I’ve been having trouble with tagging.
If I apply a tag to an item in a database in DTP, and then do a Show in Finder, and Get Info in Finder, there’s no tag. And spotlight won’t find that item by tag, even though it will find it by name.
Are those tags openmeta? or are they Mavericks tags, but for some reason aren’t getting written to the files, and if so, how do I correct that?
DEVONthink tags are OpenMeta compatible, but are not written to the files of tagged documents until the files are exported. Instead, the tags are maintained as database metadata.
Bummer. Thought I could do a work-around by exporting files and folders and then reimporting. The tags return in the database, but not in the resulting files.
Any ideas for work-arounds?
Also, is there a way for the DTP dtBase2 package to be written by DTP as a regular folder? or to change it to a regular folder? This means it would actually be searched by spotlight, and it would allow easier access by other applications. And since DTP isn’t storing tags within the attributes of the files in those packages there wouldn’t be a conflict with tagging them by other methods.
Of course it would be best if I could get DTP to write the tags, as MailTags does, for instance, but I expect this isn’t happening. I’m increasingly annoyed with solutions that force me to search from within each application. Unless I can find a way around this DTP may not work any longer for me. 
Though I’m not clear on what this means, if I export a document with tags and then reimport it, the tags are associated with the imported file.
IMO you don’t want to be messing around inside the database package, unless you don’t mind trashing the database and making it unusable. If you need external access to files and folders, then index them – don’t import them into the database.
If you re-import them the imported files don’t have mavericks tags. Meaning you cannot find them with spotlight searches on such tags.
AFAIK the “database” you see in the dtbase2 package is simply a folder structure with files inside. Like iPhoto or Mail. Extended attributes like tags in Mavericks do not seem to change anything that DTP does, so I see little chance of that harming anything. It certainly hasn’t in my experiments, since DTP seems to ignore the metadata except when importing. I made a symlink to the folder containing the files, so at least I can use other applications to tag directly, but then I have to not use tags in DTP or run the risk of duplicates when I export.
Indexing is rather a poor solution. I liked DTP because I could create certain kinds of notes, pages, bookmark/weblocs, etc right within it. If I index files instead I might as well forgo DTP and use something that does that with tagging, like Leap or Yep. You can’t create files with those (mostly) but they are better at searching and tagging. But you may be right; it seems that with many organizational applications like DTP I ultimately have to choose to accept it’s proprietary format or use something more universal. Too bad; I thought it might be an exception to that.
Rob
I am starting to use DT for real although I bought a license a long time ago. I was able to import many files that were tagged using OpenMeta. The tags are visible in DT - yay! When I added new tags to the files I imported, or to new files, tags are not visible in the Finder at all. This is disappointing.
I would like to see DT support Mavericks tags. To me this would mean that tags are updated on files whenever I add or delete tags.
Could you enlighten us on your plans for Mavericks tags?
Tony
DEVONthink supports Mavericks tags.
Tags added to imported documents are not written to the file until the document is exported from DEVONthink, and that is when the Mavericks tags are added. Mavericks tags on indexed documents are written to the file as you add them in DEVONthink. This is the same behavior that DEVONthink had with OpenMeta tags.
This is easy to see in practice. Make a test document in your database. Add some tags. From the contextual menu select “Show in Finder” and when the Finder window opens select “Show Info”. There are no new Mavericks tags. Close Finder and export the document. Check “Show Info” again in a new Finder window. The tags are now there.