When will Spotlight searching be available?

[howarth]

@smolk

I rarely use Spotlight because it’s too lame, and even if it’s being improved, I doubt it will meet my needs.

I like MoRU very much. It uses the Spotlight index but has a better interface and lets you make all kinds of Smart Folders for dates, filetypes, etc. It’s $10 from Windstorm Software: windstormsoftware.com/wssw/index.html

[Tom_Dibble]

@annard

Why would you like to use Spotlight to query the database, since its queries are less sophisticated than DT’s? The right tool for the job so to say.

Most users just want to be able to have the file data accessible through Spotlight. Again, the purpose of this is also debatable but understandable since I guess they would feel less “locked in”.

Your comments are appreciated because the whole Spotlight integration is still a work in progress and feedback can help us get an idea why people want to use Spotlight with DT.

I don’t keep everything in DevonThink. For instance, I see no reason to copy all my mail in there, nor to keep things like Word-based status reports etc (because DT doesn’t preserve their formatting anywhere near well enough). When I do a spotlight search for something, I want to find everything on my computer about that thing. Right now, I have to do a Spotlight search, then turn around and do the same search in DT. It’s a lot more work.

Example: Say we have a release coming up that includes a project called “DTE”. A spotlight search for “DTE” will come up with a bunch of mail messages about that feature, documentation on it, where it’s been referenced in our codebase, but currently nothing about any meetings in which it was discussed (because all meeting notes go into DT Pro). To get that I need to repeat the search in DevonThink.

When I know what type of info I’m looking for (mail, or meeting notes, or code) I can always go to the specific “owner” of that kind of information (Entourage, DT Pro, or our IDE) to do a search. That handles most of my searching, to be honest. But there are times, at least once a week, where I’m trying to find something that I know someone said and I know I wrote down, but I just can’t remember where. That’s where Spotlight integration of DT Pro (and QuickSilver integration, while you’re at it, would also be nice!) would be a serious timesaver.

“Lock-in” isn’t an issue; I’d expect to be able to get just as much from an Export as I would from a spotlight-searchable database.

Is this less of a “work in progress” at this point? Any update on 2.0 coming out?