It’s always good to know of other possibilities, which is why I went and checked out SuperTab, but I’ve just looked at my system, and I have 5,419 tagged files, with 291 tags. I don’t think SuperTab would be a lot of help to me with that lot!! Personally, I use Leap if I have to work with tags a lot, or else I do it inside DEVONthink. Incidentally, that does not include the bookmarks I have on Pinboard, which are also mostly tagged, so that is another 1,100 tagged items, and a similar number of tags, most of which are the same as on my system. Once you get into tagging, it is easy to build up huge numbers of tagged items, and a large number of tags.
Martin, if you want to find out if the script could be something for you I think you test it. As mentioned I don’t use tags beside this script, so I really can only think what could work. I see no problem in prefixing tags that you want to use with SuperTab. In fact thats exactly what I do, but of course this can not be a guide for you with so much tags. Did you try the script? As mentioned I can imagine that it’s not always clear what I want to say. If this is the case or you’ve found something else please let me know.
Your video has exactly nothing to do with this thread. I don’t write this in anger or the like but I think this must be clearly stated for other users.
This thread is about DEVONthink records and how some of them (not your entire databases…) could be made accessible outside of DEVONthink. The whole thing is meant as an easy to reach accessing point for records (groups, smart groups or single records) that you need at a given time. If you had read this thread you would not have found that much to misunderstand. It’s really remarkable how I entered this thread again some hours ago and how I have to leave it now.
However, if other users have suggestions, questions or whatever, I’m open to it.
Well, the title of the thread is “A dashboard (not only) for DEVONthink”. I therefore assumed the thread was supposed to be about dashboards, a concept that has interested me for a long time. (And here I take “dashboard” to mean broadly a way of getting quick access to items that interest you, usually presented in some sort of group, as icons, or perhaps a list.) It was the word “dashboard” that sparked my interest. I confess I have something of a weakness for this sort of thing, and I’ve lost count of the number of “solutions” I’ve tried over the decades – including DragThing, FinderPop, Fresh, Liquid – you name it, I’ve tried it. You can even achieve something of this sort using Gladys, or Dropzone, which is a utility that I use a lot. In recent times I was simply tagging files with “status:urgent”, “status:pending” and so forth, and using smart folders (both inside and outside DEVONthink) to keep track of those items. It worked pretty well. As to the video, well it is possible to use the method to create a dashboard for quick access to individual items inside DEVONthink. Here is a screenshot of one that I created in a couple of minutes this morning.
The last three items on the palette are items inside a DT database, accessible via item links, and clicking on them will open them in DT. Any item that can be linked can be placed on the palette. Not only that, you can even put actions or menu items on the palette, or even chain them together. The other items are there because I added the new ones to a pre-existing palette. Some of them launch two different applications and position the windows to my taste. The palette appears on my screen when I make a three-finger swipe on my trackpad. Granted, this is not a way to deal with large numbers of bookmarks, but personally I would not want more than a few items on a dashboard because in my view that would defeat its purpose. If I did want a large number of bookmarks, I would probably use the tagging and smart folder method, or I might use Tinderbox to watch a DT folder. Since I keep my DT databases indexed with SpotLight, I can use that, or HoudahSpot, to find tagged items inside a DT database very quickly. It is even possible to use Alfred to do the same thing.
I certainly intend no disrespect for the solution @pete31 has offered to the problem of creating dashboards – on the contrary. Indeed I looked at it, and even installed SuperTab temporarily, to see if it could work for me. I regret that it doesn’t suit my purposes, which is no reflection on the quality of the script. It is merely the case that I have different needs. If I mentioned the system I use, it was only in case it might be of interest to others – which it may well not be. I used to be a teacher, and it is natural to me to want to share knowledge. But we all work in different ways, and each of us has to find their own solutions. I believe that discussion of other options can help us to find one that works for us.
Personally, I prefer to use Alfred to search my databases instead of creating a dashboard. But if I do need to have some items readily accessible I use a macro called Spotlight Search Prompt for Keyboard Maestro to create a list of the items I need with their attached links.
Hi Bernardo – thanks for mentioning that – I see it’s one of Dan Thomas’s extraordinary efforts https://forum.keyboardmaestro.com/t/macro-spotlight-search-prompt/4665. I already use KMFAM. I’ll certainly give it a try. And nice to see that the Alfred workflow for searching is being updated for DT 3. I found it on Git. More strings to our bows, which is good. Or, as the English say, “there is more than one way to skin a cat”. Thanks again.
In case you’re trying to run the script I posted in this thread you’ll find that it doesn’t work in DEVONthink 3.6.
That’s due to DEVONthink’s new handling of “invalide arguments”. After the release of DEVONthink 3 I decided to continue to use “search window” in scripts so that DEVONthink 2 users could use them in, well, search windows. With version 3.6 that’s not possible anymore.
If you want to use the script you’ll have to replace this voluminous block …
set windowClass to class of window 1
if {viewer window, search window} contains windowClass then
set currentRecord_s to selection of window 1
else if windowClass = document window then
set currentRecord_s to content record of window 1 as list
end if
… with this neat line …
set currentRecord_s to selected records
… which does what the six lines have done. Wow, that’s great!
