Most of you seem to stay wit DT/DTPro. I don’t think I’ll do.
First of all I’d like to outline my usage scenario. I am a teacher. I am teaching several subjects: History, Social Sciences (Sociology, Economics, Politics), English, Computer Science for Beginners. As you can imagine I have TONS of files and information to deal with. And what’s more: those information and file vary pretty much in topic, complexity and tpye (text, graphic, PDF, etc.). In the past I dumped all those files into DT Personal. Automatic classification, search and all the AI-stuff built into DT sounded quite handy to me. Actually, they never really worked. Here’s why:
My database easily reached a size of 6-10 GB. Launching DT was a pain that could take several minutes. Too long for my taste.
Auto-Classification never really worked. Of course I know, that I have to create genuine folders for each topic and subtopic. I read this forum and the recommendations given here. However, having to create a complex folder hierarchy in order to get artificial intelligence to work is not my idea of artificial intelligence… it sounds more like artificial stupidity. Each time I used auto-classification I had to check if it worked properly - a great hinderance of my productivity.
Searching was slow, especially if I used the search field in the top right corner of the DT-window.
Searching wasn’t accurate, due to the lack of Boolean operators. I never found out how to narrow down search resutls.
This whole databse thing grew quite suspect to me. My DT-DB got corrupted several times. Thank god I always kept a copy of all my files within the Finder. But then, every time I added something to the DT-DB I had to add a copy to my Finder folder structure. Again, this was not improving productivity.
On the other hand Spotlight works like a charm. It finds my files quickly, I can use boolean operators (although there aren’t documented at all). Of course I have to file my documents manually, but since I had to create the same folder hierarchy in DT, that isn’t much of a difference.
I am not saying DT is a bad app. I am only saying it didn’t work for my like Spotlight does. Maybe I did it all wrong, maybe my problems could have been solved easily. In that case, please don’t hesitate to help .
Before spotlight, I liked the spotlight like search of Devonthink… and in fact, I just bought the professional upgrade of Devonthink. It still bothered me that spotlight doesn’t search devonthink files, as it seems a waste to have to search in two places when you have spotlight that covers everything (except devonthink files).
I just tried out my MacJournal again as they now support Spotlight, plus they have a setting where attachments can automatically be stored in a folder with the MacJournal database files… this is EXACTLY what I am looking for! Complete Spotlight support! The PDF Attachments also show up in Spotlight (as they are stored in a separate folder)! A one stop shop solution that I only wish Devonthink could have been. Who knows when Devonthink will offer Spotlight support.
I must confess that Spotlight has heavily disappointed me. When Tiger was launched, I thought Spotlight would do miracles, but after having worked with it for a while, I must conclude that - in my case, at least - Spotlight is rather useless. Every search produces too many hits and creates too much confusion. With the endless lists of results it produces, Spotlight almost makes me nervous. A litte - and free - application like Easyfind in many respects is better than Spotlight. For me, at least.
You are absolutely so full of sh*t… Spotlight is the most amazing thing to happen to computers since … computers… I can search my entire computer for a series of words… and it doesn’t matter what program those words appeared… they show up in spotlight… and I can find them. I can even do away with folders because of spotlight… so I have no idea what you are talking about…
So, Spotlight will be able to search within DT database. What happpens with smart folders? It would be great if DTPro could open/ share Spotlight’s smart folders.
In my opinion, Spotlight’s interface is a disaster, although its searches capabilities are very interesting.
I mainly work with Pdf files on my computer. A search (or a smart folder) using spotlight produces about 100-150 results. And no possibility to have a quick look at them. (I dont’even think about opening 150 windows with preview).
With DT, things are different, I can read part of these files, stop, come back later, etc…
Also, I find the 4 navigation arrows in the toolbars of DT windows a great idea. Using these arrows, each group in DT can be used as a notepad. This does not exist in the Finder.
If I understand well, we can expect boolean search with the next DTPro.
I’ve seen on Macrumors that OSX 10.5 will come with an enhanced Spotlight
interface (a la Itunes). So we’ll see.
For the moment, I use Spotlight to search files that are lost in the depth of my HD, and keep DT for serious work.
Yes, spotlight will search inside the DT “database”. If I understand correctly, the DT database will effectively share it’s content with the finder or something conceptually similar.
Spotlight currently finds everything but the kitchen sink and that’s a problem for me. It searches inside bundles etc and turns up A LOT of irrelevant stuff.
DT is much more effective and targeted for my needs.
Also, for extending spotlight with meta data, check this out.
I look forward to 10.5 and DTPro 2.x. Together I think we’ll have an awesome set of tools for creating, managing and sharing information.
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