For those among us who find that we import a huge number of our files via the “inbox” folder in the finder, I have a feature request. Wouldn’t it be great if when using the save dialogue box, you could route files to specific places rather than having to put them in the Inbox and then “put them away” a second time from there?
I spend a lot of time doing this!
Therefore I’d like to propose that the contextual menu in devonthink have an option added to it that would allow any group in devonthink to have an “inbox alias” added to it in the file system. These would appear as subfolders in the file system with names that would be “#Database name…last parent–>last child,” e.g.:
“#Research…Book Project–>Books to Read” or
“#Research…Authors–>Kierkegaard”
“#Finances…Bills to Pay”
Files saved via the save dialog box or dragged into these folders from the Finder would then automagically routed into the appropriate folder just like the Inbox feature.
The hashtag at the front of the folder name would be to distinguish these special folders-to-group aliases to be distinguished from regular finder folders added to the inbox.
If the folders were deleted, they would stop working.
Does anybody have any refinement suggestions to this? I think this would be a straightforward addition to the current functionality and would save TONS of database-to-database dragging, especially when one is doing a bunch of quick sorting on a single project.
I’m not sure what you mean, but it’s probably because I wasn’t clear.
If you mean Favorites in the DevonThink sidebar, I already do that, but it ends up being a drag, because I’m still importing the files via the inbox and then doing a second drag to put them away. Moreover, it’s slow for big databases, because the file ends up being moved from the inbox database to the ultimate target. Twice as much dragging PLUS importation doesn’t happen in the background, which is one of the nice things about the DT inbox as finder folder model.
If you mean Favorites in the Finder/Save Dialog, well, that is what I want to do. What I do right now is that I set up a set of folders in my home directory that are import conduits. Then I go to the place in devonthink where I want the files to be imported, and I “index” the finder folder so that it becomes a group. Then when I want to import items, I do a “synchronize” in devonthink, and select each one and do a “move into database.”
The latter is for more useful than the former as it saves a lot of resorting…but it doesn’t do things in the background like the “Inbox” folder does, plus it’s a pain both to set up each folder, as you have to switch between DT and the Finder several times, and to move each item into the database. I like the automatic quality of the inbox folder exposed to the finder.