I have been using DTP with Bookends for ages, using DT to process PDF files (that start as photographs of documents from archives) before dropping them into Bookends, where I enter bibliographic data and take notes, usually quotes from the PDFs. Sometimes, when searching for something, I have gone back to the original PDFs, which are left in DTP databases (as well as being in the Bookends Attachments folder), done searches, and when I have found something useful, I have then had to identify the document manually in Bookends. But aside from this, once something is in Bookends, I do not go back to DT.
However, recently I have been thinking I should make greater use of DT’s searching, which clearly beats Bookends. So I used the Import from Bookends option, which appears to be just what I want, except for two things:
(1) If I make new notes in Bookends, I cannot see how I can update the entries created in the Bookends folder in DT, short of deleting and importing again, which does not seem the right way to go. There must be an easier way to do the updating, even if it means re-importing and then deleting duplicates and flagging ones that look as though they might be duplicates that have been edited in Bookends since the last import.
(2) More important, although the Bookends references are each linked to a PDF attachment, the only way to see the attachment is to click on the “title bar” (not sure what is the correct term) which takes me to the reference in Bookends. Not nearly as efficient as having the attachment indexed in Bookends. I Indexed the Bookends Attachments folder, but although I can search Attachments and search the Bookends data folder, the problem is that the attachments and the Bookends data are not linked, so if I choose a hit from searching the attachments, I have no idea what the bibliographic data are. I guess what I was hoping was that, given that Bookends does link each reference to attachments, the entries in DT would link to indexed versions of the attachments, somehow.
Sorry this query is so long, but though I have an idea about what I want to do, I am not clear on how I want to do it or what might be possible. I found some scripts on the forum which looked useful, but I could not work out how they worked (I am not skilled in reading Apple scripts). If a Bookends user could point me in the right direction, that would be great.