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Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jul 13, 2018 at 08:21 PM
Paul Korm wrote:
>I’ve all but abandoned using it after
>realizing the file system and a few useful low-cost utilities gets more
>done than fiddling with databases.)
Can you mention some of these utilities?
Posted by Paul Korm
Jul 14, 2018 at 10:40 AM
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. 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.
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>Can you mention some of these utilities?
Posted by nathanb
Jul 14, 2018 at 01:56 PM
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. 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.
>>Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>>Can you mention some of these utilities?
I’m on Windows so don’t know the specifics here, but am assuming that storing files in the file system vs a database are roughly the same.
I’ve long wrestled with this issue about where the metadata for a file should live. I agree that far and away the best place to store document metadata (tags) SHOULD BE in the file itself so the user isn’t depending on a separate index (database or not) for curation. Lots of file types have their own metadata standards built in (incompatible with each other, of course). Like adobe pdf tags, exif info in photos, and MS Office Docs even has their own group of tags which you can get file explorer to show….
...ah that specifically brings me back a couple years when I was trying to migrate a bunch of my company files to Sharepoint. I was surprised to find that ALL that embedded metadata for Office files beyond the filename was completely ignored upon import…. Sharepoint even ignored the basic created/modified dates. I was quite perplexed that Microsoft regarded what seems to be a fairly good metadata scheme on it’s own documents as not worth bothering to preserve. I mean, if MS is going to ignore this info upon migrating to a ‘more modern’ platform, then who IS using these tags? Que the MS jokes about abandoning a good thing for stupid corporate reasons (RIP OneNote) but this particular example is typical of the whole industry. Picasa being another good example. I use AutoCAD too , a horrific Frankenstein of 3 decades of different embedded metadata schemes that inexplicably still ‘coexist’ within the most recent version.
Examples like that over the years have made me cynical about relying on file-based proprietary metadata for ANYTHING large or long-term. Is this situation generally more stable in Mac-world?
Besides the trouble with changing metadata standards and maintaining a mixed file system of different standards, isn’t the other main benefit to use a database is to browse the scope of your metadata (push) instead of just blind search (pull)?
Take tagging pdfs inside the pdf (using the Adobe standard). If I copy a directory of those pdfs to a different pc, is there any software that scans those to show how many of each tag exist or do you need to explicitly (get lucky) search for them? Maybe I’m just missing a whole category of software. I’m not an academic but I’ve always had this impression that a solid granular metadata situation exists in the Adobe world that I’ve never been able to leverage because in the business and engineering world not enough people care about or even recognize document metadata as being useful.
Curiota Windows
The thing is, when I curate my own collection, I want to create a dashboard to it beyond ‘powerful search’. I want to be able to see the scope of my category and tagging scheme to help guide how I label the newest item but also to remind me what my whole library looks like and about the connections I’ve made in the past. My recall memory is garbage but my recognition memory is pretty good. So I need my collection to remind me about stuff I filed for a good reason a year ago that I’ve completely forgotten about today. Let’s say I ran across a great white paper “What Entomology can Teach Us About Information Theory” a year ago. If I file it in folders, the best I can do (i think) is to tag it with a bunch of keywords so it’ll be more likely to pop up in search. If I file/index it in a database then I can associate it with various knowledge graphs/maps and have it show up in a few different branches of tag/category trees. For me to rediscover it the first way, I’d have to one day actually search my own stuff for ‘ants and knowledge’ or something like that…which will NEVER happen because my recall memory is garbage. I’ll remember that article IF I run across it again and then the old idea connections it spawned then would spring up again with hopefully new insight today. But the only way…well, the most likely way…I’ll run across it again will not be upon search discovery, it’ll be through navigating a curated knowledge graph/tree.
Am I way off that it’s not possible to have the freedom of just files in folders AND a useful knowledge graph of those files? If I’m wrong, please point me in the right direction!
Posted by Paul Korm
Jul 14, 2018 at 03:30 PM
As with anything to do with “metadata”—it depends. Including the definition of “metadata”. The way Windows or macOS handles tags varies, and the way third party software on those platforms recognizes tags varies by developer. Tags are not the only form of metadata, either, just the one that most people are familiar with and like to chat about. In theory, a database can support the metadata managed by the file system and augment it with custom metadata, either defined by the developer or the end user or both. In practice, on macOS, that doesn’t happen much. DEVONthink has no user-defined metadata, and a few developer-defined attributes. macOS and Windows support additional attributes in the file system but these are not easily accessed by the end user.
Curiota
nathanb wrote:
>I’m on Windows so don’t know the specifics here, but am assuming that
>storing files in the file system vs a database are roughly the same.
Posted by Chris Murtland
Jul 14, 2018 at 07:12 PM
The ability to apply metadata across diverse files and information types has always been the draw for me for database approaches like Ultra Recall. In UR, I can set up shared fields that are used on notes, PDF files, email messages, etc., and then use those fields in searches (and those saved searches are items like any other, with metadata also applied to them).
That said, the approach of something like Notebooks, which is entirely dependent on the filesystem, is also highly appealing to me. Not being locked in and being able to operate on the data using various other tools seems more sensible in a lot of ways. Unfortunately, tools based on the file system rarely provide any real metadata capabilities (at least on Windows), and therefore prevent much in the way of slicing and dicing.
I’ve never really resolved this tension to my satisfaction; wish I could have both. UR slightly wins out though, in that it can synchronize to external folders, so there is a possibility of getting the best of both worlds to some degree.
However, there is also a cost to maintaining fields/attributes/metadata on a lot of items. It pays off sometimes, but the file system approach seems to have less overhead.
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The hardest part of reviewing Curio for Mac is explaining what it is. It's like a light-box for information. Or maybe it's a bulletin board of data. Or maybe it's a mind mapping application that's also a rich content organizer. None of these convey exactly what Curio can do. And now version 10 is out and it adds even more, which makes a direct comparison to another tool even more impossible.
The Basics of Curio
Curio documents are divided up into pages called 'Idea Spaces.' These are similar to slides in a slide deck. They can hold anything and can be reordered and nested to provide context.
The most basic elements of Curio all revolve around information capture. This Mac app not only supports almost any content type you can throw at it but it supports it natively. Create a Pages document from within Curio and the content is indexed for search. Double click it in Curio and it opens in Pages for editing.
Capture
Curio is a great little research tool. It integrates directly with Evernote to provide quick access to your library of notes. But it goes way beyond that now with the Curiota system capture app. Now you can cruise around the web or just your own file system to capture anything into Curiota and direct it to a Curio workspace.
Projects
The calendar integration works well with the Curio native project management tools. Set time-lines and progress and get the convenience of reminders in your iCloud calendar. If all of your project work is done in Curio then you really get a huge amount of value for managing deadlines.
The variety of native content types in Curio is mind-boggling and it's not a cheap version either. IF you like working with Mind Maps then Curio Mind Maps are going to be perfect. It provides a variety of quick ways for building out a map or transforming a nested list into a new map. There's also plenty of formatting options to make great looking maps.
Curio has some great ways to bucket information, especially lists. The 'Index Card' objects are perfect if you are familiar with apps like Scrivener. It makes lists portable little cards you can move around and organize on your workspace. The lists can be nested, formatted and include check boxes. The 'Stack' is new in Curio 10 and it's a terrific improvement of standard lists. Items in a stack can be rearranged through click and drag or turned into a task with a check box. As with most Curio data elements, even arbitrary files can be attached to a Stack item.
As with all Curio objects, you can insert a Mind Map or Stack anywhere on a workspace. You can insert any number of objects on a page and format each one differently.
And then there are all of the other Instant Document types Curio supports. Inserting a Pages document is one click away. Double click the document to open it in Pages for editing. Save and close to have the content indexed in Curio for search.
All of this comes together as a Curio project. These are particularly useful to me for organizing a large variety of content for a single area of work. For example, a new house design or a landscaping project at home. I can dump in photos, hyperlinks, YouTube videos, and PDFs. I create relationships between them or add notes. Heck, I can even add a star rating to images and filter all of the content in the workspace by rating.
Search
The Curio Sleuth functionality pre-dates the new Curiota companion app. It's an easy way to perform web-based research and capture the results right into a Curio project. It's still a useful feature but less valuable now that Curiota can capture information so fluidly.
Since Curio is designed to capture a huge amount of information, it also makes it easy to find that information later. Every piece of meta-data is searchable in Curio, along with the object contents too. This makes me want to use the advanced features more. Ratings and due dates are more than fiddly toggles. They are actually useful when you want to slice and dice a big content-rich project.
The Cons
Curio is a premium application and comes with an appropriate price point. That makes it even more important to highlight the downsides. There are few negatives to Curio and someone with schizophrenic tendencies could argue with themselves for days about them.
Project pages can be slow to load when they have multiple content types or just a lot of images. For the most part, it's not noticeable until a project gets big. But it does creep up when you get excited about loading a ton of stuff into a project.
There's A LOT of functionality in Curio and it can be dizzying to navigate everything. I suggest focusing on learning about one feature category at a time and then moving on. Learn about Mind Maps, then List, then Instant Documents. Play with Google Docs integration for a day and then maybe graduate to object actions.
The price can be a turn-off if you already use Evernote or DEVONthink. I get it. But Curio is it's own thing and it's the best at what it does. You'll pay for that kind of functionality. But I find myself returning to Curio for things it's not really marketed for. It's terrific for throwing together a quick timeline with a project Mind Map then exporting the page as a PDF.
It's Not Everywhere
I want to use my giant phone to view a project workspace or capture a photo into my Curio project and I can't. While I could publish a project as an interactive Web site there's no native application on iOS. It's weird, but I guess my biggest complaint is that I can't use Curio more. It's a big obvious complaint. Curio is a container for my research and if I have to wait until I get home to use it then it's a non-starter for many projects.
I use Curio for projects that will only ever exist on my Mac. That's a rare occurrence these days. When I do work in Curio I love it. It's such a perfect research and organization tool. When the Evernote Mac app gets drunk and dreams of what it wants to be when it grows up, it dreams of being Curio.
Curio 10 | Mac Only | $130