DT3 - Your Favorite thing?

DEVONthink
81

Many thanks - following your suggestion I looked up Group Tags and these provide a good solution on a project by project basis. Since a Tag with the group name is generated automatically once the project group has been defined these can be used when reading through and annotating the literature files (which reside elsewhere). In this case one would need to add separate generic tags “New”, “No”,“Coll” and “Cited” to emulate the full workflow.
The advantages:

  • easy to search for PDFs with tags “NewRadarSatellite” and “New” to see which files should be reviewed and assessed for this project. Similarly it would be straightforward to assess the other steps of the process e.g. “Coll” or “Cited”
  • the project specific marking in the notes is maintained

The main disadvantage that I see happens when one literature reference source includes material relevant to multiple projects. Say I have two missions “NewRadarSatellite” and “NewOpticalSatellite” so that each of these projects exists in its own named group and the Tags are now generated automatically. If one reference addresses both types of missions I can tag this reference “NewRadarSatellite” and “NewOpticalSatellite”. I know in a glance that it applies to both projects. However I won’t know which of the process tags “New”, “No”,“Coll” and “Cited” apply to which project. The beauty of @tom12’s approach is that he can retrieve the status specific to any current project of interest even in this special case.

I’m probably splitting straws here. Still such problems are a good way to think about and discover how best to use DT3.

82

In this case one would need to add separate generic tags “New”, “No”,“Coll” and “Cited” to emulate the full workflow.

Correct, but this is fully supported and viable, hence my suggestion :slight_smile:

However I won’t know which of the process tags “New”, “No”,“Coll” and “Cited” apply to which project.

The Location of a file is shown under a file’s name in a search and a Location column can be shown in the item listing.

And I’m certainly not intending to knock @tom12’s method. These suggestions and his approach just serve to show how flexible DEVONthink is. :slight_smile:

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83

Everything looks sleek. However, there is one feature that works in DT2 (although there is no native support) and that is tabbed browsing. I am using multiple databases every day. Using the tabbed browsing fuctionality in Mojave you are able to view all open databases at the same time (e.g., file > new window > ). Unfortunately this does not work anymore for DT3. It will become very annoting to scroll through open databases using the command+ “~” keys. I will pay for an upgrade (and more) when this will work.

84

thanks for your thoughts on this! In my case, there are only 4-6 new projects per year and I must say that I cherish the process of creating a new project group and manually adding the structure, including the tags. somehow, it helps me get into the right mindset to start a new project :wink:

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