Two indexing questions

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1

I have two questions about indexing. The one that I think is simpler first:

  1. I use DevonThink on three machines. On two of them I have DT3 installed; the other still has DTP2. (I’m not resisting paying for the third seat; I just won’t have the budget for it for a couple of months yet.) My question is this: I understand that If I add a file to a folder in DTP2 that is also indexing files on my hard drive—in other words, I have not added the file to the folder on my hard drive that is being indexed—that file will not automatically be copied back to the hard drive. Will (or should, since in my case it didn’t) that file be copied back to the hard drive folder once the databases sync and the file is in the database on the machine running DT3?

  2. I have discovered a blogging service that would seem almost custom designed for DevonThink, since it has not interface and is run entirely from folders in Dropbox. It’s called Blot. I will post more about my experience using it once I understand my own workflow/process a little but more fully, but, basically, the way Blot works is this: You place the file that you want to turn into a blog post into the appropriate folder and Blot transforms the file into a post. I now run the website for the literary reading series on Blot, www.firsttuesdays.net, and this post, for example, was created simply by placing the jpg into the right folder.

When you want to embed an image into a post—like for example, this one—and you don’t want the image also to appear as its own post, you place an underscore at the beginning of the filename. So, the name of the image file in the Cento post I linked to just above is _cento8.jpg. However, if I bring the original file, called cento8.jpg (without the underscore), into DT3—because I am trying to work exclusively within DT3, without having to go back and forth to the Finder—and then change the name to include the initial underscore, when that files gets copied out to the indexed Blot folder in Dropbox, the underscore gets stripped away.

So here’s my question: Is there something I am not doing (or doing) that might be causing this? Is it something inherent to the way DT3 indexes files? Or might it be something that Blot is doing and so I need to talk to them? I would love to be able to run the blog—especially when I get to bringing my personal blog over to Blot—entirely from within DTP. It would make for a much smoother workflow.

2

No, the sync doesn’t perform actions on its own and version 2 doesn’t automatically move created items inside indexed groups to the external folder like version 3 does.

Depending on the filesystem and platform (e.g. older macOS versions) files beginning with _ are hidden, that’s why DEVONthink automatically strips them while converting names to filenames.

3

Thanks for responding so quickly.

  1. I just want to make sure I understand your answer to my first question (since I now think I may have made it more complicated than it needed to be): Are you saying that when the file on the machine using DTP2 (where it was created) is synced back to the machine using DT3, that—because it was synced from DTP2—DT3 will not move the file to the external folder?

  2. As for my second question: Do I understand correctly that there is no way around this and that my best bet is simply to add the images and change the file names in the Finder?

Again, thanks.

Richard

4

That’s right. The file is inside the database in version 2 and exactly this is synchronized.

That’s the best option.

5

Thank you!