Sonny Software

A question that might interest many: is there any possibility that in a not too distant future Spotlight will be able to find things inside (the references of) a Bookends database? If I understand well, Spotlight can only find things in documents that have been archived as independent files; and Bookends' references clearly are not. But is it technically possible to write a plug-in that makes Spotlight work with Bookends, or not? Will we ever see such a thing?

If we won't, this probably implies that from now on it will be better to forget about the abstract section in the reference window, and to attach abstracts as independent (Word- or Pages-)files to a reference. In this way, the abstracts (which clearly are the most interesting part of a reference) can at least be searched by Spotlight.

Hi Eckius,

I'll be looking at Spotlight carefully, with an eye toward how it might be useful in conjuction with Bookends. I'm not sure a Spotlight search of a Bookends database can be accomplished, but we'll see what is possible (and useful).

Jon
Sonny Software

Eckius wrote: If we won't, this probably implies that from now on it will be better to forget about the abstract section in the reference window, and to attach abstracts as independent (Word- or Pages-)files to a reference. In this way, the abstracts (which clearly are the most interesting part of a reference) can at least be searched by Spotlight.

But spotlight does index pdf's, so why not attach the whole article (if it is available of course...)?
If you follow bookend's advice and put all your attached pdf's in the same folder, it is really easy to have it search through your library.

(But I was talking not about downloaded abstracts, but about abstracts made by myself. )

Ah, I see...
But then again, Bookends can search through the database pretty much the same way that spotlight does it, in the live search field...

But I suppose you would like your abstracts searchable from the spotlight menu? That would of course call for a plug-in. Still, I must say, after a few days of experience with spotlight, that although it is really cool it also has its shortcomings. I would imagine that a keyword seach in spotlight would bring up way too many hits from other files on your system (manuscripts, pdf's, emails, etc) so that it would probably be faster to launch bookends and search from within it.

Best regards, Niklas

Yes, I think you'd definitely want to search from within Bookends (that's what it's designed for). And one technical issue that may or many not matter (haven't looked) -- Abstract field data are compressed. This may well foil Spotlight.

Jon
Sonny Software