images

DEVONthink Tips
1

I think I’m a bit confused about the reference to images in notes. I have been dragging jpgs to my notes and saw the size of the databases get large quickly. However…I believe that I’ve instructed the program to not copy images. If I see the image in the note, is it referenced external to DT? Or, if visible, is it in the database? For that matter, what exactly does it mean to import? If I click import and choose, say, an image…I get a new document that appears to be empty, but has a path indicated back to the image that I ‘imported’. What I think I expect to have happen for externally linked images, etc is to have a hyperlink that if I clicked it would open an image viewer and the file that was linked. I’m sure I’m not getting something simple here…any straightforward examples of how this is done? thanks…

2

Rich texts containing attachments (like images for example) always store the attachments inside the database (similar to TextEdit or other OS X applications which copy the attachments into the RTFD package - they’re never referenced).

The preference to copy or reference only applies to image or PDF contents.

3

hi…thanks for the reply. That squares with what I observed. Is the definition of an ‘image’ for DT specifically a ‘note’ that is solely a graphical file? That is, not a note that includes a graphic? (that’s the ‘d’ in an rtfd file, right?).

In this same vein…as the databases get bigger, due to my inclusion of graphics…is there any instability that can result? I need to regularly synchronize the db’s with a separate volume for backup, which I do with Synchronize Pro. What would be really nice is a set of db’s which are not just the 4, but one for each separate folder or something so that a true synchronization of only what was altered could be done efficiently. Here, the ‘notebook’ metaphor seems more efficient. In DT, I can have only one ‘object’ (ie., I open DT and I can only deal with the single ‘notebook’, if I may, that I have) which must contain all possible subjects, as I understand it. thanks again.

4

  1. Yes, an image is a graphic file (either referenced or copied). RTFD (rich text with attachments) on the other hand can contain almost everything - images, movies, compressed archives etc.

  2. No. We’ve been running databases containing up to 60.000 images (>2.2 GB) for example over here without problems. And DT Pro will support multiple databases ("Notebooks") - coming at the end of the month or beginning of February (next release will be v1.7.5 this or next week).

5

hi
Thank you very much for your reply. I very much look forward to DT pro, as the multiple db issue seems critical to me for the reasons I mentioned.