DT4 - Upgrade to DEVONthink4

DEVONthink
22

Jim,

Since everyone is using DT4 without any issues, I am thinking to give a try. If I install DT4 beta now, will the update to future releases be automatic?

23

Yes, updates will be available automatically, just like maintenance releases of version 3 were. And actually in the future updating from DEVONthink 4 to e.g. DEVONthink 6 will be as easy as installing a maintenance release - the application name, its bundle identifier, its preferences and its application support folder will remain the same from now on and therefore no more need for migrations.

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24

According to the Help, Hidden Preferences could be changed or removed with any update. Is there a way that I can list down all the current dt3 Hidden Preferences? So, that I can refer to it when I update the dt4 Hidden Preferences.

25

The currently available hidden preferences are listed in the help, see Help > Hidden Preferences

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26

Yes, I’m aware. Instead reading each key to compare dt3 and dt4, is there a dt3 plist file and dt4 plist file that we can compare to see the difference?

27

Well, the preferences (e.g. ~/Library/Preferences/com.devon-technologies.think3.plist and ~/Library/Preferences/com.devon-technologies.think.plist) could be theoretically compared but they’re not limited to hidden preferences and therefore this would be quite cumbersome.

28

Great and thanks. I will begin the experiment :).

29

You are right. Too long a list to check and compare. As such, I have written a shell script for that.

The following is the Hidden Preferences in dt3.

# Hidden Preference keys
AdditionalPlainTextExtensions
AVSkippingInterval
AdditionalXMLExtensions
BatesNumberDigits
CounterDigits
DatePlaceholdersWithoutLeadingZeros
DisableActivityWindow
DisableAutomaticDeconsolidation
DisableAutomaticUpdatingOfIndexedItems
DisableBadgeLabel
DisableFileSystemEvents
DisableFileCoordination
DisableFinderTags
DisplayGroupsInPreviewPane
DisableHighlightColorMapping
DisablePDFValidation
DisablePreprocessedClipping
DisableRelativeDates
DisableTagAutocompletion
DontAutomaticallyEnableOperatorsOptions
DontSetFindPboard
EnableApplicationFiles
EnableAutomaticConsolidation
EnableFSEventLogging
EnableEvernoteRTFDImport
EnableSearchFieldAutocompletion
ForceEditablePDFs
IndexRawMarkdownSource
MaximumNumberOfRecentDestinations
MaximumNumberOfRecentSearches
MonospacedSidebarFont
MonospacedViewFont
PersistentSortingOfSearchResults
PlainTextIsMarkdown
RawMarkdownPasting
RawOPMLImport
RichNotesWithoutAttachments
ShowAdditionalInfoInPathBar
SyncDebugLog
UsePDFDocumentDates
WindowToolbarStyleExpanded

And a shell script to print out those Hidden Preferences that have been set.

#!/bin/zsh

DOMAIN="com.devon-technologies.think3"
CONFIG_FILE="settings.conf"

echo "Reading settings from $DOMAIN..."

while read -r key; do
  # Skip empty lines and comments
  [[ -z "$key" || "$key" == \#* ]] && continue

  # Trim leading and trailing spaces from key
  key="${key//[[:space:]]/}"  # equivalent of 'xargs' for zsh

  # Attempt to read the key from the domain
  result=$(defaults read "$DOMAIN" "$key" 2>/dev/null)

  # Check if key was found and print the result
  if [[ $? -eq 0 ]]; then
    echo "$key = $result"
#  else
#    echo "$key = <not set>"
  fi
done < "$CONFIG_FILE"

I hope this is useful for those who need to copy the Hidden Preferences from dt3 to dt4.

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