Storing Apple Pages Documents in DEVONThink

It’s better to support iWork 08 instead of no iWork. But otherwise iWork documents are simple xml files so at least searching and a simple text view should be possible.

Yes, except that the text is hidden as a compressed archive file inside the package.

XML was once touted as the file format that would “open” proprietary file formats to more universal access. But in practice many of the XML files retain “wrinkles” to discourage universal access to the data. So a standard search application would have to be adapted to read Pages text (look inside the package, locate a file named index.xml.gz, uncompress it, then identify the actual text content), with another adaptation to read each of those other “wrinkled” XML files produced by other applications. :slight_smile:

Yes, it’s possible to index Pages files (and other file types using XML), and to display text content using approaches similar to the above approach. But that’s application-specific and takes development resources. It’s not all that simple, after all. Some of those “wrinkles” are trickier than they appear at first glance (developers really want you to buy their word processor or spreadsheet).

Pages and Numbers are important to many DEVONthink users. Enough said, at the moment. :slight_smile:

That’s what I wanted to hear :wink:

Interesting that the new DT 2 supports pages documents even if there’s no pdf preview. How could this be possible?

Quicklooks?

Right, I haven’t realized, that with iWork 09 Quick Look could also show all pages of a document without pdf preview.

Quick Look itself is still relatively new, and there has been a lot of variability in the quality of plugins provided by developers of various applications.

Over time I expect Quick Look display to get better and better.