So you don’t use Replicates, and use tags instead?
Is it?
I like the concept, very flexible.
I have a tag for each project (Project-aaaaaaaaaa)
Any records connected to the project are assigned the specific project tag
WOW! Thank you for your explanation.
I used to tag like a crazy when I was on Evernote, then I smashed to the ground when I went away from the platform and exported the notes: all the tags disappeared (they were metadata that didn’t show up in the exported files), a second brain that was disconnected in itself…
Is there any option to extract tags along with all the other metadata from a note?
Tagging is very similar to replication.
A tag and a group are pretty much the same thing. The tag is a group with automatically created replicants of everything with the tag. Removing the tag from a document basically deletes the replicant that’s in the tag. Adding the tag to a document automatically creates a replicant in the tag.
If you add a tag like Stooges/Curly/Scientific achievement, the tags in that chain that don’t yet exist are automatically created.
So, you can tag something with WW1/Paris and another document with WW2/Paris. A search for Paris will return both, or you can have a smart group that includes everything tagged with Paris. That will show documents from both WW1 and WW2. As you add documents tagged with Napolean/Paris, 100 Years War/Paris, Tale of Two Cities/Paris, those documents will automatically appear in the Paris smart group, which is pretty much a stored search.
You can do what tags do with replication and no tags at all, but it’s just a lot easier and more flexible with the tagging mechanism.
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We can provide details if you supply more details
For tags, I was happy to see when exporting notes, DT tags become Finder tags
The Create Metadata Overview function puts a column in the TSV output file for tags.
If you add a tag like Stooges/Curly/Scientific achievement, the tags in that chain that don’t yet exist are automatically created.
So, you can tag something with WW1/Paris and another document with WW2/Paris. A search for Paris will return both, or you can have a smart group that includes everything tagged with Paris. That will show documents from both WW1 and WW2. As you add documents tagged with Napolean/Paris, 100 Years War/Paris, Tale of Two Cities/Paris, those documents will automatically appear in the Paris smart group, which is pretty much a stored search.
I like how you use tags.
They create bridges between distant notes.
I mean: tags are not embedded into the file.
i.e. images don’t have tags inside their EXIF.
If I take my files that are stored on DT, and put them out from the software, I lose the tags, is it?
I wonder if there is a way to “export” them along with the related file, so that I don’t lose them.
You say DT tags are converted to Finder tags, that is great.
But again: I lose the tags if I move away from the Finder (maybe because I move to another OS such as Windows or Linux).
I’m very pedantic about the “exit plan”.
Do you mean “when I take a photo, it has no tags in the EXIF block” or do you mean “DT does not handle EXIF tags”? In fact, you can put tags (aka “keywords”) in the IPTC block of JPEGs.
Yes. DT keeps your files as they are (which is the Right Thing, imo). Tags etc. are just metadata that DT saves separately from the data itself (well, in the case of PDF or MD, there’s no strict separation between data and meta data).
But frankly, tags are only one feature of DT. If that is all you need or want, then the program is maybe overkill. On the other hand, if you need some or many or all features of DT, you can stop thinking about moving to Windows or Linux anyway. At least give up all hope to do so painlessly.
But again: I lose the tags if I move away from the Finder (maybe because I move to another OS such as Windows or Linux).
That’s just a generally true situation.
There is no standard for global arbitrary metadata, i.e., you can’t just tag any file and have the tags transport across filesystems. For specific files, e.g., XMP on PDF files or EXIF/IPTC on images, they can survive. For other file types, there is no guarantee. OpenMeta, leading to Finder Tags, in macOS was the option to allow for abitrary metadata. But apps and transporters (like Dropbox) had to opt in to use or preserve them. (I was part of OpenMeta and had emails back and forth about the tags being lost in Dropbox sharing.)
So your exit will have some fundamental flaws regarding tags if you’re leaving the Apple ecosystem.
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If I was leaving Devonthink/Apple, I would take action to preserve tags and other metadata
fwiw I use an applescript to append tag names as keywords to the note name; it adds context to a brief description
Another example is a transfer to Apple Notes, I would append the tags names to the note contents with a #prefix
Which can make for very very looong names? Which again can cause problems with other (file) systems… As @BLUEFROG said, there are provisions for meta data in some file formats (e.g. Markdown, PDF, JPEG), but in general, there’s no failsafe way to carry them over from one program to another, much less one operating system to another. For example, I’m using user-defined metadata in DT and tags and groups… to save that when I move somewhere else would require a lot more then just appending some tags to the file name. Unfortunately.
An alternative might (!) be an SQL database from which one could export all (meta) data as text and then import into another SQL database. But that would cause a lot of other problems with different SQL dialects, data types, the fact that SQL is relational and DT not at all, that most databases do not have a nice UI etc etc.
Finally, if one really would have to move all data out of DT, something like XML (for the more masochistic inclined) or JSON might be an option: These formats are portable and flexible enough to accomodate all kind of (meta) data. If and how such a file can be imported in another program is a different question.
Finally, if one really would have to move all data out of DT, something like XML (for the more masochistic inclined) or JSON might be an option: These formats are portable and flexible enough to accomodate all kind of (meta) data. If and how such a file can be imported in another program is a different question.
An interest idea, feeling somewhat like Lightroom’s sidecar files. But yeah, there would be the problem of needing adoption from other apps, etc. for it to be useful outside our apps.
This is something I’m thinking about.
The more I use DT, the more I realize I’m using it as like as a fusion of a note taking App (such as Apple Note) and a storage App (such as Finder) plus some “strange feature” such as extracting highlights from a PDF.
I don’t say I don’t need other features of DT, maybe I’m so used to note taking Apps (Evernote, Onenote, Apple Note) and methods such as Zettelkasten so that I’m too deep into such concepts.
The result is I can’t see other maybe better way to organize and work on things.
I’ve already watched many tutorials.
Maybe I’ll start another thread for it…
How about a .tsf file
Tools > Create Metadata Overview
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Possible, but not ideal: TSV (and other tabular formats) have to contain columns for every possible data , even though many of these do not contain any values. In the case of relational data, this should not be a big problem (one table, one file), but with mostly unstructured and wildly varying data like in DT, JSON or XML are better suited (well, XML not really, but it was very hip once).
Or set up my “unofficial API” which creates a MongoDB database with all of the metadata and custom metadata
With any application, there’s a tradeoff. The more completely you commit to it, the harder it becomes to extract your data and use something else. Data portability is one of the major goals of Markdown, for instance, but by definition Markdown is strictly plain text.
One question to consider is under what circumstances would you want to move on? And to what extent are those circumstances under your control?
There is one column in the TSV metadata overview for a comma separated list of the tags associated with each file.
You might take a look at Zettelkasten techniques. Luhmann, Zettelkasten’s progenitor, worked out a method for filing index cards in sort of a physical, somewhat self-organizing analog to a Devonthink database.
Well, I’m not planning to move on soon 
But I’ve learnt to never say never: I was totally committed with Evernote for many years, then things went wrong and I moved on.
As for the operating system, now I’m full inside the Apple ecosystem, but who knows what happens from here to some years?
This is how I met Markdown…
I know the Zettelkasten method, and in my own experience requires lot of time to curate the notes and the links between the notes.
This is one of the reasons why I’m testing DT: I’ve read a lot about it and watched lots of tutorials, and it seems to be best suited for organizing documents (I work with academic papers, articles and other media a lot) and, above all, for retrieving them.