MadaboutDana wrote:

I think I've understood the problem, and while I can't pretend to be
able to offer "the ultimate" solution, I've found the following approach
useful.

I use the Windows version of Notebooks (by Alfons Schmid:
notebooksapp.com) to copy and save web pages. Notebooks preserves the
formatting of web pages almost unchanged, but also allows you to edit
the pages (e.g. add comments,highlights, or even rewrite/reformat the
things completely, etc.). So a typical Notebooks page consists of:

Title
URL (pasted)
Comments (by me)
Tags (by me)
Contents of web page (pasted)

This means that when I eventually read through the web page, I may
decide to cut out bits that aren't directly relevant to my interests
(easy: just select and delete). Other pages I make "read-only"
(Notebooks offers that facility) so I can't change them (e.g. nice bits
of writing I want to preserve for my future edification).

Notebooks automatically time-stamps pages anyway, and you can arrange
them into folders. The actual pages are held as separate files (an HTML
file plus a .plist file for each page, containing the index and
references), and Notebooks automatically indexes them for searching (I
have to say the iOS app's search function is much better than the
Windows client's search function, but you can always use Windows Desktop
Search or any other search app of your choice; I use Copernic, for
example). Notebooks folders are thus actual folders in the file system,
which makes Notebooks very "open".

While this doesn't obviate the issue of duplicate pages in particular,
it does make it very easy to organize pages and delete them, annotate
them (using highlights if you wish!), shove 'em about wherever you want
'em, and so on. Although it's a slightly lengthier process than using
e.g. Surfulater or Scrapbook, I've found it's more flexible - and unlike
Surfulater, Notebooks supports full UTF-8 encoding, so is compatible
with most languages. Finally, if you want to manipulate your web pages
without reference to Notebooks, you can easily do so in the actual
Windows file system (or on a Mac - Notebooks also has a MacOS client).

The Notebooks Windows client is currently free (because it's still in
beta). If you've got an iPad, you can synchronize easily via Dropbox
(Notebooks defaults to Dropbox in any case); the cost of the iOS app is
low (can't remember what, exactly). Notebooks has, as a result of all
the above, become my go-to information repository.

Do you have a link for this software? I'm afraid the name isn't the best choice for marketing. I just spent ten minutes in Google trying every combination of "Notebooks", "Windows", and "Software" I could think of but was unable to find it.