This note describes the system which implements A reading inbox to capture possibly-useful references.
Reading comes in many flavors, and different tools are appropriate for capturing and reading different types of media, but I “drain” all items from this inbox at the same time. Inboxes shouldn’t be split into multiple places, so I create a “virtual” inbox which presents a unified layer across these items.
The database is managed by Pocket. I can add pages via browser extensions on desktop and mobile.
I chose Pocket because it is free, has a somewhat decent API, good extensions, and can double as a bookmarks manager.
I file web pages by archiving them; I trash them by trashing them.
I save them to ~/Documents/Archive/Inbox. I have an Alfred workflow which copies/moves the PDF currently open in Preview to this folder.
I read PDFs in Skim because it supports linking to specific locations and exportable annotations.
I file PDFs by moving them to ~/Documents/Archive and adding them to Zotero. I trash them by deleting them.
I save them to ~/Documents/Archive/Inbox.
I read e-books in Clearview, but I hate it (c.f. All desktop EPUB readers are awful).
I file e-books by moving them to ~/Documents/Archive and adding them to Zotero. I trash them by deleting them.
I save a .bib representing the book to ~/Documents/Archive/Inbox. I have a Shortcut to make this quick.
I file e-books by moving them to ~/Documents/Archive then running file_epub.sh, which renames them according to their metadata. Then I remove their entry from the .bib from the Inbox folder.