements to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

have you looked at Zotero?
posted by lex mercatoria at 10:54 AM on July 4, 2010

I bookmark with delicious to do this, using a bookmark plugin on my toolbar. If it's a whole page of text or quotes and I'm only flagging one bit, I copy the quote I want into the description field. The entire operation takes me approximately one and a half to two seconds.

You can export your delicious bookmarks in CSV format. You can also tag entries if you want to organise them, and search your bookmarks.
posted by DarlingBri at 11:08 AM on July 4, 2010

If you highlight the quote you want and then use the delicious bookmark it will auto-copy the highlighted text to the description field
posted by Mick at 11:16 AM on July 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

You could look at Tumblr, which is free. Once you have a Tumblr account, install the bookmarklet (available here). Then all you have to do is highlight some text on the page, and click the Tumblr bookmarklet. It'll create an entry on your tumblog that quotes the relevant text and gives a clickable link to the source page. If you wanted to have a copy offline, there are plenty of tools (such as this one) that export tumblogs to XML, HTML, and so forth.

That's the best thing I can think of. Sorry it's not exactly what you asked for.
posted by komara at 11:31 AM on July 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

I don't know about exporting, though it seems to have some functions along those lines, but I use the Wired-Marker add-on for FireFox to highlight particular quotes. It sort-of creates a list of "quote bookmarks" that you can search through and manipulate in various ways. There are 8 different highlighter "colors" which sort as folders, so you can sort them according to topic/type/need if you wish. (I use it a lot when gathering info for a new lectures for a class I'm teaching, and sort them by lecture.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:33 AM on July 4, 2010

It is, however, online - accessible from anywhere, search function built in, viewable via RSS feed if you (or anyone else) should so desire, and pretty.
posted by komara at 11:33 AM on July 4, 2010

You mentioned clipping stuff and appending it all to a text file, so perhaps this isn't a good solution. But for what it's worth, Firefox had an add-on called Evernote Web Clipper that allows you to clip selections of or entire pages. Clips become individual notes in your Evernote account (cloud with offline options) and are accessible from Evernote running on your mobile device, laptop/desktop or the web interface. Evernote comes in free and premium flavors. Free accounts get 40MB/month and premium accounts get 500MB/month. This is my second Evernote plug today but I swear I'm not affiliated.
posted by christopherious at 12:48 PM on July 4, 2010

There are lots of software that can do the job (like Evernote, which christopherious mentioned) but I always found Google Notebook to be the most streamlined, bullshit-free of them all. It has plugins for Firefox and Chrome, too.
posted by procrastinator at 1:15 PM on July 4, 2010

I always found Google Notebook to be the most streamlined, bullshit-free of them all.

Google Notebook is no longer available for new users.
posted by me & my monkey at 9:01 PM on July 4, 2010

Opera has a built-in notes facility that does more or less what you want: You highlight text on a web page and select "Copy to Note". Notes are stored in a folder hierarchy, along with originating url and time of capture.
posted by Dr Dracator at 10:57 PM on July 4, 2010

Online - the tumblr suggestion whilst using firefox is very good and simply done.

'Offline' You might consider using MS Onenote with Auto Hot Key - Simply set a key to mean 'copy this to one note' and poof, it is done.

Quick and easy with no interruption to what ever you are doing.

Google Onenote + AutoHotkey
posted by DrtyBlvd at 1:30 AM on July 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Wow, what a lot of options out there.
Thanks for all the suggestions.
Think I'll have a trial with a few of them, and pick the best one.
Looks like it's going to be a bit of a compromise what ever I choose.
posted by 92_elements at 6:22 AM on July 6, 2010