Instead of merely deleting a replicant, the document itself is gone. What happens when folks create a document inside a tag folder is that they eventually forget the document is there and delete the tag. So deleting a tag doesn’t destroy your document, it just removes the replicant. Normally, the contents of tag folders are replicants (DEVONthink’s equivalent of aliases, but not at all the same thing). Can’t remember what, but something was odd. I tried that on a test database once, and found oddities. I had found you could create documents inside tag folders, which the documentation says are just folders - but I hear you about the issues creating documents in them. It’s a lot simpler to use TheBrain for exploring notes and concepts and forget about tagging. Personally, I rather enjoy organizing concepts in TheBrain in a very freeform manner, and if a concept is related to a document in DEVONthink then I insert a DEVONthink-link in the brain to link back to the document. They are completely different information concepts. You’re not going to achieve in DEVONthink what you achieve in TheBrain. When you start putting original documents in the Tags hierarchy you get a mess-not that that’s what you’re doing, but it’s worth mentioning. Keep documents in “normal” groups, and so when you tag them you only have replicants in the Tags hierarchy. Also, never import, create, or index a document inside a tag. I think it’s best to set a database to “exclude groups from tagging” and to look at building a hierarchy of tags inside the database’s Tags group.
Just musing about how to get more out of it.ĭEVONthink uses an unusually metaphor for tags-“tags are groups”-that a lot of users have a hard time getting comfortable with. I like DEVONThink and it’s been very reliable, much more so in my experience than TheBrain. If a group gets named the same thing as an existing tag, the group association, not the pre-existing tag, seems to be what’s active.
That works, but duplication in naming is not well handled. Or, I can turn off the “exclude groups from tagging” option in the database properties. I can add tags to groups, but that can only be done in the “get info” window. It’s imperfect, though, because I can’t use a tag to link to a group unless I use one of two methods.
Then, I use tags and subtags to do what TheBrain does with jump thoughts. I’ve started using DEVONThink where I use groups and subgroups to file documents in the manner of TheBrain’s hierarchy.
Parent thoughts have child thoughts, and every thought can have jump thoughts, which are sort of sidebar references. In TheBrain, there is a hierarchical order. I’ve been thinking about how to get more out of DEVONThink, particularly in the way that TheBrain organizes stuff.