Bookends iOS, Devonthink and Liquidtext best practices

A place to discuss Bookends for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.
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Christoph
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Nov 13, 2017 4:46 am

Bookends iOS, Devonthink and Liquidtext best practices

Post by Christoph »

Hi
I have the following configuration:
Bookends macOS is running on two computers (desktop, Macbook)
Bookends for iOS on iPad
Liquidtext on iPad

I am currently letting Devonthink sync the PDFs separately, which creates no problem for Bookends plus it lets me link whatever annotations I produce on either computer and this link will function on the other computer as well. This system is rocksolid, but recently the iPad was added to the mix.

Bookends for iOS cannot, as far as I understand, work with an attachment location on the Webdav server I am using currently but is limited to iCloud. I am in principle okay with using that although it would force me to upgrade my iCloud storage. However, letting iCloud handle the syncing, Devonthink on either side of the sync will no longer treat a PDF the same, i.e. any annotation or note file linked to the PDF in question works only on the computer the link was created. On the other computer this link is broken.
On the positive side, reading and annotating PDFs on the iPad is a joy.

Is there a way I could salvage most of my system so that I could keep using Devonthink on the Macs to search through the PDFs AND still be able to use Liquidtext on the iPad?

Many thanks
Christoph
mk7
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Nov 27, 2018 11:08 am

Re: Bookends iOS, Devonthink and Liquidtext best practices

Post by mk7 »

I’m not sure if this would work, but I was wondering something similar. Seeing as syncing via iCloud basically just sets up a folder with all the PDFs in iCloud, could you not index that folder with devonthink and have it treat PDF’s/annotations the same way? And then on iOS could you just use LiquidText to edit the files directly in their location in iCloud? Basically you’d be using Bookend’s iCloud sync just as a storage folder but not actually using Bookends to do any of the reading/annotating. Theoretically, this should keep all annotations synced across devices in iCloud and at the same time accessible via any application you use. Again though, I haven’t tested this.
Christoph
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Nov 13, 2017 4:46 am

Re: Bookends iOS, Devonthink and Liquidtext best practices

Post by Christoph »

I had tried something similar in the past, however, the problem had always been that one had to either let Devonthink handle the syncing of the attachments (in which case iCloud is out of the game hence Bookends on the iPad does not see any of the attachments) or let the PDF syncing happen externally in which case Devonthink would treat the same file as two different PDFs on the two computers and link any annotation file only to the PDF on the computer it was created.
BUT
to my own surprise I found that this is the case when using a Webdav server (which works beautifully BTW) but syncing the PDFs through iCloud leads to a different behaviour. Whether iCloud preserves some Mac-specific attributes or whatever the reason may be, Devonthink - although completely oblivious as to how the PDF managed to make it to the other computer - somehow realises that it is identical to the one on the other computer and so the files attached to and indeed all the links pointing to this PDF work on both computers and the iPad. Whohoooo!

I am still testing but it looks like using iCloud may be the critical step in making Devonthink, Liquidtext and Bookends work together seamlessly.

Hope this helps
Christoph
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