Question concerning DevonThink Search with Houdahspot: no groups?

rufus123 · September 13, 2021, 2:59pm

great. thank you.

BLUEFROG · September 13, 2021, 3:16pm

Perhaps DEVONsphere Express could find groups in DEVONthink, as it can already find files there. And it’s more intimately related to DEVONthink too

rufus123 · September 13, 2021, 3:17pm

I have it and will have a look. I have not been using it because of memory consumption problems. thank you

BLUEFROG · September 13, 2021, 3:53pm

You’re welcome.
But note it won’t find DEVONthink groups at this time. I was just making a suggestion to @cgrunenberg that maybe it could in the future

tudoreynon · September 13, 2021, 5:16pm

I have to say, that I find Houdah Spot and DEVONthink 3 work well together for me. It is a combo I would hate to lose. I have all my files now, other than ones I am working on and email in DEVONthink 3 anyway, so I could revert easily to native search but I really find HS very powerful and it sometimes finds stuff I didn’t even know was there. I use groups but don’t really search in them…

rufus123 · September 13, 2021, 6:48pm

thank you for your comment.

HoudahSpot, in addition, has a nice large document/item preview pane.

Concerning the impossibility for search for groups, I found a solution thanks to the help of our beloved master @cgrunenberg
It is discussed here : Document opened but sidebar not visible and no way to identify or open the item's group - #3 by rufus123

I use keyboard maestro macros. In case you do also, you can create a HoudahSpot palette with 2 macros
1- a macro to open an item (search result) in DevonThink
2- a macro to open the group in which the item is located (for some strange reason, I often find myself having to do this). Macro -2- is simply macro -1- to which I added ⌘R which is the DevonThink shortcut for Data > Reveal

tudoreynon · September 13, 2021, 7:34pm

How do you do those macro if you don’t mind explaining.

rufus123 · September 13, 2021, 7:49pm

Here are the 2 macros

I have one problem that I am trying to solve which is that HoudahSpot finds items/docs in the trash which I am not interested in, but that I don’t want to delete for the moment.

@BLUEFROG
is there any way to add the prefix DELETED to all files in the trash ? thank you

tudoreynon · September 13, 2021, 8:13pm

Thanks. that was kind of you to take the trouble.

BLUEFROG · September 13, 2021, 9:50pm

Technically feasible, but I’m wondering why you wouldn’t be routinely emptying the database’s Trash.

rufus123 · September 14, 2021, 5:18am

just because I’m a bungler. Could I create a smart rule?

BLUEFROG · September 14, 2021, 2:11pm

Not directly, no. You can’t target the Trash or the Trash of any database with a smart rule.

However, you could create a Reminder script and apply it to the Trash of a database. Set it as an intervallic alarm, e.g., Daily, in the Annotations & Reminders inspector.

Here is such a script…

on performReminder(theTrash)
	tell application id "DNtp"
		set currentDB to (database of theTrash)
		set trashedKids to ((contents of currentDB) whose (location begins with "/Trash"))
		if trashedKids ≠ {} then
			repeat with thisKid in trashedKids
				if (name of thisKid) begins with "DELETED" then
					exit repeat
				else
					set name of thisKid to ("DELETED-" & (name of thisKid))
				end if
			end repeat
		end if
	end tell
end performReminder

Save it in the ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.devon-technologies/think3/Reminders directory and relaunch DEVONthink. t will then be available as a script for a reminder alarm.

rufus123 · September 15, 2021, 7:48am

thanks very much for your reply.

I created a dummy database called test, created and deleted a few docs.

If I put the script in Save it in the ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.devon-technologies/think3/Reminders I can’t see it in the smart rule dialog box. I had to put it in ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.devon-technologies/think3/Smart Rules for it to appear after quitting and reloading DevonThink.

When I did that, the script does nothing. It does not add deleted to the trash

I am running the script every minute just to test it. After that I will reset to daily.
Please note that I did not edit your script. I did not insert the database name because it’s in the smart rule.

thank you

BLUEFROG · September 15, 2021, 3:56pm

It’s not in a smart rule.
It’s a Reminder script. See the Tools > Annotation and Reminders inspector.
It’s a reminder on the Trash of the database, since you can’t add a reminder to a database.
You can set the reminder to run hourly. That should be sufficient.

Also, I would not set a smart rule to run every minute unless you had a actual need to run it that often.

rufus123 · September 15, 2021, 4:35pm

works perfectly. thanks very much for the explanation (… and your patience) !

BLUEFROG · September 15, 2021, 4:59pm

You’re welcome

randystokes · September 17, 2021, 10:29pm

I’ve been reading through this thread. Is the HoudahSpot template mentioned here the template named DEVONthink in the HoudahSpot app? I have HoudahSpot version 6.1.5, and the DEVONthink template is shown in the menu for HoudahSpot, but I can’t figure out how to make it work. Doesn’t it provide a means for searching within my open DEVONthink database(s)? I tried typing in LSC in the search box, because I can see a document with the name beginning with LSC in my DEVONthink inbox, but HoudahSpot tells me it can’t find such a file.

tudoreynon · September 17, 2021, 11:06pm

You have to allow spotlight to index the DEVONthink 3 files. Also make sure all your permissions are set.

randystokes · September 17, 2021, 11:16pm

Thanks. I had done all that, but noticed when calling up the template to search that the Content Type was automatically set to com.devon-technologies.metadata.thinkpro. If I delete that and leave Content Type blank, HoudahSpot found all the documents in DEVONthink meeting my criteria.

rholmes777 · September 18, 2021, 2:36pm

Ok I just installed the HoudahSpot Search tool and searched for a partial filename I knew would get some hits. When I chose to “Open in DT3” I received the message that the database was no longer available. I found the issue, the database had indeed been renamed, AFTER I had converted it from an internal db (stored in DevonThink) to an external (Finder-based) db and indexed it, and renamed it. This was so I could keep hierarchical integrity as well as find stuff in external tools such as HoudahSpot (!).

Turns out the only files I found in the HoudahSpot search were not easily findable, and there’s no apparent remedy. The files are stored in the non-specific metadata location:

/Users//Library/Metadata/com.devon-technologies.think3/D99483C0-[more numbers]-C0509C3E0AC0.dt3

One of these is an orphaned file (a .skim document automatically created when using Skim to annotate a pdf - they always get orphaned - another reason I went to an indexed, file-based DB).

Is it safe to remove these files in the finder? Or can I find these “orphans” in DevonThink and get rid of them?

As far as I can tell, since they’re metadata associated with the old (pre-conversion) DB, they serve no useful purpose.

On another note, the search template works great for Devon-internal databases!

Thanks!