Version 3 performs few additional tasks (e.g. scanning PDF annotations and ensuring that substrings aren’t matched) but the performance should be basically identical to the one of version 2.
Compare this to the way Preview reacts to clicks.
Looks very similar to DT’s behavior IMHO
It isn’t. Not remotely. It’s too bad the screen capture doesn’t record mouse clicks as visual feedbacks. DT is very sluggish in this case (the one I recorded) compared to Preview.
Could you please launch Apple’s Activity Monitor application (see Applications > Utilities), choose DEVONthink while it’s sluggish in the list of processes, select the menu item View > Sample Process and send the result to cgrunenberg - at - devon-technologies.com? Thanks in advance!
Done. I launched a search through a large PDF, immediately started the sampling and while it was running I tried clicking on the slowly populating search results, with very sluggish response from DT (I’m on beta 3 now).
I also import substantial pdfs. To check, I have imported the variety104-1931-11.pdf into DT3.3 and search/find text “Features in production”. Instant result. Instant too for ‘PLAYING CAPITOL THEATRE’. Deeper in find “manager of Hippo-” also instant.
Doesn’t appear to be an issue, at least not for me? Am I missing something about the op’s concern?
I don’t think you are. But it’s not instant at all on my end, and it’s a pretty fast Mac. I don’t know what is causing that.
I have similar age/spec iMac except it’s 32GB; also Mojave version is 10.14.5. Might be worth updating the OS?
I don’t know if this could be your culprit but two weeks ago after i updated from Sierra to Mojave, a few days later I encountered a massive problem with Spotlight not indexing properly, Finder tags not showing, unable to find Mail messages. I tried all the common problem solutions but to no avail. Finally found an uncommon problem solution which included deleting an obsolete TagsMail.mdimporter.
Suggest also search Google - mojave slow pdf search. You might find something amongst the comments.
Another possibility i find is to run the OCR on a pdf again. I use Acrobat Pro X1 to ocr but I assume DT’s Abbey Fine Reader similar. Have you tried Data>OCR>to searchable pdf? (Not that that explains how I was able to find the text without redoing, but maybe OS 10.14.5 is the answer?)
but maybe OS 10.14.5 is the answer?
While I can’t say this is the solution, we do generally recommend keeping up to date on operating system point releases.
After updating to 10.14.5 I can confirm searches seem to go faster but still slower than Preview. Thanks for the suggestion.
but still slower than Preview.
As @cgrunenberg mentioned, “Hard to tell what it does exactly but Apple’s apps are of course not limited to official APIs.”
There are plenty of private APIs and things Apple may do but not make available to developers, so it’s entriely possible the team working on Preview has done things we aren’t aware of or don’t have access to.