DEVONthink Standard3.5

The 3.5 release brings many new features, fixes, and improvements. Here are a few highlights: The Navigate sidebar now features an active database section allowing an isolated view of a single database's groups. We have added several smart rule actions including two which allow you to parse a document's name or contents and retrieve strings, dates, amounts, and even arbitrary data using regular expressions. Use the results to change attributes like a documents' dates or custom metadata. New event triggers activate smart rules on events like duplicating, or tagging documents. You can also now specify more than one trigger per rule.

For office use we have updated the OCR engine and added with two new OCR options which allow OCR without changing the original document. DEVONthink records voice notes in a more compatible format and you can view Markdown documents with syntax highlighting. The web interface lets its users upload files easier and features a custom metadata inspector pane. And, as always, we have improved the overall reliability and performance, too.

NEW

• Added a new active database section in the Navigate sidebar, allowing an isolated view of one database's content at a time. This option becomes available by disabling Unify databases in Preferences > General > Sidebar.
• Added commands Go > Previous/Next Database to access the previous or next database in the Navigate sidebar.
• Added Go > Favorites menu, allowing access to the favorites when there is no main window open, the Navigate sidebar is hidden, or the Favorites section is collapsed. Also, hovering on the menu items shows the path or location of databases and items in a tooltip.
• Added Edit Table, Edit List, Edit Spacing, and Make Link items to the Editing bar with rich text files.
• Added View > Sort > by Character Count and View > Columns > Character Count. Character Count is also available in smart groups, smart rules, and advanced searches. Additionally, the character count is shown in the Editing bar for a documents.
• Added the option Prism support to Preferences > Media > Markdown, adding syntax coloring. Currently AppleScript, Objective-C, Swift, C, C++, Java, and JavaScript are supported.
• Added optional New Group and New Smart Group toolbar items for use with the toolbar of main windows.
• Added a Log toolbar button to open a detachable Log popover when the Log window isn't open. If the Log window is open, it will come to the front when this button is pressed.
• Added to PDF (Single Page) to the Data > Convert menu. Also renamed "to PDF" to to PDF (Paginated). These options are also supported by smart rules and AppleScript.
• Smart rules can now be triggered by multiple event triggers.
• Added smart rule events On Duplicating, On Replicating, On Tagging, On Imprinting, and Every Minute.
• Added Scan Text and Scan Name actions to smart rules and batch processing. These actions can be used to parse the name or text of items for certain strings or numbers and used with subsequent actions, e.g., Change Comment or Change Modification Date. These actions can be specified with String, Date, Amount, and Regular Expression parameters for more targeted parsing.
• Added new Mail Rule - Add links to DEVONthink mail rule script for Apple Mail. This adds the web links of the email messages to DEVONthink.
• Added smart rule actions for converting hashtags, keywords, properties, geolocation to tags, as well as Add Tags to Images and Scan Barcodes actions.
• Added action Add Tags From Document to smart rules and batch processing. This action is similar to the Add Tags action but adds only existing tags which are found in the document’s text or title.
• Added new %documentString% placeholder for use with the the Scan Name and Scan Text smart rule actions.
• Added placeholder for seconds in the date placeholders.
• Added clutter-free scripts to the Scripts > Download menu for web archives, PDFs, and formatted notes.
• Added optional trigger parameter to perform smart rule AppleScript command which can be used do things like trigger only smart rules which should be performed after importing.

NEW (Pro)

• Added commands to Comment and to Annotation to the Data > OCR menu to add the OCR text to the Finder comments or create an Annotation file, leaving the original file unmodified. These commands are also available as smart rule actions, in Preferences > OCR, File > Import > Images (with OCR), and in AppleScript.
• Added an Export command to the contextual menu of Cloud view of the Tools > Inspectors > Concordance inspector, allowing the export of the current cloud as a PDF document.

Improved

• Improved the contextual and action menus for items in the Navigate sidebar including opening new windows, moving/duplicating/replicating item, setting marks and labels, and URL interactions.
• You can now select multiple groups in the sidebar, displaying a union of the contents in the item list. Multiple selected smart groups and rules will not show a union of their contents but they can be dragged and dropped, e.g, for export.
• Items in the Favorites section of the Navigate sidebar can now be renamed. This does not affect the name of the original item in the database. The Sorter, contextual menus, and destination popups will show the name shown in the Favorites section of the sidebar.
• Updated format conversions: PDF to HTML, formatted notes and bookmarks to plain text.
• Improved Tools > Summarize Highlights when used with PDF documents highlighted by PSPDFKit, e.g., DEVONthink To Go.
• File > Database Properties now shows the remaining disk space for encrypted databases.
• Slightly revised totals in File > Database Properties to be more consistent with the Info inspector.
• The Format menu now has icons for some items.
• Most toolbar items, excluding Search, Preview, Marks, and Zoom, now have the same priority. The order from left to right determines which items are removed if there's not enough space to display them.
• The Search inspector now uses the Preferences > General > Appearance > View Font Size.
• Recipients of imported email messages are now ordered, e.g., in List view or the Document > Properties inspector.
• A read-only icon for locked documents is displayed in the Editing bar.
• The Schedule popup of the Annotations & Reminder inspector now includes items for today, tomorrow, in two days, and in one week to simplify setup of one-shot reminders.
• The Show log automatically option of the Log window is now strictly honored. Errors with RSS feeds and automated AppleScripts are now logged here, too.
• Improved the clutter-free web capture mechanism to support larger pages, ignore empty anchors and zero-dimension images, more reliably detects page encodings, and more reliably follows redirections. Also, the page source is sent to our decluttering service to improve the results, when possible. Clip to DEVONthink ignores the titles of browser windows if it's identical to the URL. We also added special handling for capturing webpages from our user forum.
• Improved drag-and-drop support for third-party applications.
• Improved preserving the attributes of PDF annotations, e.g., the arrow settings for lines.
• Improved sending email with Postbox.
• Improved support for indexed Scrivener files.
• You can now also drop items onto databases in the Favorites section and the items will be put into the root of the database.
• Pressing Return in the search results of Sorter's Navigation tab now reveals the selected group.
• Pressing Escape while renaming an item in the Navigate sidebar while in fullscreen mode doesn't leave fullscreen.
• Tabbing in Inspectors now scrolls the view to the active field, if necessary.
• Hash tags can be applied by the new Tags > Convert Hashtags to Tags action.
• The smart rule and batch processing actions Add Tags, Add Tags from Document, and Remove Tags now support placeholders for more dynamic tagging.
• The create record with {} AppleScript command now supports specifying geolocation data via longitude, latitude, and altitude parameters.
• The column parameter of the get/set cell at … AppleScript commands now supports specifying the name, e.g., in set strName to get cell at column "Name".
• Improved dark mode appearance of the Content > Table of Contents inspector.
• Improved dark mode appearance of the embedded scripts editor and buttons in the smart rule editor (macOS Catalina).
• The Sorter now creates voice notes in MPEG-4 format for better compatibility, including in the web interface.
• Grouping items now selects the new group in the Navigate sidebar if View > Show Only Documents is enabled. Improved revealing of groups, e.g., in search results, when this option or View > Cover Flow is used in the item's location.
• Control-Tab now supports the search field of the Tags filter. Also keyboard navigation in the filter has been improved.
• Reports created by Tools > Create Metadata Overview now account for custom metadata applied to groups, smart groups, and feeds.
• Updated the default Annotation file template to improve compatibility with DEVONthink To Go.
• Renamed "Copy Smart Group/Rule Link" to Copy Item Link in the contextual and action menu of the Navigate sidebar.
• Renamed "Enable MathJax support" to MathJax support in Preferences > Media > Markdown.
• Renamed "Amount" in the "Insert Placeholder" contextual menu to Document Amount to be more consistent with Document Date and Document String.
• Improved RSS feed handling is more compatible to certain feeds, e.g., Daring Fireball.
• Invalid URLs of feeds are now automatically corrected and logged if a valid feed URL can be found in the HTML code. Otherwise a message that the feed is invalid is logged to the Log window or popover.
• Importing and indexing HTML files, formatted notes, and web archives now supports HTML geolocation metadata "geo.position" and "icbm" when available in the page source.
• Annotations of PDF documents and PDF packages annotated by Skim are now indexed and searchable.
• Thumbnailing of audio files now uses the artwork as the thumbnail, if available.
• .sml files are now imported as plain text.
• Closing an encrypted database now empties the disk image's trash to conserve space.
• Databases are automatically verified after opening them if they weren't closed properly.
• File > Verify & Repair Database now checks and repairs for invalid characters in filenames. The items with an invalid filename are logged to the Log window.
• Improved handling of items when the hidden preference DisableAutomaticDeconsolidation is active.
• Plain text files larger than 256 MB are now skipped as they can crash the foundation framework of macOS in case of insufficient memory.
• Aliases or symbolic links in ~Library/Metadata/com.devon-technologies.think3 are now resolved.
• Merging documents now triggers the On Creation smart rule event.
• Automatic creation of tags, e.g., entered in the tags bar or hashtags inside documents, now triggers an On Creation event in smart rules.
• Updated scripts for Apple Mail and Microsoft Outlook to trigger smart rules using the on import trigger to make this more consistent with our other email archiving methods.
• The "Tags - Assign" smart rule script now applies only existing tags found in the document.
• Hashtags are now applied after documents were edited in external applications.
• Improved recognition of document dates and amounts.
• Improved handling of the extension of JPEG images, e.g. created via AppleScript.
• Improved detecting and skipping of already imported messages after dragging them from Apple Mail. Depending on the size of the messages and the speed of the Internet connection this can speed up the import 2 to 100 times.
• Unsupported URL schemes are now forwarded to the approprate application when possible.
• Improved overall performance and reliability, including reduced resource consumption for smart rules, caching custom icons in the Navigate sidebar, and improved email archiving.

Improved (Pro)

• Updated OCR engine, processes very large PDFs faster, improves the support for CJK, and creates smaller files. Fixes also issues with rotated images and with text quality in PDF output.
• File > Import > Unix Mailbox now supports .mbox packages exported by Apple Mail without having to choose the MBOX file inside the package.
• Added Today, Tomorrow, In Two Days, and In One Week options in a popup on the label for date-based fields in the Custom Metadata inspector or the form view of sheets.
• Improved dark mode support of rich text fields in form views of sheets and the Info > Custom inspector.
• Tabbing in the form view of sheets or the Custom Metadata inspector now scrolls the view to the active field, if necessary.
• Improved performance in the Concordance inspector.
• Scans produced via the Import sidebar can now trigger both the On Scan and On OCR smart rule events.
• Updated web interface, improves: file uploads with drag-and-drop to the upload control, viewing and editing custom metadata in the Info inspector, and updated context menus in the toolbar. Also moving, replicating, duplicating, tagging, renaming, and editing items in browser now triggers smart rule events. Additionally, we improved compatibility of audio and video media to Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.

Improved (Sync)

• Indexed items located on external volumes are now handled like indexed items located in cloud folders as the volume might be a shared network volume.
• Improved syncing when Scrivener's files are in a database.
• Improved the reliability of Bonjour sync.
• Improved reliability of duplication and logging in case of sync conflicts.
• Improved error message in cases of an invalid database UUID.
• Improved multi-threading, fixes rare crashes.
• Improved host identification to avoid minor issues like inefficient garbage collection of sync stores or unnecessary clearing of cached files.

Fixed

• Fixed a crash related to the AppKit framework.
• Fixed a crash related to the Acrobat PDF browser plugin being installed on the computer.
• Fixed a rare crash related to certain EPUB files.
• Fixed a rare crash related to the Navigate sidebar.
• Fixed an intermittent crash related to video notes in the Sorter.
• Fixed an issue where Data > Launch URL used the local file URL instead of the remote URL in case of web documents, e.g., clipped formatted notes.
• Fixed an issue where Edit > Copy URL was incorrectly available with document windows displaying files without a remote URL.
• Fixed an issue where a toolbar search wasn't updated with the same term after pressing Return if the databases were modified since performing the search.
• Fixed an issue where accessing the font and color options in the Editing bar temporarily consumed too much memory.
• Fixed an issue where Apple's PDFKit framework could freeze while creating thumbnails of PDF documents.
• Fixed an issue where changes in the Info popover were not always saved, e.g. after pressing ⌃S.
• Fixed an issue where changing an annotation or Finder comment in the Annotations & Reminders inspector caused glitches when setting a label in the toolbar.
• Fixed an issue where changing the selection didn't update the Quick Look panel.
• Fixed an issue where changing the sorting of a column in column view also affected the top level object of the window.
• Fixed an issue where commands to create new feeds and groups weren't disabled when the Reading List was visible.
• Fixed an issue where documents in the Favorites section of the Navigate sidebar didn't honor the Preferences > General > Double-click opens documents externally setting.
• Fixed an issue where dragging items to locations in the Navigate sidebar didn't honor the Preferences > General > Sidebar: Automatically expand & collapse setting.
• Fixed an issue where dragging text from web pages into DEVONthink could have the wrong URL.
• Fixed an issue where duplicating a global smart group or smart rule in the Navigate sidebar didn't set a new identifier on the duplicated item.
• Fixed an issue where encrypted databases couldn't be reopened after an application crash.
• Fixed an issue where Finder comments were sometimes not imported.
• Fixed an issue where imprinting multiple PDFs added a wrong identifer value.
• Fixed an issue where indexing and thumbnailing PDF packages (.pdfd, .lpdf) didn't work.
• Fixed an issue where integers didn't work as percentages in custom metadata and in sheets.
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to close a database while items were being moved into it in the background from another database.
• Fixed an issue where item links pasted into an embedded script in smart rules or reminders pasted the item's name, not the link. The format of rich text content pasted in is also now ignored.
• Fixed an issue where items moved via smart rules immediately after importing them didn't always remove the original item.
• Fixed an issue where links in the Tools > Inspectors > Document > Links inspector could be renamed.
• Fixed an issue where long custom metadata labels caused layout problems in popups.
• Fixed an issue where main windows showing global smart groups and smart rules were not restored by workspaces and when DEVONthink launched.
• Fixed an issue where pressing Escape in a popover, e.g., the Info popover, closed the search instead of the popover.
• Fixed an issue where rebuilding a database wrongfully showed a warning that the database would be in use.
• Fixed an issue where saving PDF documents in the background could happen multiple times concurrently.
• Fixed an issue where sheets were not editable after modifying the sheet's columns.
• Fixed an issue where tab characters in titles of emails were not replaced.
• Fixed an issue where the Tags bar was sometimes shown when switching databases using different view or preview settings.
• Fixed an issue where the Table of Contents inspector wasn't always immediately updated, e.g., while editing Markdown documents in side-by-side view in main windows.
• Fixed an issue where the Welcome Assistant showed no icon when running the standard edition.
• Fixed an issue where the Table of Contents inspector didn't scroll to the headings of Markdown documents in preview mode.
• Fixed an issue where the Table of Contents inspector incorrectly listed hashtags.
• Fixed an issue where the Annotations & Reminder inspector wasn't always updated after creating or removing an annotation.
• Fixed an issue where the Navigate sidebar didn't scroll to the selected item, e.g., after using Go > Go to Group.
• Fixed an issue where the Open With and Label menus of the See Also & Classify inspector applied to the currently visible document, not the selected one.
• Fixed an issue where the active filter pane didn't immediately apply to search results.
• Fixed an issue where the AppleScript application property reading list conflicted with the alarm parameter of reminders with the same name. The alarm parameter option has been renamed to add to reading list.
• Fixed an issue where the status in the Information bar was displayed incorrectly in macOS El Capitan.
• Fixed an issue where the tags autocompletion popup would increase its width as tags were added.
• Fixed an issue where the toolbar search popup did not immediately include recent searches.
• Fixed an issue where the tooltips of icon view were not always updated after changes.
• Fixed an issue where the URL of documents wasn't shown in the Navigation bar after certain actions, e.g., locking or unlocking an item.
• Fixed an issue where the wrong encoding was used for some EPUB documents.
• Fixed an issue where the wrong file path was logged to the Log window after importing files and folders exported from another database.
• Fixed an issue where, e.g., Markdown previews, formatted notes, HTML pages, news, etc. caused artifacts in dark mode.
• Fixed an issue with cached counts of smart groups showing out of date numbers.
• Fixed an issue with some inspectors scrolling after pressing the Tab key.
• Fixed an issue with the alignment of items in Tools > Annotate and Tools > Mode.
• Fixed an issue with the text color of the item counts of selected groups in sidebar.
• Fixed an issue with undo handling after certain import operations if automatic tagging in Preferences > Import was enabled.
• Fixed issues of the tab order of interface elements with disabled controls.
• Fixed issues of undo handling after merging items, especially via AppleScript.
• Fixed issues with bookmarks where links to items in a database were marked as having an annotation file and removing an annotation file from a bookmark would change the URL.
• Fixed issues with the Log window.
• Fixed issues with the Sorter including: the search field didn't receive focus when opening, double-clicking groups in the Sorter didn't always switch the sidebar to the Navigate view, clipping web pages could have the contents or URL of the previous clipped page, the Finder comment of plain text was set to the clipped text, some appearance issues in the destination popups, corrected the color of the menu extra in dark mode, and an issue with its position on a second monitor.
• Fixed issues with the clutter-free capture option when handling certain URLs. Also fixed some layout issues with images in the captured page.
• Fixed issues with WebKit crashes.
• Fixed issues with WikiLinks, including: an issue where automatic Wiki linking in plain and rich text documents could create separate links from a single WikiLink, an exception caused by square bracket WikiLinks after removing all the content from the document, square bracket links not functioning when inside parentheses.

Fixed (Pro)

• Fixed a crash related to archiving emails.
• Fixed a crash related to scanning.
• Fixed an issue where a selection of multiple UNIX mailboxes couldn't be imported.
• Fixed an issue where corrupt PDFs caused a memory leak.
• Fixed an issue where Danish was being shown as Esperanto in Preferences > OCR.
• Fixed an issue where dragging messages from Apple Mail could freeze both Mail and DEVONthink.
• Fixed an issue where Microsoft Outlook wasn't automatically launched by the Import sidebar.
• Fixed an issue where reporting corrupt PDFs did not always work as expected.
• Fixed an issue where scanning input only went to the Global Inbox when using the Metadata panel post-OCR. Also reinstated the ability to resize the Metadata panel.
• Fixed an issue where switching to Import sidebar didn't always work.
• Fixed an issue where the text color of custom metadata in Preferences > Data wasn't updated after toggling the checkbox.
• Fixed an issue where the color of linked text in rich text content in the Info > Custom inspector was wrong when using dark mode and smart links.
• Fixed an issue where the text color of imported Bookends references wasn't correct in dark mode.
• Fixed an issue where item links of emails containing / didn't work.
• Fixed issues of the web sharing, including some localization issues, and disabling dragging while renaming items.
• Fixed issues with the Concordance inspector, including: an issue where double-clicking on a word in the inspector in document windows caused an exception and artifacts with Greek characters.

Fixed (Sync)

• Fixed a rare crash related to broken status files.
• Fixed an issue where Bonjour syncs could cause intermittent freezes.
• Fixed an issue where resolving conflicts or when synchronizing indexed cloud folders or network volumes could cause duplication.
• Fixed an issue where sync locations could appear to be constantly busy.
• Fixed an issue where temporary Dropbox server issues could cause synchronization to be endlessly retried.

Removed

• Removed obsolete scripts for Microsoft Entourage.