When i save an archive normally from Safari onto the desktop, the action is almost instantaneous. However, when i use the “add web archive to devonthink” , it slows up my whole system, and furthermore DT freezes for 20 seconds or so…and even then, sometimes it doesn’t load the whole archive, but just the html, if i don’t give it enough time to load up the pictures.
Am i doing something wrong? Or is this a problem of Applescript?
When you transfer the HTML files, you are only transferring to DT Pro a collection of text files and, as you say, the transfer takes place quickly.
But when you are saving Web Archive files to DT Pro, that’s another matter and will involve a lot more CPU activity and RAM usage. You are now downloading the images and creating the Web Archive packages in DT Pro. That takes more time, depending on your CPU speed and the amount of available RAM. Be patient. A process like this goes pretty quickly on my PowerMac dual core 2.3 GHz with 5 GB RAM. Others may vary.
Just to be clear, when I save from Safari to the desktop, I am also saving the webarchive, and not the html. In other words, the process is – as far as I can tell – just one step removed. In fact, it seems that it is faster for me to save it to the desktop and then copy/paste into the database. However, this gives me speed of the transfer, but slows down my workflow, as I’d have to switch apps, losing focus in the process.
And, you know Bill, we would all love to have 2.3ghz 5meg ram… but we don’t live in a perfect world … Some of us have to deal with normal machines. 
Safari uses its internal data to create the web archive without having to load anything again. That’s of course fast. But scripts can’t access the web archive data of Safari (contary to DEVONagent for example which supports this) and therefore the “add web archive” script has to download the page and all its images, sheets, scripts etc. And that might need some time/CPU power.
Until last year I was doing all my work in DEVONtechnologies apps on my old 500 MHz TiBook, purchased in late February, 2001. Although I had to use some tricks to keep things running reasonably quickly, I was able to do a lot of work on that machine. it finally retired last month.
But I’ve taken on some volunteer projects that pushed the envelope. Last fall I was asked to help some health care analysts examine the impacts of hurricanes Katrina and Rita on Louisiana’s health care infrastructure (a total disaster in many areas). Perhaps the TiBook could have done the job. In any case i got my hands on an iMac G5 with 2 GB RAM. I pulled down over 10 thousand pages with DEVONagent, moved the results over to DEVONthink Pro and the information was useful. But DEVONagent struggled at times on the big searches, which were very demanding on memory.
I’ve learned some DEVONagent tricks, based on doing incremental scheduled searches with fewer results per plugin, that get big and deep searches done, even on a computer with limited RAM. It just takes longer, but completes the job.
Last November I was asked to create a second database using the same search queries. The reason for a complete rerun was that some of the iT people wanted to be able to compare the status of health care Web sites, a great many of which had either disappeared or were no longer being maintained several months after the hurricanes.
I had been budgeting for a PowerMac. For less than $400 I was able to add an additional 4 GB RAM, bringing it up to 5 GB. Used that machine to recapitulate the searches and build a new database. This time, it was a piece of cake!
So RAM is good. More RAM is better, and gets things done faster. Now I understand why video and photo pros load up their RAM slots.
Although I was doing this project for free, I had people pushing for fast productivity. 