Maybe it’d be better avoid using “ugly” or “beautiful” to describe software from the beginning. Instead, describe with more specific criteria:
Conformance with the OS’ design patterns;
User experience; learning curve;
Targeted use cases; “killer features”;
Visual appearance; design details;
Accessibility to persons with special needs;
etc.
It’s unrealistic for a single piece of software to be “beautiful” in all measurements. It’s usually necessary to trade one for another, depending on the targeted use cases, platform, and audience. Command line programs like Vim can’t be less attractive compared with modern GUI eye candies from the visual perspective, but nonetheless works “beautifully” in manipulating text with unparalleled efficiency.
I am in the process of abandoning DT for Obsidian. The problem is that I have approximately 5000 notes in DT right now that are short notes that for sure will move to Obsidian. That takes a while to sort out as none are currently in markdown. I have used the DT coversion but it’s not ideal and all notes need tweaking anyway. I also have over 100K individual email messages in DT that I need to deal with. None of that counts the use of DT to index files in finder. I’m debating how to handle that.
In my book any software that is focused on storage of data that ends up creating zero length files and thus losing your data is no longer worth me risking my work in.
This is just to record my own experience, and is not a comment on anyone else’s case. Have used DEVONthink continually, morning to evening, for 14 years, normally with 6 databases and 20GB of data in use. I have never lost a file due to v1, v2 or v3 of the DEVONthink software.
Yep, I agree for years DT was rock solid. I have 8 databases in active use. Total data is over 40GB and until DTTG 3 I never lost anything. Sadly that perfect record was broken with DTTG 3. I still do not know when the errors/losses started but I do agree that it appears that the problem actually happened much earlier but DTTG 3 is what exposed the bug.
I am now at over 400 lost files and counting.
The more I look the worse the problem is. Every day I find a few more.
I did a backup if everything and removed it to an offsite location and am trying to convert from DT into Obsidian as fast as I can.
Sure scanning with the button works with ExactScan Pro. As with Scansnap Home, ExactScan Pro needs to run as an app. It’s fine as it is light on system resources.
After Scan you can choose to get a Save dialogue box to confirm filename/location or do automatic file creation using sequential numbers in a pre-defined scan target folder
ExactScan Pro includes the OCR kit, the simple version does not.
OCR works fine. I only very occasionally do a manual second OCR using Prizmo or automated one using PDFPen Pro.
I use a temp filing folder for all scans and downloads. All files that haven’t been processed (read) by Hazel, will be automatically OCR’d by PDFPen Pro. This only happens very occasionally, which means the scan OCR is working just fine.
Great, thanks a lot!
Can you configure like a set of scanning profiles (like a few predefined folders or apps to send the scans to) with it like in ScanSnap manager? I would really like to do without the Fujitsu software.
To me beautiful software does one thing exceptionally well and nothing else; it’s designed to integrate with other, similarly-focussed software, hopefully in a cross-platform and network aware way. In some sense, the further it strays from the Unix-ideal, the uglier I find it.
yes to profiles, yes to folders and apps. There is no automated profile selection though. You will have to choose profile before scanning. In each profile you can determine scan location, type of confirmations and target apps.
I decided not to use it. I just scan to folder and have Hazel do the renaming and filing automation as well as ensuring I have backup copies. This way I can use same worfflow for both scans and downloaded files/statements
Thanks for the info ! I’m fine selecting stuff, I already do with the Fujitsu software. I’m really happy to be able to do without it, will definitely give it a try!
After this discussion of ExactScan I gave it a try and really liked it. Was planning to buy a license but was leaving on a trip and decided to wait until I returned. Got home and had a document in the mail I needed to scan and send to someone. Tried to scan it and ExactScan said my trial had expired. Tried to buy it and the store link is broken. Have emailed them but no response yet. Had to scan the documents with the old software on my MBA because I had only loaded ExactScan on my new iMac.