Tag bar - how NOT to alphabetize?

DEVONthink Tips
1

Hello all,

Whilst being weary of invoking a possible response of “DTP cannot possibly accommodate every individual’s workflow approaches” - I figured I would still pop this up, to confirm if a.) anyone else has also wondered the same/does it similarly; and b.) if this can already be managed through preferences?

As a prolific tagger, I use many different tags per research article. Primarily due to the fact that whereas the article in question might be focusing on Topic(Tag) A - it also explores/touches on Topic(Tag) B,C, X, Y, Z…

I accordingly tag the article with all of the above. Were I then to explore Topic C - I would call up tag-view, and whereas I might have 20/50/90 articles there - I can quickly work through them based on their Titles etc., to zoom into the relevant ones…
I would, for instance, group them into a new group, and then search through them to find those articles that had that topic as its MAIN point of departure, as opposed to merely referring to it, as an aside.

Please note - I prefer to include the “as an aside” articles into my tag system - since they often provide confirmation ‘by summary’ of my view, since they might contain a sentence or two, or a paragraph, that confirms what took 30/40 pages in a different, more focused article, to say…

What happens currently:

I tag an article with tags D,A,X,T,E,W,Q,B.
DTP, upon that article being closed - and then reopened, has automatically re-ordered the tags alphabetically - i.e. the tag bar now displays it as tags “A,B,D,E,Q,T,W,X”

What I’m hoping for:

Can this “automatic” reordering be prevented? In other words - when I call up the document - the “D,A,X,T,E,W,Q,B” order of the tags, as they were originally inputted, remains?

Why? If the above were possible - I would “order” my tags in terms of a particular criteria. (Eg.) The first 1/2/3 tags are the primary focus of the article. Then a standard ‘jurisdiction’ tag is placed [UK; USA etc], and all tags that follow that tag, are the ancillary tags - the topics referred to in passing…

This would allow me, upon working through my newly created group, to instantly gauge what the primary focus area of the article was, based on the “order” of my tagging… Almost a “score-bar” of my own design, as it were…

Any comments would be appreciated…

2

Just had a thought - is this something that could be scripted? :confused:

3

Tags for a document are stored as a list ordered in the sequence that the tag was added to the document. If that sequence has meaning, then a script might be useful. However, this is fragile – there is no guarantee that the FIFO order of the tag list element will always be the case, or that it will not be overwritten by some other process.

I know this doesn’t address the original question. I believe the answer to that is “not right now”. But someone else will know better and address that specifically.

Perhaps a file-naming scheme (e.g., with certain coded prefixes and/or suffixes) combined with annotation notes; or even Spotlight comments; might be a more stable approach than tagging? A script that copies existing tags to comments, or names, or annotation files, is simple – there are examples already found on the forum or with DEVONthink’s included scripts.

4

Thanks for the reply Korm, and the useful suggestions…

I guess the primary benefit of wanting to use the “in-tag” approach, is simply that it would be the least disruptive in terms of my workflow. The process of tagging sees me engaging with the content of the article, in order to tag it appropriately. 9/10 times, the first tag I put down, is the “main/primary” reason - the main-gist of the article… Everything that comes after it, is purely by manner of approach, less important… Occasionally a 2nd or 3rd theme might arise - but that would be a simple case of placing those tags immediately behind the first one…

I realise that the annotation/notes/comment/filename options would offer that (and more) as well, but since I’m already ‘doing’ the tagging, it would have been super-useful (to me at least), to have left the order of the tagging, unchanged upon restart…

Oh well.

5

Getting a bit OT – I’m sympathetic to the epistemic concept that @Cassady’s tagging practice is aimed at. An emergent understanding of one’s reading and research – conceptual relationships that develop over time. I’ve never found a wholly satisfactory mechanical way to do that. Annotations. Concept mapping. Tinderbox. Wikis (Connected Text). Some call this search for the “right” tool CRIMPing. 8)

DEVONthink excels at finding connections but not (yet) at preserving the found-connections. Perhaps there’s a market niche here among us CRIMPers that a future DEVONthink could serve?

6

Here is an example that works, although it would be understandable if it is too much trouble to work for you. When you enter tags into the tag bar, they can all be selected at the time of entry by using the return key, then copied to the clipboard with command-c. In the comment field of the info pane (command-shift-i), the tags can be pasted and they will form a list;

D
A
X
T
E
W
Q
B

You can then display the Spotlight comments field in the document display list and sort on this field. You would need to navigate to the main tag (topic) that you are looking for, but the documents would also be sorted in the list by secondary tag (topic), etc.

document xxx, tagged D, A, X,…
document xxx, tagged D, T, X,…
document xxx, tagged E, W, B,…
document xxx, tagged E, W, Q,…

Obviously for this to work, the list of tags would need to be the first items that appear in the comments field. It would be much more trouble than what I would want to endure, but it will do what you want.

7

I recall several years ago, back in the DEVONthink 1.x days, when there was some discussions that DEVONthink 2.x might include the data visualization/topic maps that have always been a part of DEVONagent. I’ve always thought that data visualization just might be a fine addition to DEVONthink…

8

Thanks Korm. You just diagnosed me with the disease that I never knew I had… :wink:

The symptoms are too many, the signs are all there… I’m a CRIMPtee. Or would that be CRIMPtor?

:stuck_out_tongue:

9

That would be wonderful. As would a “tag-cloud”!

Many thanks for your workaround suggestion in your post above. I will give this a whirl, and see how it goes…