Purpose of DevonThink? Organisation. Missing?

Hi Everyone, bit of a long one here - I am very enthused by what this software could do, it could actually make a lot of things easier (wow imagine a computer doing that!).

This feedback is specifically in regard to the direction & purpose which I recommend DevonThink/DevonAgent serves, whether this is found in a  parallel product or integrated within above progs, they should work together!
Please comment, disagree, add your bits worth.

DT/DA are truly cool products, they work, they make sense, they actually help you conceive, hold and organise information - better. And by joves there’s a lot of it these days.

While looking at the new release of ‘Creo - Six Degrees’ product, which fulfils a parallel need that DT provides - with very different functionality, I realised how much, in the real world, DT provides a more solid foundation for information & management.

Let me explain . . .

WHAT SIX DEGREES DOES
it’s a cool idea - the prog tracks everything you do around email on your puter: watches mouse clicks, files attached & sent and creates a dynamic link system to these files/emails/contacts - and opens them in there native applications as you work, so you save time going thru directories etc finding the contacts, files etc, etc, everything is categorised in groups via file or contact etc.
It serves a purpose for those managing/developing projects, collaborating etc, etc

YET
any sane person who is managing a project would create clearly referenced/navigatable folder and file structures anyway, which makes more sense, albeit may take fractionally longer. But I see the issue as INFORMATION CONTAINMENT, not FILE MANAGEMENT.

WHAT DT/DA DO
my needs which are fulfilled, in much more useful ways than six degrees employs, are management based - writing my ideas, scripts, reference readings, projects yet to be born, a business plan, clients files, read within DT, edit search in DA and back again - ALL CONTAINED.

YET WHAT DT DOES NOT DO
is cover that vital part of the administration/project management which is EMAIL!

IMAGINE IF IT
incorporated email/contact/reader functionality- it would be a truly unbeatable product. If it searched your existing email client database and find matches/links based on info/contacts/attachments dynamically, allowed you to read them, and opened a reply window in your existing client, allowing you to maintain your existing structure within your email client.
I say this over integrating an email client as this would be a whole new direction which would detract from DTs true value.

Adding this functionality would provide a logical and readily usable FRAMEWORK to everything i need to do in managing organisation, similar to six degrees yet within a logical context - CONTAINED within DT (or DA) - where DT would be the hub of all other information processing, feeding back into it from various applications & processes.
This would make my and a whole world of peoples lives a lot easier.

And isn’t that worth striving for!?

;]

The ability to create multiple databases has been mentioned for an upcoming release. Then you could have one for "email" - ick - and I could have one for my thoughts. . …

Seriously, I’ve been torn all along for ways to maintain an idea/writing database - that does NOT impose somebody’s else’s brain on me, thank you (you know who you are, Tinderbox) - and a separate way to organize and exert complete control all the data-type data on my powerbook.

Both reasonably effortlessly - and in this, Panther is a step backward. However, I hang on - because it of course has in its bones the ability to accomplish any level of management in all new ways. Have you seen NoteBook? I’m surprised Six Degrees is still around. Fab idea, limited execution, slightly misleading p.r., and unrealistic pricing.

I like “Information Containment.” Very much. Read “The Social Life of Paper,” about the way air traffic controllers handle living, breathing information. It’s what we’re after - on the computer.  

As stated in another thread, DT 1.9 will import mbox files. Maybe there will be a plugin for Apple’s Mail too in the future but currently Apple didn’t publish the interface of Mail and we don’t like hacks.