Some of you doing tagging with indexed files might be interested in Tagger, which can be found here: http://hasseg.org/tagger/
I converted the “front application script” for DTPO which is attached below. There is a small bug in Tagger, however, that keeps the script from handling more than one file.
I made a fixed version (thanks to open source software), but if you want it, please email me after you’ve installed Tagger. I’m sure Ali will upload a fixed update soon.
As always you’re the judge of software’s suitability for your needs. Blame yourself, not others, for working without backups of your precious data.
Charles, I realize this is a bit off-topic, but I wonder if you could elaborate a bit on why you chose Tagger over some of the other tagging applications out there? I’ve tried some, if not most, of the available apps at one time or another and I gave up on all of them (the exception being MailTags for my email). I’ve never looked at Tagger and would be interested to hear what you like (and dislike) about it.
It’s a tiny little application that I have connected to “Shift-command-T”, and it will pull up the OpenMeta tags for the current DTPO selection. I find this very useful, although I’m not saying it’s a full-service solution if you want to use tags throughout your filesystem.
I like the “flattened” aspect of tags in DTPO, because in my research, the 1st set of groups I need to create are folders that indicate physical locations of files in archives, author names, etc… Tags are a nice complement to this organization, rather than another set of hierarchical groups, but that’s another story. They also correspond to bibliographic “keywords,” which is what has got me working on tagging right now.
I use Bibdesk after a long while with Bookends, and a shorter (and unhappy) while with Sente. It’s scriptability and integration with Skim is huge for me, and I’ve got a commitment to LaTeX, so the cite-while-u-write aspect of other bibliographic tools is not very important for me. So I’m currently scripting interchange between DTPO tags and Bibdesk keywords. The odd thing is that Bibdesk partially supports OpenMeta, but doesn’t offer much support for “actual” keywords, as contained in the PDFs we all (?) get from online journal archives.
So I have scripts that synchronize (“unionize,” actually) tags and keywords, and a script that updates the Bibdesk keywords based on what OpenMeta tags there are for a particular citation’s linked file(s). There are a lot of interesting issues to solve here.
So I don’t know how committed I am to “tags everywhere.” I looked at many of the tagging applications, and I like Punakea and Leap. I was initially put-off by Leap’s cost, but the views of my disk drives it provides are particularly well thought out. And being able to easily do raw Spotlight queries in Leap’s environment is pretty powerful, so I may be persuaded to adopt tagging on a wider basis than just as a bibliographic exchange format.
But I still like Tagger and Rakantari’s TagList: they do a single job really well, and are integrate-able into other apps’ workflow. Nice!
Charles, thanks for the info. I installed Tagger, your DTPO front application script, and the Tagger Address Book front application script. I must not be configuring something correctly as I’m not having much luck. Tagger does nothing at all in Address Book, complaining that it could not get files to tag.
In DTPO, I played with it on several files and there was only one document where Tagger displayed the existing tags applied to the file. With this document, deleting a tag in DTPO did not update the tags displayed for the document in Tagger. If I try to assign a tag to a file, the only suggestions are tags that were created with Tagger-none of the DTPO tags are suggested. The above results are with all files are imported into the database-nothing indexed. Indexed files work a little better, although none of the tags in DTPO are found when I try to assign the tag with Tagger.
Also, what is your experience with Spotlight searches for DTPO tags (tag:tagname)? Searches for DTPO tags do not turn up, but MailTags-created tags and Tagger-created tags do get search hits. I’m on Leopard also if this matters.
Hi Greg-
It’s the issue above that I confronted. Tagger is written for Snow Leopard, which now respects case in Applescript returned variables. It’s a “filePath” vs. “filepath” thing. If you PM or email me, I can send you a version of Tagger that works for Leopard.
My experience is with indexed files mostly. DTPO, in my experience immediately updates the indexed file for tags that are added. I’m not sure whether there’s an immediate update for tag removals. My understanding of OpenMeta behavior for imported files is that they are only added on export, but I haven’t played with this at all.
You mean searching for tags inside DTPO databases? I was just getting around to exploring this, and I’ll report back. For indexed files, the OpenMeta tags should just “be there,” and searchable with any of the above you mention.
While I’m at it, could someone that’s running Snow Leopard test Tagger and one of the Front Application scripts, and verify that Rakantari’s current download works for them?
He’s without a way to test on Leopard, so verifying that it’s a 10.5 vs. 10.6 issue would enable him to push the fix to the current release.
From what I can tell, if you add a user tag to an imported file, the OpenMeta information isn’t written to that file.
If you then “export” the file, for example, drag it out onto the Desktop, the OpenMeta info is written to the file stored in the .dtbase2 package, as well as the copy on your Desktop.
It seems that the DTPO Spotlight info isn’t written out immediately, but I’m still trying to get a tiny handle on this.