Apologies if the following has already been suggested, and for the record, I’m a big fan of the new sorter.
On the July 20 episode of the podcast Automators, one of the hosts talks about a similar situation with OmniFocus. She mentions that she sometimes invoked the quick capture keyboard shortcut only to realize the OmniFocus wasn’t running. She solved this by creating a Keyboard Maestro shortcut that waits for the shortcut, starts the program if it isn’t running, then prompts her to redo the capture. It’s all very simple and explained in podcast #28: Keyboard Maestro and the Mac. This would also work with DEVONthink 3.
I must agree that the ‘new’ behaviour of the Sorter doesn’t bother me in the slightest, since DT3 (and before that, DTPO2 etc.) is open 24/7/whenever my Mac is running in any event…
I suppose I could understand how, were that not to be the case, it might bother me – but then again, getting something into DT3 using the Sorter surely means one will at some point need to open DT3 in any event to file/manage what has been imported? So still don’t quite get the seemingly strong reaction towards DT3 having to be open in the background to use the Sorter?
Would those arguing for wanting that functionality returned care to be a bit more specific about why that is so useful?
Apologies if missed it somewhere above – quite a few posts now, so might have misread.
But I for one would find that useful in trying to understand the sentiments towards the change.
Well, I definitely like the new sorter! There are some really good enhancements. BUT, I also really wish I did not have to open DT3 so I can use it. . . . however, in fact, it is not a very difficult thing to keep DT open. It is not much of a resource hog.
I don’t yet have DT3, I usually wait for stability over newness.
Never the less I have an opinion regarding this app needing to be running in order to clip.
The sorter sounds like a real upgrade in functionality, which is great.
First of all DT is not a memory or cpu resource hog. In fact it’s on the low side compared to most apps I run, which admittedly tend to be image and video related.
So unless you have a laptop 10 years old or more the power/memory should be more than adequate, not to mention even the older OS could, thanks to the inherent beauty of unix, swap memory to disk efficiently. It doesn’t seem to be a valid complaint in this age.
As far as the safety of the database, there’s backups. The same people who are afraid of losing data from DT running should then be equally worried about the finder running all the time. The files in DT are in fact just hidden in folders. Again unix is doing all the hard work. If you are worried about the extra space frequent backups take up, use DT with references and the database itself becomes small. But I imagine it would have to be pretty catastrophic for DT to corrupt a database, even with a power outage. This kind of potential file corruption used to be a real worry years ago, particularly on PCs, but my experience is that’s also been reduced to almost nil (you can always buy a small power regulator for cheap).
People without some understanding of how a modern OS operates might be worried about having more than a couple apps open. But if you run activity monitor you’ll see that ‘apps’ of all kinds come and go constantly, hundreds of them, memory coming and going as well. Unix has been beaten on for decades and the result is super stability.
So to me the only issue might be, as has been pointed out here, that if DT3 doesn’t happen to be open when you want to clip something you might have to wait a few seconds for it to start up, then try again. So why not make it a startup app. What a great world it would be if this was my biggest problem.
“What downsides does anyone see to having DT always running?”
None that I can think of? DTPO 2, and now DT3, is basically never closed over here. And I have multiple, multiple windows open inside DT3 (as I did with DTPO2) at any given time (I just counted – 38 separate DT3 windows open right now).
So one could open DT3, minimise/hide its main to the bottom right of the Dock, and never need to think about it again, unless one wants to do something in it. This would effectively see the Sorter working as a standalone app.
Well there’s 32GB of RAM on my iMac, but if I have Lightroom and Photoshop and all their ancillary stuff running I don’t really want too many other ‘major’ apps taking up that memory, but it would be nice to be able to take notes and dump stuff to DT if I wanted. So I ‘get by’ with the service I wrote in Automator to send things to the Inbox. But it’s not as good as having the thing there in the menubar. I thought the whole point of it was to get stuff quickly into DT without the main RAM footprint of DT, but if DT has to be running, well then there’s clearly less point to it. But presumably the decision was made long ago and is effectively unchangeable, so I’m not holding my breath for any reversal of design logic.
Having initially missed the old ‘always on’ Sorter, I now do not. The new one is much more useful. People still have an inbox database, one used for a generic catch all, that is the sole database that runs on startup. That keeps valuable data not in use or vulnerable, only loaded as required.
Just checked with Activity Monitor, and DT3 running in the background takes about 300 MB of RAM. For comparison, the Finder takes 200 MB, the Dropbox app takes 300 MB, and Chrome takes 325 MB.
I do like the new user features of the DT3 Sorter, but am not that fond that DT3 has to be open for Sorter to work.
I often do not have DT3 open so it’s break in the workflow to have to open DT3 just to file something in it. Much prefer the old way that Sorter worked in DT2.
I don’t know much about programming, but could DT3 Sorter be an independent app and basically when something is filed via that Sorter, it would open up DT3 and do its magic?
Technically speaking, it used to be an independent application. You don’t have to have DEVONthink visible to work with the Sorter; just running. You can minimize any DEVONthink windows.
Minimizing DT3.0 for the Sorter to be running is a possibility. However, so that it doesn’t break the workflow, DT3.0 will have to be included as a login item and then minimized. I think I prefer not to do that due to possibility of human error resulting in moving things around in an open application.
A small app to run DT3.0 Sorter from simply a usage perspective seems better.
However, so that it doesn’t break the workflow, DT3.0 will have to be included as a login item and then minimized.
That is possible, though I personally would not advocate opening an app like DEVONthink at login.
A small app to run DT3.0 Sorter from simply a usage perspective seems better.
We are aware of this opinion, but as noted in this thread (and other places), the Sorter is more deeply integrated into DEVONthink for sound technical reasons, including paving the way for future extensions.
If Sorter will not be its own app, a suggestion is have to a DT3.0 menulet (icon on menubar) that appears on login so that it’s easy to access DT3.0 from there. This is basically replicating the DT3.0 extensions that are in web browsers.
I have DT open all the time, so the Sorter being part of the DT app doesn’t bother me. However, it seems to be a real bone of contention here. I’m guessing that the current DT 3 Sorter functionally wouldn’t be possible without DT itself being open, or possible after months of re-programming.
How about a compromise where the old sorter is restored for those who want it, but with no more functionality than it originally had, whereas the new sorter functionality continues to require DT to be open? I’m guessing some old sorter re-programming would still be needed, but not to the extent it would for the 3.x sorter.
Another option for old sorter fans is to use Curiota as a parking space for when they don’t have DT3 open.
It’s a nice thought, but I suspect it’s a significant source of pain for the developers. My interpretation what’s been said so far is that the Sorter integration mechanism had been rewtittenj completely and I’d be very surprised of the hooks for the older interface are still available.
But, you know, that’s just me doing what Sherlock Holmes always called a capital offence - theorising without data
I had to look up what Curiota is. Looks to me that if one were to use that in replacement of a Sorter like DT2.x, that would be an interruption to workflow because those files and bibs and bobs will still need to be filed in DT itself. I’d rather file something properly in DT when I can, than park it somewhere else to be handled later.
That kind of “parking” is how for some people their computer desktops get so icon cluttered.
