Went back to the DEVONthink manual (3.9.8) for some automation info. Just wanted to say the manual ROCKS. As a (retired) information designer, this is one of the best structured & written manuals there is. Kudos.
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/humbled and appreciative
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Jim, you know, if I were back in (interaction) design school, I’d study you guys to see how you work as a team. All these years I’ve been using the products and participating in the forum, there are a few things that standout. One is you are laser-focused on your mission, and on what the products are. I’ve worked in several software companies, and am well used to feature-creep, mostly driven by product management and sometimes specific (heavyweight) customers. Brings to mind Steve Jobs comment that the most important thing was knowing what NOT to do. And Jim, following you along these years, I love how you respond to requests, suggestions, wishes that DEVONthink did this and that, became this and that… When you became a jack-of-all-trades you start sucking at your core competencies. And your core competencies are being an information repository with magnificent metadata, classification and search-and-retrieval abilities, with careful extensibility. Dependability is core. In the almost 20 years I’ve been using your products, I am still amazed of how little data I lost; of how it was always possible to recover, and how you guys are always there in the forums or help. I think Apple should pay you guys, for you are the reason I never moved to any other platform.
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Thank you so much for the very generous words of encouragement! This is indeed an unusual company made up of all exceptional people. Being this small, everyone carries their own weight but each person still shoulders some of the burdens of the others, as needed. I am fortunate to find myself in good company, personally and professionally 
Also, I am just the messenger for requests. The real decisions are made by the development team though I do participate in many of those discussions. Staying on track, following our own trajectory, and deciding what to changes to make is not trivial but I guess 22+ years is proof they’re pretty good at it!
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Exactly my feelings. I have to say that for me my Mac is really Mac/DEVONthink 3 now and, in fairness Keyboard Maestro. I have other tools I like don’t get me wrong and I write outside DEVONthink 3 and then move everything back into it. It is a good system that works for me. I like it that, for instance, that I can set text docs to open with BBedit from within DEVONthink 3. Sounds trivial but it really makes a difference.
Were DEVONthink 3 to disappear I would be devastated but though I would probably continue on Mac it wouldn’t be the only computer I ever consider.
I still find new things on DEVONthink 3. I hadn’t looked at the scripts for about a year or more, this week I did, just to see, and there was something useful there. I haven’t lost any data ever, I do proper back ups and so on.
I still learn a new shortcut now and again to, or make one via Keyboard Maestro. I like the people too and the user community.
And I Soooooo agree about feature creep. What I found is that use less and less my own organizing systems, folders and sub folders. I even merged a whole database recently; somehow DEVONthink 3 is doing the work for me, or really I can always find what I need. I can’t even quite explain how to be honest I do it now. I never could find anything on the ironically named Finder !
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We’re glad to have you here – on the forums as well as a user of our software! Your thoughts and kind words are very appreciated.
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