Version 7.3 of Tinderbox was just released. It has a new feature that promises to be very handy. You can set up a Tbox document to watch a Finder folder and automatically import files. This means you can add a folder to Dropbox called, say, Tinderbox Inbox, then add notes from your iPhone or Windows PC, or even through Dropbox's web version and those notes will be imported automatically. I did a quick test, and found this worked just fine. This is one way importing, not synchronization, but a real step forward, I think.

Steve Z.

It is also possible to "watch" a DEVONthink group (i.e., a folder) with a similar approach in 7.3.x. Be aware that the instructions for this in the release notes are a bit inaccurate.

not synchronization,

It is good progress. But, a true sync back to Devonthink will take TB to a different level.

Inability to search TB notes from Spotlight has been a major challenge to me.

I doubt you'll ever see that feature. Tinderbox "notes" are text inside XML files, conglomerated with lots of other text and coding -- there's no discrete "note" to search for.

Dellu wrote:

Inability to search TB notes from Spotlight has been a major challenge
to me.

Couldn't Devonthink's Formatted Note talk to Tinderbox's XML?

I was thinking, if both way syc is implemented, Devonthink can give out to Spotlight.


It could be very hard to implement both ways sync, if the technologies are deeply different. That might be the reason why TB always sucks in, rarely gives out. But, TB is able to sync back to Simplenote.

So kind of interpreter should already be in hand. They can use the same method to interpret the XML to the formatted note...or something similar.

That is an interesting idea. I migth steal it for Hyper Plan. ;0)

If there was a "like" icon for this comment, I would have clicked it.

Andy Brice wrote:

That is an interesting idea. I migth steal it for Hyper Plan. ;0)

I'm not an expert, but I would say that it is indeed possible to search Tinderbox notes from Spotlight. Sure, the note files contain additional XML syntax, but they also contain all the actual text of your notes, so Spotlight searching should work fine (which has been my experience).

Paul Korm wrote:

I doubt you'll ever see that feature. Tinderbox "notes" are text inside
XML files, conglomerated with lots of other text and coding -- there's
no discrete "note" to search for.

Dellu wrote:
>Inability to search TB notes from Spotlight has been a major challenge
>to me.

Sure that is possible but I think the original question was if it was possible to have Spotlight return the actual note in question rather than just pointing to the Tinderbox file.
This is currently not possible but it is not technically unfeasible, after all, Tinderbox has zero difficulties finding its way through the XML file.

But without a Quicklook plugin that passes on some of the knowledge about the notes structure inside the Tinderbox XML file to the macOS, Spotlight will only ever return the Tinderbox file, not the note inside of it.

A quicklook plugin that displays the Tinderbox document in a preview is feasible but challenging -- the document can have numerous tabs, folded hierarchies, thousands of notes: so the developer would have to make design decisions that are arbitrary -- and getting a QL preview for just one note would be expensive in development time.

DEVONthink addresses this "find my document with Spotlight" issue by creating small metadata files in a cache that Spotlight knows about -- one metadata file for each document in a database -- that contain a concordance of words in the original document and the document's database identifier. DEVONthink's QL then knows to grab the preview and show it to you in Spotlight. Clever. It's a better solution than QL, might work for Tinderbox, but probably will never happen.

I agree, direct quicklook plugin to the Tinderbox file is hopless. It is too complex process and I don't think Eastgate also want to go that way.

A glimse of hope I have is if both way syncing to Devonthink could be done, Devonthink can push these individual notes to Spotlight using its internal technology, that Korm has noted.

- For me, it already feasible to completely avoid storing notes inside Tinderbox's database altogether and rely on the Watch (sync) feature.

Over the years, what I learned is that these small pieces of notes are extremely useful when indexed in Spotlight--as I ramdomly discover gems while searching around. I often get surprise that I have already written (commented) some note a few years ago on a topic that I am searching about.
Memory fades. These notes from years back take me by surprise. Devonthink's AI also do similar magic that the agents and careful structures of TB cannot do.

Yes, Devonthink was precisely what I was thinking about.

Now that Tinderbox has unique Note URLs that allow addressing notes from outside of Tinderbox (incl Spotlight?) perhaps someone should suggest this to Mark Bernstein. It does not seem unreasonably difficult but then I again I have zero inside knowledge.