Link to DevonThink2 Library

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laup
Posts: 31
Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2009 6:28 pm

Link to DevonThink2 Library

Post by laup »

I keep documents in a DevonThink library, including downloaded attachments. It "should" be possible to have a Bookends 11 reference link to a document in that library, but it's not clear to me how to make that happen easily. DevonThink has a complex filing structure. In Finder, you see the DT icon for the library, but to see the raw contents you have to use CTRL and then pick Show Package Contents. A given pdf file might then be at

~/Docs/LibraryOfUser.dtBase2/Files.noindex/pdf/0/name_of_file.pdf

Ordinarily, one never bothers with this stuff, instead viewing the files inside the DevonThink browser in what seems visibly to be an ordinary folder structure but is actually an internal-to-DevonThink structure of "groups" linked to files such as the above deep in the package structure.

It does not seem possible to navigate to file with the Select attachment in BookEnds because of the package structure. One could select the entire data base, but not get inside--unless there is a magic incantation I don't know. Even if there is, that would be very tedious. Going the opposite direction, you can drag the file above onto the BE attachment pane, but that would be to copy the document rather than just link. I tried creating an alias and dragging that onto the pane, but Bookends said it couldn't find the file.

??

This seems important because it makes more sense to me at least to store items in DevonThink, which is built for that, rather than in ~/Documents/Bookends/Attachments (path approximate).
Jon
Site Admin
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Joined: Tue Jul 13, 2004 6:27 pm
Location: Bethesda, MD
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Re: Link to DevonThink2 Library

Post by Jon »

If you drag the pdf to and attach it, Bookends, it does *not* have to move the pdf anywhere. Uncheck the Move/Copy box. Then Bookends will just remember where the attachment is (in the DT "library").

Jon
Sonny Software
laup
Posts: 31
Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2009 6:28 pm

Re: Link to DevonThink2 Library

Post by laup »

What could be easier? Thanks.
jebni
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Nov 01, 2006 8:43 pm

Re: Link to DevonThink2 Library

Post by jebni »

DEVONthink doesn't need to physically add a file to its database(s) in order to use it, so an alternative would be to have DEVONthink simply index Bookends' Attachments folder. Seems to work just as well as storing the PDFs in a DEVONthink database -- you just have to attach a script to the resultant folder in DEVONthink to reindex it. Or you could set a folder action to the Attachments folder that auto-indexes any new files added to this folder, which is what I do.

This is the Folder Actions script I attach to the Attachments folder:

Code: Select all

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
	try
		tell application id "com.devon-technologies.thinkpro2" to launch
		repeat with theItem in every item of added_items
			try
				set thePath to theItem as text
				if thePath does not end with ".download:" then
					tell application id "com.devon-technologies.thinkpro2" to indicate thePath
				end if
			end try
		end repeat
	end try
end adding folder items to
rickl
Posts: 182
Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2004 4:47 am
Location: Japan

Re: Link to DevonThink2 Library

Post by rickl »

My (uninformed) first thought is that jebni's solution is preferable: I have a sneaking worry that DT might move things around in such a way that Bookends loses track of them, and in any case I wouldn't want to have to uncover all my PDFs in the Finder in order to drag them from DT to Bookends. Are there any reasons I haven't thought of for using laup's approach?
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