My appreciation to DEVONtechnologies for 1.8.1

DEVONthink Feedback
1

I’ve been using DEVONthink since version 1.4. For some time, I’ve been a beta tester.

We’ve gone through 10 (yes, ten) betas of DEVONthink 1.8.1. New features were added and tested, bugs were eliminated, and a series of tweaks to the application were made. Yet I was able to use DEVONthink for my critical workflow without any problems – the database is as bullet-proof as they come.

As a result of new features in 1.8.1 I’ve changed some habits I had built up while using earlier versions of DEVONthink.

[1] HTML versus RTFD captures of Web pages: Previously, I had favored capturing Web pages as RTFD because the earlier Web page rendering in DEVONthink was slow. But with the improved WebKit browser in DEVONthink, along with contextual menu options, I usually capture Web page content as HTML. I still do some RTFD note captures, but primarily for capturing graphic  content from sites that may be ephemeral. (In a future version of DEVONthink, HTML captures will actually download images, so that they will be available offline.) In either case, capturing information from the Web into DEVONthink is a pleasure – really quick and easy. For "batch" searches of the Internet or selected sites, DEVONagent is also a very useful tool, and the search results (in whole or in part) can easily be added to my DEVONthink database.

[2] Index imports of large documents, such as large PDF files: I’ve got thousands of PDF reference materials on my TiBook hard drive. Many of them run hundreds of pages in length. DEVONthink’s ability to capture the text of PDF (and Word) documents into the database makes these documents searchable and rapidly accessible from my DEVONthink database. But the text imports often are large, and they often are hard to read (especially for multi-column PDF documents, and for tabular material). Version 1.8.1 adds a new import mode, by collecting a compact index of the PDF file’s text. In this mode, I can search index-imported PDF files (with the limitation that content can’t be searched using the “Phrase”  search mode.)

[3] Hyperlinking features add a world of possibilities, such as linking notes and comments to documents in (or outside) the database. Linking is still in a relatively early stage of development in DEVONthink but is already useful.

DEVONthink is my most important tool for scientific and technical literature research. DEVONtechnologies has continued to make it faster, more stable and more powerful. Thanks.

2

Bill,

Fully agreed, DT gets better and better! One more thing… Christian mentioned that it will be possible to search the contents of linked files in a future version of DT (PE/Pro?). This will be another fine addition as you will always have the latest version of the file searched by DT. It may make the search a bit slower but normally you will only link to a small number of files, namely those which are still worked on outside of DT. Once the final version exists it can be finally included in the DT database.

Rudi

PS: Bill, did you ever try SENTE as a search tool for pubmed?

3

No, I haven’t – but just looked at a couple of reviews, and it looks useful. I don’t need "formal" citation layouts for what I do, however. And I tend to get overwhelmed already with what I can pull with DEVONagent!;D

Thanks for the tip.

4

Bill, Rudi,

thanks for the positive feedback. There are still some rare issues in DT 1.8.1 but the upcoming release 1.8.1a should fix the most important ones (no new features this time). And Rudy, did I really mention this? Can’t remember - I need a supplementary brain ;D

5

Christian,

You are correct, a wishful misinterpretation of a statement made in an email titled ‘Re: DT capture’ from the 25th of Feb

…
Da Links keinen Inhalt haben, fehlen diese Buttons (Classify, SeeAlso). Allerdings wird eine spätere Version diese Knöpfe wieder hinzufügen und einfach den gerade sichtbaren Inhalt mit der Datenbank vergleichen. Sollte nur marginal langsamer sein.
…

I notice right know that your answer was in respect to the current contents of a single linked document. But a general search of linked documents would be still a very, very nice feature

Rudi

6

Good to know that my brain does indeed still work :wink: However, I’ve added your suggestion to the to-do list of version 2.0 but I can’t promise this feature currently. By the way - version 1.8.2 will be able to compare the contents of the currently visible WebKit view to the database.