The Files integration with DEVONthink To Go is great. I really appreciate the ability to use DTTG as an external file provider with another app, so I can use that app to read/edit/manipulate files I have in my database.
My understanding is that linking to folders is a different API. Some file providers (Working Copy is one in my iPad) allow linking to folders in other apps, which provides a way to access/edit/add files inside that sandbox in another app. DTTG doesn’t yet provide that feature.
Question: Are there any plans to do this, on the horizon, or any roadblocks that would make this difficult, given DTTG’s architecture?
The reason I ask is this. One DTTG database is my cabinet of research papers. On my Mac, they’re filed there using BibDesk, a bibliography manager, which keeps citation information in a simple text database (".bib" file) containing all the information you need to cite those papers in your writing. (Tools like LaTeX, pandoc, etc., process .bib files and ease the process of making your reference lists in the articles you write.) In the .bib file there are links to the files in my filesystem on the Mac. They’re in a folder which is indexed by DT3 on my Mac, so the files are also synced in my database on my iPad, ready for me to read at any time.
There’s now a great little app that reads .bib files on the iPad, References:
References has some really clever abilities. It allows you to point it to a folder of a file provider on your iOS device so it can look for linked files there, so you can go from a bibliography entry on your iPad to its linked file, at the touch of a link. I would so love to be able to point it to my ‘Cabinet’ group in my Research database in DTTG, which, as of today, contains 6361 pdf files, ready to be linked.
That’s something that would make DTTG even better for me, and tie it in nicely with the rest of the ecosystem of really useful iPadOS/iOS apps.