spotlight and bookends

[vox]

hi,

do other users also have the problem that spotlight doesn't find references in bookends? is there anything i can do about that?

v

[Jon]

There is no Spotlight plug-in for Bookends, and probably never will be. If you want to find references in Bookends, use the built-in search features (which are a lot more powerful than Spotlight, and a lot faster).

Jon
Sonny Software

[vox]

There is no Spotlight plug-in for Bookends, and probably never will be. If you want to find references in Bookends, use the built-in search features (which are a lot more powerful than Spotlight, and a lot faster).

That's utterly tragic. I am aware of how powerful bookends' search functions are, but searching with spotlight and in bookends are two entirely different issues. The purpose of spotlight (at least for me) is to find all kinds of information I have on a certain topic. Sure, if I know that there is information I am looking for in bookends, I don't have to spotlight it, but what if I don't? Isn't the cool thing about spotlight that it finds all kinds of stuff everywhere? It seems a waste of functionality if I always have to do a seperate bookends search if I want to see all documents relating to a particular research project for example. And honestly, spotlight integration would be a major selling point for me. If bookends won't have it, I'd switch again.

[Jon]

I'm not trying to be contrary, but...

Spotlight would be terrible for this sort of thing. Say you want to find a reference containing the word 'Shakespeare'. You'd use Spotlight...after 60 seconds it would have found dozens of articles on your computer containing this word, including a Bookends database. You'd launch the Bookends database -- and then have to do a search in Bookends for 'Shakespeare' to find the relevant references.

Spotlight is a great tool to deal with disorganized data scattered over many files. Bookends organizes it for you. Just finding that a word or phrase is in your Bookends database doesn't do you much good, because you'll have to launch Bookends and do the search all over again in Bookends.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Jonathan Adrain]

Um, this view is cropping up here and there since Tiger came out, but I think it's based on not quite understanding what Spotlight does. Spotlight searches the metadata of _files_. A Bookends database (and, e.g., a Filemaker Pro database) is one file. Each record in most database software packages is just data inside a file, not a file itself. The utility of knowing that something is in a database is pretty limited, as you'll still have to launch the database and find it using the search or organization functions of the database software. This is why, for example, Filemaker is touting on their website that they plan to take advantage of Automator and Dashboard, but don't mention Spotlight - it just really isn't relevant to this kind of application. On the other hand (as I think has been pointed out in this or some other thread) Spotlight will search all the attached pdf files (assuming you have any) and return the relevant hits, so it does help a bit with bibliographic searching, assuming you have a large library of downloaded papers on your hard disk.

Jonathan

There is no Spotlight plug-in for Bookends, and probably never will be. If you want to find references in Bookends, use the built-in search features (which are a lot more powerful than Spotlight, and a lot faster).

That's utterly tragic. I am aware of how powerful bookends' search functions are, but searching with spotlight and in bookends are two entirely different issues. The purpose of spotlight (at least for me) is to find all kinds of information I have on a certain topic. Sure, if I know that there is information I am looking for in bookends, I don't have to spotlight it, but what if I don't? Isn't the cool thing about spotlight that it finds all kinds of stuff everywhere? It seems a waste of functionality if I always have to do a seperate bookends search if I want to see all documents relating to a particular research project for example. And honestly, spotlight integration would be a major selling point for me. If bookends won't have it, I'd switch again.

[Jon]

On the other hand (as I think has been pointed out in this or some other thread) Spotlight will search all the attached pdf files (assuming you have any) and return the relevant hits, so it does help a bit with bibliographic searching, assuming you have a large library of downloaded papers on your hard disk.

Your comments are spot on, Jonathan (pun intended).

As I've said before, we will be evaluating the possibility of integrating attached pdf searches in Bookends...

Jon
Sonny Software

[prop]

What's the point of searching PDFs through Bookends when I can quickly call up Spotlight and search through there?

On second thought, maybe if, as I'm searching for text words in a particular PDF, Bookends identifies the files those text words belong to, and displays the titles from the database, that would be useful... Then I can open the one that best corresponds to what I'm looking for...

[Jon]

Bingo.

[odysseus]

Spotlight would be terrible for this sort of thing. Say you want to find a reference containing the word 'Shakespeare'. You'd use Spotlight...after 60 seconds it would have found dozens of articles on your computer containing this word, including a Bookends database. You'd launch the Bookends database -- and then have to do a search in Bookends for 'Shakespeare' to find the relevant references.

With all due respect, I don't think that this is true, Jon. Applications can talk to Spotlight and Spotlight to applications so that clicking on an item in a spotlight hit list will cause the app to display that item. The most obvious example of this is Tiger mail (Spotlight can find an email message among other things, and double-clicking on that item will cause it to open in Mail -- you don't have to perform the same search again from within Mail), but it isn't limited to Apple's apps.

[Jon]

Hi odysseus,

Well, we'll have to see if this sort of thing would make any sense. Frankly, even if we could get to a specific record in a database via Spotlight, it buys very little. The only scenario in which I think it would make any sense is if you had many Bookends databases (because Bookends does not allow you to search more than one concurrently). Other than that, a Spotlight search would save you no time (might as well just do the search in Bookends). Also, FWIW, some of the data in Bookends database is compressed...my guess is that Spotlight isn't going to like that.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Jonathan Adrain]

With all due respect, I don't think that this is true, Jon. Applications can talk to Spotlight and Spotlight to applications so that clicking on an item in a spotlight hit list will cause the app to display that item. The most obvious example of this is Tiger mail (Spotlight can find an email message among other things, and double-clicking on that item will cause it to open in Mail -- you don't have to perform the same search again from within Mail), but it isn't limited to Apple's apps.

I'm no expert, but Mail messages are each a separate file - go to Users/~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/ or Users/~/Library/Mail/[mailaccountname]/to see them. Isn't Spotlight simply indexing and searching the text/metadata of these files and launching them as appropriate ([i.e., the item that's being double-clicked on is a file]?

Jonathan

[odysseus]

Frankly, even if we could get to a specific record in a database via Spotlight, it buys very little. The only scenario in which I think it would make any sense is if you had many Bookends databases (because Bookends does not allow you to search more than one concurrently). Other than that, a Spotlight search would save you no time (might as well just do the search in Bookends).

Not true. The point of Spotlight, as I see it, is to provide a GLOBAL find for ALL types of files. So I can go into Spotlight and type "Du Bellay," and find the pdfs, the word docs, the photos that contain the word -- and perhaps even eventually the Bookends references as well. Not only does that save me time, but it's irreplaceable. Only after conducting the global find would I then go into Bookends if I needed to edit the reference, copy it, etc.

Do you understand what I am saying?

By the way, I imagine that it is possible to write a Spotlight plug-in that can handle compressed data.

[Jon]

Sorry, I disagree about the utility of Spotlight for Bookends. FWIW, I posted a question about this on a programmer's list, and here's one reply:

------------
Without resorting to hacks, Spotlight is unable to search megalithic files meaningfully; hence, for example, Mail.app is now storing each message in its own file, rather than within a large .mbox file.
AddressBook is doing a similar thing (though I understand it is storing its data twice: once in a database file, and once in discrete person files.

So, other than the case you mention of being able to find *which* [Bookends] database contains a string (assuming it's stored as clear text), I can't imagine anything very useful being possible. You could, of course, write out duplicate data in text files, a la AddressBook, but you'd further have to design your program in such a way that it would react to Spotlight's (or the Finder's) request to open the file by having it then display the full associated record from the [Bookends] database.

Considering how slow and clumsy Spotlight seems to be (at least on my 2.5GHz DP G5!) and how lightning-quick and flexible [the Bookends database engine] is, I think I'll be pursuing other options.
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Having said all this, I'll look into the possibility of a Spotlight plug-in that would find databases, but I think it would be more of a gimmick than a useful addition.

[odysseus]

Sorry, I disagree about the utility of Spotlight for Bookends.

Clearly it currently makes no sense for large monolithic files. However, Spotlight 2 will have the ability to search them.

Can you see that if this were possible, it would be nice to have Bookends databases turn up in global Spotlight searches?

[Jon]

Clearly it currently makes no sense for large monolithic files. However, Spotlight 2 will have the ability to search them.

Can you see that if this were possible, it would be nice to have Bookends databases turn up in global Spotlight searches?

Yes. If Spotlight could search Bookends databases and then tell Bookends which records to return, I can see where that would be useful -- and I would be happy to revisit the whole issue.


Jon
Sonny Software