How to implement synonyms?

DEVONthink Tips
1

Hi,

maybe this is a very easy to answer question but neither google nor this forum had any results on synonyms.

Now my question: first, I’m would like to use DevonThink with books and articles written in two languages. That is for each tag, there is a ‘synonym’ i.e. a translation.

How can I tell DevonThink that the tag Philosophy and Philosophie are exactly the same?

Apart from the language problem: how would I tell the AI that saliency and salience are to be treated the same?

Many thanks in advance,
Antonius

2

One option that may work for you is to assign an alias to the primary usage tag. You would need to select the primary tag, show the info (command-shift-i), and enter the other tag names (separated by commas) in the alias field. As example, if the primary spelling is Philosophy, then show the info for this tag and enter Philosophie in the alias field.

A potential downside for you using the above is that this acts as a conversion-documents imported with the Philosophie tag are now tagged with Philosophy-the Philosophie tag goes away entirely.

No ideas on the AI question.

3

Thank you for the suggestion of using aliases.

In the documentation it reads:
“Aliases: Enter one or more words here, separated by semicolons, as alternative targets for Wiki-style links. Generally, Wiki links refer to the name of contents and aliases make this system even more flexible.”

What are ‘wiki-style links’?

Thanks,
Michael

4

Another option would be to make Philosophy a parent tag of Philosophie. You can nest tags just like you can nest groups.

5

do the assigned tags really affect the search results of the AI?
Or does (as I fear) the AI only rely on the content of the files?
(E. g. it does not take into account identical file names [with different suffix].)

6

Now I’ve found the old discussion:

Here we had a similar question:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1148&hilit=+german#p5454

Bill DeVilles suggestion was to create “bridge documents” which contain the synoyms or translations and help the AI create a relation between the words:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1148&hilit=+german#p27838

I experimented with that “bridge document” approach long ago, but did not really use it.

However, I still would strongly suggest to implement such a feature as I assume many people using DevonThink (especially for research purposes) have documents of at least 2 languages: English and their own one (if it is not English as well).