Smart groups, sync conflicts

I recently noticed after a sync that one .rtf file ended up having a duplicate. I guess this was due to some sync conflict. I checked the content of the file and its original, and both were identical so no panic there, and it doesn’t seem to happen very often.

The duplicate “copy” file was named as the original file but with the addition of " copy" after the name.

However I thought I’d make a smart group (in the database) to alert me to this, on the assumption that conflict duplicates will always be named as the original file name but with “[space]copy” after the name.

Couple of questions:

  1. Are sync conflict duplicates actually always named like this? (I don’t want to make the smart group if they’re not, obviously.) I don’t show file name extensions, if that’s relevant.

  2. I notice that the smart group I made doesn’t show the count beside it. In fact, no new smart group I make shows a count, though the ones that were bundled with the app do. Why might this be?

edit: 3. Why are some smart groups coloured purple while the rest are grey?

edit: 4. With any smart group, if I right-click it and choose “Get Info”, it always shows as “Size - (1 items)”, however many items it contains.

Thanks.

They’re currently named like that but this depends on the localization and might change in future releases (although it’s unlikely at the moment). However, why don’t you disable the duplication in case of conflicts, see Preferences > Sync?

Not all smart groups display always the count, only simple ones do.

A screenshot would be useful.

The next release will support this.

Because I thought having duplicates offers a better chance of not actually losing something. The ‘latest’ document may not be the ‘right’ one.

What constitutes a ‘simple’ smart group? (The one I was testing just looked for a word in the file name, which seems simple enough.)

Screenshot of grey-black and purple smart groups attached.

Smart groups not using the search index (e.g. no string queries)

Maybe the Unread smart group has a custom icon or label?

Well, that’s surprising ! I would have thought the mighty DEVONthink could handle that !

Well, I just ‘cut’ its icon (as you do in Finder, but here from ‘Get info’), and now it’s just a dot-like icon, like a bullet-point surrounded by a circle:

Interestingly, if I right-click and ‘Get Info’ on any smart group, it’s always a purple icon:

purple-icon

Not a mind-shattering issue, I know. Just strange.

I’d like to just round off my comments in this thread by saying that I hope it isn’t impossible in principle for smart groups which do use the search index (e.g. string queries) to be made to show item counts (maybe at some point in future development), as I do find myself glancing at the list and assuming that there are none in that smart group, while there are.