Sonny Software

Hi - sorry, I can't see how to join the earlier topic on Dropbox, but I can see how to open a new one. I'm trying to sync my Bookend notes across an iMac and a MacBook, since I travel with the MacBook but want to keep entering notes about the books I'm carrying and reading.
I can upload the whole Bookends folder OK (34 MB) to Dropbox, but I can't see in Mac Finder which Bookend file my notes are in - so the whole program gets uploaded to Dropbox. But when I access it on the other machine all that downloads is a single window of code. And that's after changing the setting so that Dropbox will allow an upload from 'an unidentified developer'. Any ideas about what is going on here, or what are the basic steps that Bookend users have to follow to make access through Dropbox work?
Peter

First, get the Bookends folder *out* of the Dropbox folder. It belongs in the Application Support/Bookends folder where Bookends puts it. Most of the data files in it are useless outside of that location.

Second, the only thing to put in the Dropbox folder is your default attachments folder. That's it. [Note: edited in 2020 to reflect the availability of cloud sync now -- the library should never be put in the Dropbox folder, but should be).

Jon
Sonny Software

I've a similar scenario different Macs (with different account usernames) at home and in in the Uni's Lab. I've got lots of PDFs in '~/Dropbox/…' folder. The PDFs are linked in other systems and can't be moved to the Bookends attachments folder. The latter and my library BDB file are also on Dropbox and I'm very careful about closing the Bookends app at the end of a session so the data syses to Dropbox.

The problem I've having is on one Mac the attachments (to PDFs on Dropbox but not in Bookends' attachments) work fine. But on the other Mac, only *some* work. I'm not sure how/if I can display the attached file paths, but using the inspector I can copy out the path. On Mac A these work:
On Mac B, only one works, and reports the path as:
However this does exist:
If Bookends can parse the first correctly, why not the second.

Ideally, Dropbox-based paths would be stored as ~/Dropbox/making it easier for the app to hand off the path in contexts like this.

Oddly, the more I view attachment on Bookends on Mac A, the more begin to work on Mac B, so I guess there's something else going on under the hood.

I'd note that I quite understand this quasi-shared method (serially, locally on different devices via cloud-synced data) but it's a reality force on some of us. I'd add that using a single attachment folder is simply not practical in this context - unless I close all my research papers which is less than ideal. On the upside, the library file works fine and I can go find the PDFs myself (though that's made hard by the fact BE has no UI location that actually displays the attachment path - at least none I've found).

Bookends uses the absolute path for finding the default attachments folder. It could use the relative path (~), but it wasn't originally designed that way. That could be a feature request.

And although Bookends has only one default attachment folder (which can contain default subfolders, assigned per database), Bookends can find attachments in any folder (which is why you aren't required to move attachments when they're made). If you attach one file to a library and leave it where it is, Bookends will remember the path to that folder and look for attachments there if they can't be found in the default folder.

Jon
Sonny Softwaree

Thanks. I'll send a feature request for local paths to support so you've something to put on the spike (I quite appreciate a request is just that - possible 'jam tomorrow'). I quite see that until a few years ago, pre Dropbox and cloud storage that fixed local paths were the logical choice.

As a side note, for local attachment paths that are correct (where PDFs can be opened for the Mac I'm using) the Attachment pane's open button menu, 'Show in Finder' doesn't bring Finder to the fore. I'd hazard a guess this is because the path leads into my Dropbox. I've seen this in other apps where the app can't remember the last-used folder/file if it's in Dropbox - which I guess is something in the underlying Apple frameworks.

For now, I understand the logic as implemented. Luckily most of the attachments were made on my lab computer so that at least will open attachments automatically.

The Find in Finder thing is a problem with El Capitan. A workaround was made and uploaded as a silent update to 12.6.0 after release. It will be rolled into the next update, of course (coming soon).

Jon
Sonny Software