DEVONthink integrates the information content of documents of different filetypes much more richly than does Spotlight. It has artificial intelligence algorithms at the kernel of a database and creates a Concordance for each database.
When groups have become populated with document content—especially if groups hold topically distinctive content—the Classify assistant can suggest possible group locations for a new document based on an analysis of the contextual relationships of the document’s text content to the pattern of contextual relationships in the documents contained by one or more groups.
When I’m exploring ideas discussed in documents in a database, I use See Also (or See Related Text for a selection of text) heavily. While viewing a document, when I invoke that command a list of possibly related items is suggested, based on DEVONthink’s analysis of the terms used, their frequencies and the patterns of associations of terms in documents. When I see an interesting See Also suggestion I’ll open it as a new tab in the window, so that I can easily switch back and forth among several documents without losing scrolling position in any of them.
Suppose I see a reference in a document to a single-word term such as hexachlorobenezene. Option-click on that terms and a slide-out drawer appears listing all documents in the database that contain that term.
DEVONthink Pro and Pro Office have large AppleScript dictionaries, so many procedures can be automated and extension of features is possible. Suppose I’m viewing a document that will require action by a certain date. There’s a script for that and it will create a Calendar event and I can set an alert date and time. When the alert goes off, when I open the Calendar event there’s a link in it that, when clicked, will open the document that requires action.
There’s a scripted template called Annotation that I can invoke with a keyboard shortcut, to hold my notes about a selected document. The rich text Annotation note is automatically linked to the referenced document, and there’s a link from the referenced document to its Annotation note. For example, an attorney who has captured the video of a deposition into DEVONthink can create an Annotation note for that video and make notes about testimony, tying each note to the timeline of the video by typing the timeline at which a statement was made. I use such Annotation notes extensively. (I never use Adobe’s primitive plain text, non-searchable notes in PDFs.)
Of course, one might want to create annotation notes about, for example, statements made by someone in several documents. Two of our power users, form and Frederiko, have posted a very powerful script for creating such annotations. See Export an index of annotations to a numbers spreadsheet
These are just a few examples of things that can be done in DEVONthink. It is, as I say, a rich environment for working with information.