I’ve been testing MailTags and some other applications lately with Mail and DTP since I use tags a lot. But I’ve run into an attribute that I hadn’t noticed much before, and I’m wondering how DTP deals with it.
We had openmeta tags, kMDItemOMUserTag. Now we have Mavericks tags, _kMDItemUserTags.
But I also see kMDItemKeywords, Keywords. So far I’ve only found them in emlx files, but I’m wondering if they’re used elsewhere. And I know that unlike other tags they show up in Get Info windows in Finder. Are they the same as iPhoto keywords?
And I notice that DTP seems to show them in the tags window, although I’m not sure if that is common, or if it’s a result of me messing around with some beta stuff.
Keywords are an MDItem that are frequently associated with PDFs or image files. Keywords can be set or viewed in DEVONthink Tools > Show Properties and there is a column option available for “Keywords” that can be added to the columns displayed in list views, three pane view, etc. DEVONthink provides a script in Scripts > Tags > Convert Keywords to Tags (an optional add-in in the Support Assistant). See this, this, and this. Not an exhaustive set of references – but might help with some background.
From an end-user perspective – there’s really very little difference between keywords and tags, just a difference in the implementation which has more to do with different features evolving at different times than anything.
The keyword thing is important if Aperture keywords, for example, can be imported into Mavericks tags. Because I don’t think you can tag within Aperture, iPhoto or probably iTunes. So if your media is catalogued there and you want the organization to carry over to DTP or for use with other applications that play will with tags the feature you describe would be the bomb.