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Any Known Alternatives to DEVONthink for Linux or Windows?
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Posted by Dellu
Jul 14, 2018 at 10:15 PM
Paul Korm wrote:
>Finder searches are far more adaptable and configurable than any
> I don’t need a
>database to store documents. I don’t need fancy sync—iCloud is
>adequate. The See Also & Classify feature is interesting but I rarely
>use it. The amount of time spent on managing and curating folders in
>the file system is no different than the same task in a database. And
>every macOS app is integrated with the file system by default, but none
>of them are integrated with DEVONthink—if you use DEVONthink to store
>documents you are 95% locked into using DEVONthink to launch them for
>editing.
>
>Don’t get me wrong—it is a nice product, well engineered and
>reliable. But for me it is also overhead with little payback.
Thank you Paul. It also took me long time to realize that I actually use more time configuring and tinkering with my files in Devonthink than actually working on them (editing, or writing). I am also surprised to learn (probably about myself) that I rarely use the AI; the main reason that first persuaded me to adopt Devonthink. I find myself using more and more of the proximity search in Foxtrot to find bits of information from my collection (of pdf files, largely) than the AI or the search in Devonthink.
Posted by satis
Jul 14, 2018 at 10:42 PM
I remain supportive of the features and the continued development of Devonthink, but I too was not using it to its full potential: I wasn’t using the scanning/OCR or the AI analysis.
For my uses Notebooks (which I own) could have done *most* of what I needed, and is iOS/Mac cross-platform. However I settled on EagleFiler because Notebooks doesn’t handle images and other formats but EagleFiler takes on just about any format you throw at it: PDF, Word, Excel, Pages, Keynote, images, videos, Web archives, and anything that can be viewed with Quick Look plug-ins.
https://c-command.com/eaglefiler/help/what-can-be-imported
Search is acceptable: https://c-command.com/eaglefiler/images/search-sources@2x.png
And UI is close enough to be familiar after years in Devonthink: https://c-command.com/eaglefiler/images/recipes.png
Main issue I have with it is slowness when editing large rich text files from within the app. For some reason an 872k rtfd file containing passwords & screenshots started bogging down recently when adding new data, and I needed to create a new part-2 file for new passwords. No biggie, but I feel it shouldn’t have happened, and it’s the main issue I’ve had worth mentioning.
And the biggest quibble is the dearth of an iOS app, and apparently no plans to offer one. It’s possible to put files in Dropbox and access most files from iOS apps:
https://c-command.com/eaglefiler/help/how-can-i-put-my-librar
as long as one does not rename files (which will confuse the Mac app).
Posted by MadaboutDana
Jul 15, 2018 at 07:39 AM
But Notebooks *does* handle images, and treats PDFs as embedded files (i.e. you can search and view them seamlessly).
However, I have to say that for me (i.e. working on macOS), FoxTrot is one of the best all-round search apps available.
I do use DEVONthink, but strictly as a database manager for large-scale document management. This is something it does extremely well (I generally use dual-language documents created as PDF bi-texts, i.e. with German-English pages interleaved so you can view them side by side - DEVONthink searches such documents at blinding speed, highlights the search results, and allows you to skip from one result to another at speed; the only slight slowdown is actually opening [very] large documents).
But you can use FoxTrot in exactly the same way…
Posted by Dellu
Jul 15, 2018 at 06:37 PM
MadaboutDana wrote:
>FoxTrot is one of the best all-round search apps available
Totally agree. My life relied on it.
One great feature of Devonthink I highly benefited from Devonthink is the duplicate finder (smart search based on the instance of the file). There are many dedicated duplicate finder applications out there. They all rely on file checksum, rather than content. Devonthink does an amazing job of tracking duplicate pdf files based on their content.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jul 15, 2018 at 07:54 PM
Thank you! I’m on Windows and Linux, but will check the functionality of the tools you mention and see what similar is available for me.
Paul Korm wrote:
>Finder searches are far more adaptable and configurable than any
>DEVONthink search
>Tembo for quick on-the-fly searching
>Ammonite for tag searching
>Apple Notes or Curiota for on-the-fly note taking
>Forklift 3—lots of nice features for folder and document management
>
>For me, the above replace 99% of what DEVONthink does.