the new open database format is really great. So it’s much harder to loose files because auf database corruption. But the sorting by filetypes is not very good. First it’s bad for humans, as if we loose the database or don’t want to use DT anymore or DT is dead in some years. Second it’s bad for html files as the don’t find their images and stylesheets anymore.
What about doing it like iTunes? DT could create folders with the same structure and use aliases for replicates. If it will slow down DT then make it optional.
Using indexed folders is no workaround as dragging files to such a Folder inside DT won’t copy the file to it as people could expect.
I hope I haven’t missed some existing features, as I’m relatively new to DT Pro.
Why not just leave the file structure alone and let DEVONthink manage it?
It is trivially easy to export documents out of DTP. Just drag them out to the desktop, or use file->export. IMO you really should let DTP manage the files and not worry about where they are. The file structure is as it is because DTP can be faster hashing the files in that way, I’d figure. The folder has a “.noindex” suffix so Spotlight won’t find the files directly… they find it via the DEVONthink metadata importer which registers things with the system.
I’m using a ebook-database on DropBox. When DTP would manage the folders like in iTunes it would be possible to find my files also through a browser or on Windows. I know about exporting, but that produces duplicate content on my harddisk.
Because, inevitably, there will/might be an occasion where you cannot use DT to export the files, and you want to have accesses to appropriately structured file structures. This would fit nicely with Bill’s sage belts-and-suspenders philosophy. This is the most significant advantage that EagleFiler has. When it was announced that DT is switching to a Finder-based storage, I had assumed that they would follow that preferred route.
First, I don’t think it’s inevitable. As long as DEVONthink runs, it can export the files.
Second, it’s easy to get the files out of there. No, you can’t set the folder names. But they are all organized by file type. It’s trivial to use something like Leap to see every file in there.
True, but you lose all your carefully collected metadata, such as the source URL. There exists the ubiquitous DEVONtech_storage files, but I have yet to figure out how to use these data to attach the metadata to each exported file.
Of course you can “see” the files, but you have lost the folder structure, which was the point of this discussion.