Firstly, the new view of facing pages in landscape in DTTG is great. Much appreciated.
Secondly, clip to DT as pdf is brilliant. Many web pages to a long pdf page. Perfect for archiving and use in Margin note 3
Finally, I have changed to now OCR imported pdf’s in DTTG.* Would it be possible to add a shortcut for this in the Shortcuts app so that this part of my workflow can be automated? §
Workflow:
Capture page by screen capture on iPad (from a magazine image)
Make pdf from jpegs
OCR in DTTG
Add metadata — tags and rename pdf
Save file (pdf+text) to DTTG
… on synching to DT3, move to database & group according to tags
Prizmo can OCR on iPad, but it loses the metadata (tags) and name of pdf
OCR on DT3 results in a slightly smaller pdf that is slower to load and display (not all PDFs are created equal)
§ Automation is a good thing and should be encouraged
No this is not possible at this time since there is no OCR or Convert Item Shortcut action for DEVONthink To Go. Development would have to assess the feasibility here.
Yes, to a degree. But automation of a process you can already do manually is the best option as you have the analog fallback procedure in place in case the automation fails. Automation that fails and leaves you dead in the water because you don’t know the underlying process is not a wise situation to be in.
Academic automation is good too, i.e., learning something new, adding skills to your personal or professional toolbox.
Well here we are some 2 years later and talk is of trying the iOS 18 Beta!
To return to the topic of PDF size after OCR - I am getting significantly smaller file sizes when I OCR on my MacMini (M2) in DT ver 3.97 than on my iPad Pro 5th gen M1 with DTTG 3.8.6 (compression on)
So a ‘Raw’ pdf will go from 8.5MB to 17.2MB in DTTG at 65% compression vs 8.5 to 8.7MB in DT3
There will be all sorts of explanations as to pdf engines and silicon Macs but I am curious why this anomaly is present.
I have sorted this out for my own use by altering my shortcut, to OCR in DT3 on my Mac after synchronisation and then after a subsequent synch (iCloud) it has sent this searchable pdf back to the iPad; the file in DTTG on my iPad has OCR applied to the pdf without a large bloat in size.
A wee bit Heath Robinson but the best I can come up with.
You should not run a beta on a device you need running properly. So unless you have a spare mobile device to commit to it, don’t.
I am getting significantly smaller file sizes when I OCR on my MacMini (M2) in DT ver 3.97 than on my iPad Pro 5th gen M1 with DTTG 3.8.6 (compression on)
There’s no anomaly here. It would only be anomalous if all things were equal and they are certainly not. Different platforms, different applications, different frameworks…