Indexing, and files tagged elsewhere

I use Together as my day-to-day inbox for materials of general interest that I want to keep around but are not of major (e.g, research and work) significance. I use it because of its ability to tag documents, smart groups, etc., and it has a nice, usable interface. Features that maybe, someday, DT might have, but just isn’t there yet, imho.

So, I also have a DTP database that looks at the same folder where Together has its data stored. This is to use the more robust features of DTP when I need them. I index that folder in DTP. It works nicely, to a point, with the Together tags because I’ve set Together to store its tags in Spotlight comments - thus making them available to DTP.

I’ve noticed a couple of drawbacks with this. First, if I add or change tags in Together, they never get updated in DTP. Syncing the folder apparently does not cause DTP to update the comments in its database (I assume). Also, DTP ignores Spotlight comments (and thus tags) on unknown filetypes. Don’t know why, but that’s what it is.

For now, to get around the first problem - tag changes - I merely start over and build a new database from time to time. That works OK, since I’m only using the DTP instance for analysis. But, maybe it would be nice if DTP would update its storage of the Spotlight comments when the original file gets updated.

I wonder if anyone has a similar set-up, with Together or Yojimbo, Leap, etc. Any other approaches?

DEVONthink synchronizes only files with a modification date newer than the internal date but obviously Together doesn’t change this date. So the best workaround is probably to change the date by using scripts/workflows or third-party software like FileBuddy.

I’ve attempted to use Together with DTPro in the way you described, i.e., indexing the Together folder, and have found that not all of the files get indexed and a couple of them will get duplicated. So I’ve gone back to using Together much as you do as an interim or non in-depth repertory and if I decide something residing there should graduate to DTPro I manually import it. I’m hopeful that DTPro 2.0 will be enough in terms of UI and otherwise to free me up from using two DB programs.