DTPO "Disrupting Thought, Perennially Obfuscating/Obstructin

My views are note being “retained” across DTPO sessions and it’s beginning to drive me insane! :open_mouth:

So, I have both Enable tabbed browsing and Retain view checked in the DTPO general preferences and still I have to waste time and energy restoring everything manually every time I quit from DTPO and start it up again. I’m starting to develop a phobia that kicks in anytime I sense that I’ll soon need to either shut down or reboot my Mac (and in turn DTPO).

For example, why do I have to manually reconstruct this view every time I open DTPO? From tabs to pdf pages where I last left off?

Why will my “workspaces” or whatever you want to call them not restore? Am I not using the preferences correctly? Is there a snapshot button somewhere that I need to press in order to capture (and then later restore and/or combine) my layouts?

IMHO, a significant role for any information management tool should be the ability to administer the managed information in ways relevant to the viewer and do so quickly; ESPECIALLY when it’s information that they have already found and been in contact with before. Isn’t one of the great benefits of digital over analog the speed at which objects/items/displayed info can be transformed? With physical books, papers, pictures, etc and their counterpart cabinets, drawers, shelves, tables and desk I might only be able to view one page at a time and fit only so many open books on my desk at a time; so many pictures on the wall, etc, and should the maid clean up and put everything away, I will have to find again every book and every page in order that I continue with my task. Why am I having trouble overcoming this hurdle with DTPO? I tried trashing my DTPO prefs,again for the zillionth time!, but retained views aren’t working. (yeah yeah I know, that’s why it’s beta, I just find it hard to revert to my paid vsn of 1.x as it’s much much worse.)

It drives me nuts to have to browse and search all over again simply to restore what I already had found and was reading/writing/referencing/etc in the first place. Why am I having to manually “remanage” the items of focus that I either already HAD strategically laid out before me? Or worse why do I have to jump through so many hoops to leverage info I currently HAVE right in front of me? e.g., a specific part-chapter-section-page-paragraph in a PDF that in order to annotate (markup, markdown, bookmark, mark for snapback, highlight, etc, etc) I again have to disrupt my focused attention in order to reopen the document in a different application (e.g. skim), refind the info, annotate it or whatever, head back to DTPO and index or reindex my skim notes, get reengaged and whatever else. Or I print that PDF’s page to a pdf file and refile the redundant little gremlin into the same dtbase2 file somewhere. It all is very harmful to concentration. What am I not seeing that would help DTPO NOT get so much in the way?

Instead of being able to launch DTPO, jump back into my research and projects right where I left off, I have to waste time, and more importantly the energy and impetus to focus and work on recalling my last layout strategy, relocating and reopening items in tabs, and/or reopening docs in windows and reestablishing the view for whatever the last page was that I was reading, etc, etc. It’s exceptionally defeating at times, especially when at one point I was on a research, writing or project roll and then be faced with a reason to have to shut down or restart, or even worse a DTPO crash! DTPO’s exceptional power is also beginning to become part of it’s more frustrating liabilities.

I NEED DTPO to help me MANAGE my information, it’s an information manager right? Why do I have to continually, manually manage my info!? Sorry, I’m not usually this THIS much of a ranter :blush: , I think I finally reached the end of my rope today in relation to what my perception of an info management tool is and what DTPO actually does (and does not).

While I’m on the subject “viewing” info in DTPO,am I just not seeing a feature somewhere that allows me to bookmark and/or snapback to pages in my pdf files? Yeah Skim’s fine but I’m growing tired of having to open and manage so many different applications all the time! :imp:

Is there a way to create snapshots of current views and then restore each view as needed? Say for instance I have one window open with items strategically opened in tabs within that window… You know what, nevermind, this is just stupid. I feel as if I’m asking GM why my car didn’t come with a steering wheel or something like that. I’ve wasted enough time manually restoring my work spaces in DTPO and this is taking more time that I’ve got to articulate. If it’s not there it’s not there. :angry:

And yes, I’m a b!tch. :smiling_imp: It’s immensely better than being a fake. :stuck_out_tongue:

I would like all or most of those things, too. :slight_smile:

Some of them are possible, some not currently possible in OS X, at least for all the document types in common use, and some can be approximated in one way or another.

If part of the problem is that you had open view and document windows that did not appear after a Quit, set Preferences > General - Startup to open the windows that were last open on Quit (you should also have designated one of your databases as default, in File > Database Properties). Now, next time you launch the application all of the databases and windows that had last been open will be reopened.

Will they be open at the specific scrolling positions and tabs that you previously had open? No.

You could create a rich text note that you can use to jot down some information that will help you get back to where you were. For example, if you are reading a book-length PDF, Control-click in the thumbnail of the page you were reading and choose the contextual menu option, Page Link.
Paste that into your rich text note. Now click on the Page Link and the PFD will open scrolled to that page.

A text string copied into your rich text note can serve as a cue to get back to your position in another long document.

Until the universe achieves perfection as I would define it, I have to make do with kludges.

Example: While I’m working on a project I use a DEVONnote rich text document as a convenient placeholder for links to documents that I might want to open in their own windows. From a view in DEVONthink, Option-Command-Drag the document to the cursor position in DEVONnote. When I click on a document link in DEVONnote, it instantly opens in DEVONthink. I’t not necessary to use DEVONnote, but DN’s floating window makes it easy to drag from DEVONthink.

Workspaces are not yet supported. But they will be.