spotlight support revisited

[danzac]

oops, sorry. misread it. My point still stands though- how come a now-ancient program can do it but spotlight can't? a bummer.....

[jeremydouglass]

For those users who rely on Spotlight search results are an important part of their workflow, I can suggest a few workarounds.

I'm personally sympathetic to the Spotlight desire, at least to a certain extent. In an example of my workflow: I keep notes, draft documents, multimedia resources, and bibliographic entries all on the same artist. When I begin drafting a paper, say on the artist "Exempli Gratia," sometimes I think "hey, what do I have on her?" I then use Spotlight, and I get some conference notes, a mention in a set of lecture slides, a quicktime movie, some email correspondence with her etc. - but, of course, no citations of her writings or of other works that discuss her.

Obviously, I can simply search twice - once in Spotlight, once in Bookends. If you want to get better Spotlight results, however, I can suggest two workarounds:

Hack 1. Name all Bookends attachments with major citation information.

This will only work for entries that *have* attachments, of course, and then is only really necessary for those such as image-only PDFs, images, and multimedia files - html and PDFs with full text should already come up without prompting. Still, I give all my attachments abbreviated bibliographic titles (Name, Title, Source, Date) when I add them, and this makes Spotlight results significantly more useful to read - Finder views too:



If you keep your attachments organized by Bookends, then any filed attachment coming up in search results will remind you that there is a corresponding citation entry.

I do this not because it is helpful in Spotlight, but because it is also useful in Finder, in email attachments, in burned CDs, etc. etc. etc. [One dream Bookends feature I wish for is that I could control the default attachment naming behavior of Bookends to do this more seamlessly, rather than manually expanding the default name-date every time.]

Hack 2. Periodically export a raw text file list of authors and of titles from Bookends.

Title the file "In Bookends.txt." All it should contain is a raw list of author names and a raw list of title names, or whatever. Any time the "In Bookends.txt" file pops up in Spotlight, it will remind you that you (probably) have information in Bookends as well, and you can then search there. If it doesn't, you (probably) don't. [Note: I don't actually do this, as my attachments almost always lead me back to the individual reference.]

Hack 3. Add an attachment every time

This is a lot of work, but it would in essence be a way of manually doing what Jon doesn't want Bookends to do automatically - handle individual files for *everything*. Every time you add an entry that you want Spotlight searchable, copy the citation out of your tray into a text file and attach it to the entry, auto-renaming it and importing it into the references folder. Bam! File-based Spotlight index of Bookends. Still, major drawbacks include - double-clicking on one of these files wouldn't actually launch Bookends and take you to the citation - attachments could get out of sync any time you edited the main entry - etc. [Note: I certainly don't do this!]

Hope this was helpful.

[danzac]

I like these ideas for a workaround, thanks.

I think I suggested something similar (or was just thinking it) in relation to the attachments folder structure. One thing I like about Sente is the options for the attachments folder structure and the choice of how to automatically assign titles to attachments (name and year, title, etc.)

Take this suggestion for what its worth, but what if the attachments folder could be hierarchically arranged, say Author>Title>Ref folder. Lets say every reference got its own folder. Then it may be possible to add attachments by simply moving a file to the references own folder (say via the awesome Quicksilver). Now, to make this Spotlight savvy, how about the concise info (like what's in the concise info pane) is placed in the folders Spotlight comments. This makes it Spotlight searchable. As I remember Jon saying, problems may come with unique ID numbers. Even greater would be some sort of link-back connection or something to go from the references folder to the reference itself in the database.

I think this kind of thing would be great and would be solving a few modest desires of Bookends users (or at least this Bookends user )- i.e. Spotlight friendliness, adding and manipulating attachments easier from outside of Bookends, and a better Attachments folder structure.

Of course this may all just be a pipe dream, and Jon usually pops my balloon pretty quick.......

[Jon]

Hi Danny,

I also recall implementing quite a few things you wanted, too. We'll revisit the Spotlight issues once Leopard is out. In the meantime, we haven't been idle...

Jon
Sonny Software

[danzac]

Another thing I just realized is that my theoretical Attachments folder framework would also bring compatability with devonthink, because devonthink also imports the finder spotlight comments.

So again, going with jeremydouglass's idea- I think it would be cool to name a references dedicated folder should be named based on a chosen format, and its spotlight finder comments should get the Concise info in it.

I gotta say i think this idea is very awesome.

And by the way, I am giddy with anticipation awaiting the next Mellel update, and Jon is very good at stroking that anticipation !

[jeremydouglass]

There are obviously a number of technical issues that would be involved both with syncing edits and with "keeping organized" (in the iTunes sense) - and the code would have to accommodate the fact that other programs can edit Spotlight comments, files can be moved etc.

Now, I would love to have the features you mention - in particular a way of managing attachment naming, with Spotlight info a bonus - BUT I'm leery of requesting tons of additional complexity in an area that might make the program difficult to maintain and grow. The big question is, if Bookends maintained what in essence were two synced plaintext version of itself, both in the form of filenames of attachments and in the form of the Spotlight comments on those attachments, how much would that data get used, even by power users?

My modest proposal is that people interested in these future features test them by manually pasting entry info into a few dozen (or few hundred) Spotlight comments, and then taking it for a whirl to see how useful it is in practice, and what the drawbacks are.

[danzac]

Now, I would love to have the features you mention - in particular a way of managing attachment naming, with Spotlight info a bonus - BUT I'm leery of requesting tons of additional complexity in an area that might make the program difficult to maintain and grow. The big question is, if Bookends maintained what in essence were two synced plaintext version of itself, both in the form of filenames of attachments and in the form of the Spotlight comments on those attachments, how much would that data get used, even by power users?

I understand your modest proposal, but I think there is evidence of enough users who would like the enhancement to use that this would provide. But, practicing with that would take a damn lot of work to do for your entire database, which is the only way I can see placing the info in the comments and renaming the files would pay off. Doing a few wouldn't do much.

Perhaps i am way off, but I can't imagine that using a format for the file name (or folder name) is super-hard— Sente can name the file the Title name. And Sente can organize (and reorganize over and over) the Attachments file structure. As for adding info to the Finder comments, who knows. I am not a coder and I don't know of any program that does this (so Bookends would be breaking new ground )

But perhaps the new OS will change these possibilities, as Jon has seemed to indicate.