Missing files common problems no solution

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1

Devon think 3

Missing files and deleting the only file Bug

(1) Devon think 3 will delete the only version left of your file in the following circumstances.
(a) and (b) DT in duplicants to replicants may take the entry without a file as the primary entry. Then delete other duplicate entries that have files attached. You will have one entry but no file.

(2) Devon think 3 will also make missing files without you intending to. Defeating the purpose of a file management system.

(a)Dragging
Dragging a entry from the main DT3 window duplicates the file to finder. This is expected. It does not create a missing file.

Dragging the icon from an open DT3 file window will remove the file from the DT3 file system. But will leave the database entry. This is not expected.

What is expected by dragging the file icon from any DT3 window is: (i) the default behaviour of single left mouse click and drag should be to copy the file from the DT3 and;

(ii) I imagine modifiers may be used to give either an external file reference. removal of the files and DB entry, or to remove the file but retain the DB entry.

(b)Renaming file
Renaming a file outside of DT creates a missing file. This is partially expectedā€¦

In preview, when a file is open and renamed, it is not lost. ā€œmissingā€. it is updated. But in DT3 an open file renamed is lost.

The expected behaviour (i) the file is locked and cannot be renamed whilst passed from DT3 to preview or (ii) Preview updates the file name an DT3 also updates the filename

Detail DT3 deleting files.
(1) You have a duplicate. But one duplicate has a missing file.
(i) The missing file DB entry, is sorted before the other entries. The latter have duplicate files attached.
Select all
Covert > duplicates to replicants.
If the first entry has a missing file this becomes the master.
Then the other entries with files are moved to the bin.
These are the only copies of your files.
Which you may delete without knowing.

(ii) If you know that the entry has a missing file. But select that and click duplicates to replicants , it will delete the entries that have files attached.

I do not want to hear comments like DT is not intended to be used this way. Because this is a file storage program, not a file reference manager. The files are the resource not the names of the files.

In changing duplicates to replicants files are removed. But DT does not check if the entries have files. This is a bug.

A bug is a an expected or undesirable action. This bug can be prevented by checking if the master has a file attached or missing.

Scenario

Tuesday Time 10Am
add dog pdf to DT3
Open in preview
drag the preview icon to deskstop
delete items from desktop

download the do pdf to DT3 twice.

DT3 in the background unknown to user.
dog - unknown missing file
dog - file /folder y
dog - file /folder x

Tuesday Time 11am
select all > convert > duplicates to replicants
delate DT3 trash.

1 year later.
Search dog.
click on the dog entry.

DT3 shows.
dog - ā€œmissing fileā€
end of scenario

I hope this is fixed. this is a major bug. DT3 cannot chose to save the entry with a file attached, but may delete it.

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How do you produce a missing file in the first place?

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That is what I just wrote. I hope you are not a troll.
That is the bug. Devon Think 3 allows you produce missing files.
(1) opening a document on a separate window then dragging the icon to the finder.

Then, with one entry, that has a missing file, does not logically use the duplicates to replicants feature. It sometimes will remove your only remaining copy to the trash.

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Please donā€™t let your frustration lead you to assume other people are trolling you. This is generally a very helpful forum where people talk respectfully to each other, and meowkyā€™s question is totally innocuous.

You clearly tried to write your post in a structured way to communicate your issueā€¦ But I must say, I also find it very hard to understand. I assume english is not your first language?

We can try to guess or infer your intended meaning, but itā€™s probably better to ask for clarification. If there is a language barrier, screenshots might help.

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5

In dragging the file icon, you are performing a Finder action
The Finder default is a file move
For a copy, hold down the option key while draging

Select all
Covert > duplicates to replicants.
If the first entry has a missing file this becomes the master.

You only need to select one of the duplicates
Donā€™t select the one with a missing file

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Well, I think I was able to correctly infer something. I think @allcry is using the Document Proxy Icon to drag files from a document window to the finder. I can confirm this removes the file from the database:

Document Proxy Icon s-loop

This is dragging without any modifier keys. Whether this is considered a bug, I donā€™t know.

I still donā€™t know about the rest.

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I would say this is unexpected behavior on the part of the user, not necessarily a bug. In my experience, the majority of users Iā€™ve dealt with donā€™t know what a proxy icon is or thatā€™s itā€™s even draggable. However, development could comment on it.

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I think this is logical behavior. The user explicitly performs an action to move out something which is previously inside a DT database. Since DT is not explicitly instructed to remove the ā€œdatabase entryā€ along with the physical file, it duly reports that a missing file is detected.

Now, if the user indeed wishes to move the file out, they can just delete the entry manually. If the file is moved out by mistake, then Iā€™m not sure whether there is a simple way to ā€œre-associateā€ the file with the ā€œdatabase entryā€. (Expectedly, āŒ˜Z does not work because the user action involves more than one application.)

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As @BLUEFROG says, I donā€™t think many people are aware that these proxy icons are something you can interact with. I have been using macs for 17 years, and I only learned of it within the last year by chance. Itā€™s not something I use much, so I donā€™t know if there are any caveatsā€¦ But my understanding is, these icons should behave just like if you dragged the file from the Finder.

If you simply drag a file from DEVONthinks item list to the Finder, it will copy the file to the destination, but still keep the file in your database. So at a glance I can see why one would expect the behaviour when dragging the proxy icon to be the same. I did when I tried before, probably because I hadnā€™t thought too much about it and was primed by this post.

Now that you say itā€¦ I guess it would make just as much senseā€”if not moreā€”to understand grabbing the proxy icon as equivalent to reaching inside the database packageā€¦ Like Right click > Show in Finder and dragging the file from there. Thatā€™s clearly what is happening.

And as is often repeated, youā€™re not supposed to perform file operations inside a database through the Finder, exactly because it will lead to problems.

(I just put the PDF back in the folder DEVONthink expected it to be in, all good.)

Well, the problem seems to be that @allcry doesnā€™t want to move the file out, but assumes the proxy icon to act like if dragged from DEVONthinkā€™s item list ā€“ to copy it to the destination. And that he does not seem very open to adjusting his perspective:

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This assertive stance is logically flawed. To see how, consider the following similar stance:

I am a real person, not a name. I donā€™t want others to call me John. Instead, I want people to refer to me as an actual person.

You can clearly see why this stance is irrational: The ā€œnameā€ is, by definition, the way we refer to someone during any conversation. Itā€™s impossible to have a physical person in verbal or written form, hence names are necessary in order to facilitate a conversation.

Similarly, file references are necessary because you are not going to deal directly with a sequence of 0s and 1s ā€” the actual files themselves. Instead, within any ā€œfile storage programā€, Finder included, you are dealing with file references. It occurs that a file reference in Finder, as well as many other applications, is visually represented in the form of an icon and a name.

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@allcry Maybe it would help you to read the sections Missing Files (p.193) and Orphaned Files (p.194) in the Troubleshooting chapter of the manual.

Among other things you will find this:

Modifying the internal contents of a database outside DEVONthink is unsupported behavior and can lead to broken or inconsistent databases. You should only get into a databaseā€™s internals when instructed to by our support team.

While I understand it is not intuitive to you, this is essentially what you are doing when you drag the icon in a document window (called a proxy icon)ā€”as the icon represents (is a proxy for) the file as viewed in the Finder, inside the internals of the database.

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Thanks for investigating and for teaching me something new. In my DT setup, all documents open in their associated app (PDFs in Preview etc) when I double click. So, I didnā€™t even have the ā€œproxy iconā€ (nor did I know that itā€™s called proxy icon).

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Maybe the ā€˜bugā€™ is having the proxy icon available on a Devonthink panel
Most users donā€™t know itā€™s a backdoor to modifying the internal components of a database

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A proxy icon is a useful thing and a staple of the Mac ecosystem for a very long time.
As I mentioned, development would have to assess if the behavior is something we need to change.

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It seems that the default changed with Monterey (Mac-Tipp: Dokument-Icon in Finder- und anderen Programmfenstern dauerhaft einblenden | News | MacTechNews.de, German). The visibility of proxy icons now depends on a global preference.

Here, it is turned off, and I donā€™t have a proxy icon of a PDF in Preview. Nevertheless, if I Cmd-O open a PDF in DT, the proxy icon is shown. Iā€™m not sure if thatā€™s a feature or an inconsistency.

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My mind is getting slower and it took a while for it to dawn that I have seen mention of proxy icons before, in Brett Terpstraā€™s blog. For those who may be interested (though it doesnā€™t relate to DEVONthink, and is on a different matter) there is a blog post here: Fixing the Big Sur proxy icon delay globally - BrettTerpstra.com

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It is interesting that even though I do not mentions ā€œproxy iconā€ in my bug report it has been latched onto. This highlights the absurdity of the comments.

I do bug reports for a living. And before that a web analyst, and web designer. I think I know a bug when I see it.

And yes a bug can be found by a new user. But it is still a bug. An unwanted feature.

Do any of you want to be able to drag documents permanently from you file database without knowing?

If I want to do this I command drag. In DT3 I get no warning. I was asked to give the reason of how I got missing files. And now I have given it, I am told the problem is mine, not DT3.

There is an element of absurdity here. This is a bug report, not a motherā€™s meeting. If DT3 needs customers to hold itā€™s hands then, so be it.

I should not be able to accidentally alter my database, without a warning. A warning that I am removing files from the database. This is a bug. Fix it or donā€™t fix it.

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This is the main DT3 window. Which is not what I am talking about.

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Cheers! I am honestly surprised that I could teach you anything computer-related @chrillek. That just adds to Bluefrogā€™s observation that very few people know about them. And as he says, they are not particular to DEVONthink, but system-level.

I learned about proxy icons by randomly stumbling upon this post on Michael Tsaiā€™s blog: Big Surā€™s Hidden Document Proxy Icon. Itā€™s a bit longer than the short Terpstra post @mbbntu links above, for those interested. At the end it also links to an archived version of the documentation from Mac OS 8.5, where they were originally introduced. The link is now dead, but still lives in the Wayback Machine.

(More reading, might as well save others the time: TipBITS: Always Show Window Proxy Icons, Daring Fireball: Document Proxy Icons in MacOS 11 and 12 as a ā€” Ahem ā€” Proxy for Appleā€™s Current UI Design Sensibilities)

The big change to defaults happened with Big Sur, and in Montery they added back an option in system settings to enable the old behaviour.

If you hide the window toolbar, a small window title bar will still be left. And that shows the proxy icon and filename regardless. I donā€™t remember if the toolbar of DTā€™s document window is hidden by default, but that is what you see. Notice how the proxy icon is not visible if you show the toolbar (View > Show Toolbar).

I have not looked for the documentation on this, but it is quite consistent for standard application windows. Try and hide the toolbar in Preview, it works the same way.

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Thanks for the bug report, the next maintenance release will fix this.