jeez louise it’s almost like people decided to be sensible and get together to create an app called… DevonThink : )
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Since it’s a cross-platform app, it’s not as surprising a situation. When building cross platform apps, the frameworks used often lack features of a particular OS. Also, there is no global standard for metadata, though I suppose they potentially could have implemented XMP for PDFs. And I can’t speak for their perspective but making inter-application communication powerful and simple isn’t a top priority for some teams.
Do note some people have contributed scripts to have some interaction between Zotero data and DEVONthink.
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I spent a lot of time helping faculty move data from one bibliographic app/reference manager to another. That and my own frustrations with EndNote, Zotero, Mandelay, Bookends, etc. and the difficulty of moving data between or out of them has me using a Numbers spreadsheet since c. 2010, which DevonTHINK easily indexes as a tab delimited file. I haven’t tried indexing the Numbers file itself (I am brand new to DevonThink) yet, but will.
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Welcome @Medievalist
We’re happy to hear you’re finding use in DEVONthink!
Note: You can index Numbers’ files and even do a toolbar search for text in them. However, there won’t be search hits displayed when you select a found file as the display is merely a QuickLook view. However, using the Search inspector on the file will show hits in the raw text of the file.
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I guess that they use IPTC/EXIF metadata that are stored in the file itself or in an XML companion. There’s no such standard for PDF. Or rather: there’s only a limited number of metadata that can be stored in a PDF.
The smart rule script Download Bibliographic Metadata is actually able to download & set certain metadata for documents having a digital object identifier (DOI).
Additional useful scripts can be found right here, e.g.
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Since about 1993 I have used Endnote, Papers, Sente, Zotero, Mendeley and perhaps some others I have forgotten. The one program I have stuck with is Bookends. It works very well with DEVONthink. You might find it worth trying.
Edit: I recently discovered Research Rabbit, which I find very interesting. Also worth checking out.
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yep!
I am a Bookends fan too. I could envision doing what you’d like to accomplish using Keyboard Maestro, Hazel and Bookends.
There are several moving parts to my workflow, but the interplay between Bookends and DT is crucial to its functionality. I don’t tag the pdf files, but they are renamed by Bookends to keep everything in sync. I also export abstracts using the Bookends script in DT, so the correct pdfs, abstracts and annotations bubble up in DT together.
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That is why I use Paperpile. Check it! You can index all PDFs in DT and have the best of two worlds: a powerful bibliographic manager and one powerful document manager!
Only works for Chrome 
I gave up Chrome long ago as it was slowing my Mac dramatically. Safari & Firefox now.
Paperpile is a web service, not a Mac app. The iOS app looks like it’s just a front end to the web service as well.
If it suits your expectations, enjoy!
You’re better off without Chrome 
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Yep, that’s what I commented above ha ha
After months of over 200% CPU, I finally pinpointed it to WindowServer caused by the Keystone Service
Hi, this is really interesting, thank you. Would you be able to link to a guide for how to set the Download Bibliographic Metadata up? I’ve managed to create a smart rule but can’t get it to work. I’ve looked for more info online and in the help menu and can’t find much, but that’s probably my fault.
Thank you in advance!
Ed
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The action Execute Script > External > Download Bibliographic Metadata is sufficient, the triggers and conditions can be chosen in any way. To test the rule and its action drag & drop some documents containing a DOI onto the rule in the sidebar. The downloaded & added custom metadata can be viewed in the Info > Custom inspector afterwards.
Bookends is great, unless you do legal research. Zotero supports blue book citations better than even Endnotes. Bookends doesn’t support it at all.
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