Versions 2.9.7 and 2.9.8 and OS X 10.11

DEVONthink Tips
1

Have not moved beyond DThink Pro 2.9.5 because it works perfectly with El Capitan, which is the OS I’m using and plan to stay with until/if Sierra fully works out the PDF kit bugs and other issues associated with this update discussed in this forum and also affecting key features of other apps I use like Scrivener.

My concern is whether in upgrading to DThink 2.9.8, which seems to have a lot of focus on dealing with Sierra bugs (perfectly understandable), I will end up updating to a version that is less stable and/or creates problems when working with El Capitan.

Have noted a number of issues scattered in the forum pages, such as OCR no longer working with imported PDFs, which would be a real loss for me.

Wondering what the consensus is on the value/risk of moving to update past 2.9.5. Are there new features and fixes for working with OS X 10.11 that warrant updating, or could the balance fall to leaving well enough alone and stick with a very stable fully functioning version for that OS?

I have reviewed the new/improved/fixed list for each update and don’t see any compelling new feature or fix that improves features I rely on and are working fine now - but that could be in part because of the way this section is written - very brief descriptions that don’t really give a sense of what was wrong before and now fixed, and whether focused more on Sierra created issues and unrelated to El Capitan.

Also using DThink To Go 2.0.6. And, works without issue with DThink 2.9.5.

Anyone using El Capitan and happy with the updates, or wishes they’d skipped these?

Also any thoughts on this from the DThink crew would be appreciated.

And, as always, thank you for the tremendous dedication to making such a vital research app continue to improve - the improvements in coordination and synching between DThink and DThink To Go over the last couple of releases of DThink To Go has been tremendous.

2

There are no known issues related to El Capitan and most Sierra issues are either caused by its crappy new PDFKit framework or by using public betas (definitely not recommended in production environments).

But you could of course install version 2.9.8 and in case of issues revert back to version 2.9.6 (ideally after reporting the issues :slight_smile:).

3

Thank you for your thoughts. Very helpful to know.

Had considered the idea of just updating and reverting back if something went awry on an update, but wasn’t sure if I’d loose settings going backwards, as opposed to updating where all settings are preserved. (With of course letting you know of any issues.) :smiley: Does it work the same and you keep all settings if you choose to revert to a previous version?

Wondering if it would be possible to give us a sense of what are the key portions of the updates since 2.9.5? Again, have read the version history information, but hard to get a sense from there of what is significant for El Capitan. As I understand your explanation, most of the changes in these updates are as relevant to El Capitan as to Sierra (except for all the fixes you have had to make related to the Sierra PDF Kit – a work still in progress given how much the kit broke).

If that is possible to do without causing a burden, that would also be very helpful information and appreciated – kind of a crib sheet of the version history information that gives a better sense of what the key points are and what they mean to our workflow.

4

Both the databases and preferences are compatible in both directions.

All issues not mentioning Sierra are relevant for all macOS versions.

5

Thank you for the info.

looks like time to update to 2.9.8.