For example.
I have an article for a new product.
I would like to tag this product as follows
idea
new product
sweets
shipping
That article can be found within “Value Propositions”. No i would like to see all the tags within that group as folders. I could make smartFolders, but if i create a new tag, i always need to create smart folders for that. Thats annoying.
Furthermore i know that i need to see all items with the tag “shipping” within the group of “channels”. Could be done with a smart folder too, but within that smart folder i need to know which is new, which is tagged e.g. later oder canceled. You see, if i try to use smart folders, created by myself, i always have to think about where i have to place this smart folder in. Maybe sometimes i will have an article tagged as new, shipping, in discussion or something like that.
DT must do this for me. So the example in the post above is really close to what i need.
Having groups and seeing all tags used in that group and some groups have tags inside them, where i know, they have to be.
korm gave an exact picture of the “state of affairs” as they are now but that doesn’t mean they cannot be different.
IMHO the problem resides in the way groups and tags interact in DT; they’re treated separately and cannot interact in exploring your DB (Tags view and 3-panes view are separated).
In 3-panes view tags and groups are actually both present but they’re considered as equivalent elements of the same monodimensional search criterion.
Suppose you add the Tags view tag column to the 3-pane view; now you have two indipendent criteria to be used to slice your DB.
You can select one or more groups to narrow the scope and the list of tags is restricted to tags available in the group(s); now you can select one or more of that available tags (e.g. after clicking on a tag if you click on a second tag you obtain a logical AND, if you Option+Click you obtain a logical OR, if you Option+Shift+Click you obtain a logical NOT. A dedicated bar that displays tag logical construct would be useful).
So going back to the OP issue: he could select the group “Channels” then the tags “shipping” AND “later order canceled”. Need to perform the same search on the group “Customer segment”? Leave the tag part as it is and simply select the new group. He can explore any possible combination of tags inside any groups.
You could also jump to find field (upper right of the main window) and perform a text search on the configured “extended selection” (group(s) + tag(s)) and you will have an instrument to cope with 80-90% of the searches.
OK enough with naive GUI theory; I’m confident guys at DEVONtechnologies have clear the issues we’re talking about and will give us a good solution in the next release.
Apologies for bringing this up again - but reading through your response above - could someone please explain what is being suggested here?
Am I missing something huge? Is it possible to multi-select tags in the 3-pane view??
Or is Johseb merely referring to how one would do the multi-selection in the process of conducting a ‘normal’ search, i.e. advanced search to add the additional delimiters?
Johseb was describing a hypothetical scenario on how tags selection/searches might work in the Three Pane view in DEVONthink. The Three Pane view doesn’t actually work that way today.
However, I don’t know exactly what you are looking to do, but you can multi-select tags in the Three Pane view. In the Three Pane view, click on the disclosure triangle for your Tags Group and shift/command click to make a selection of tags. This will give you the union of this tag set (tagA AND/OR tagB AND/OR tagC…). This is different from the Tags view where you get the intersection of a group of selected tags (tagA AND tagB AND tagC…). A third option of tag lists, that is not possible in DEVONthink without a smart group, is a difference of the group (tagA OR tagB OR tagC…).
[EDIT] Ah wait - is the “disclosure triangle” the little drop-down arrow on each tag?
I’m not sure, since you make reference to the “Tags Group”… I presume I’m barking up the wrong tree, since clicking on the little drop-down arrow brings up a series of “related” tags, but no matter how I click on them, it simply adds the clicked-tags to the tagsline - which is obviously not what I should be doing… ??
This is the Tag group, viewed in the Three Pane view. The arrow points to the disclosure triangle that will display all the tags in the group.
If you shift- or command-click on various tags, the document pane (upper-right pane) will display all documents that have (in this example) tagA AND/OR tagB AND/OR tagC.
I am constantly forgetting about the Tag Group in 3-pane view, presumably because of my “thinking” only of tags in the tag-pane view… I will play around with selections between the two views, to get my head around the AND/OR; AND; OR ramifications…
I’ve been regularly spending time in front of my monitor, just staring away, whilst I conceptualise certain links/implications of all I am picking up through this forum and DTP… beginning to get more of a practical idea of what it means to be a ‘knowledge/ information worker’ = that term never meant much to me a few years back…
That’s a good thing. Of course. In case I never conveyed that.
