Dear Brett, thanks for your as informative as always post.
I have checked out a lot of the apps using open Meta. I am a user of DevonThink Pro Office which is great, but I am still looking for the right app to tag all the files that are not in a DevonThink data base.
The whole tagging thing has two major parts – tagging, of course, and how to display the tagged files.
Tags is the program that without doubt has the most comfortable tagger but it displays the tags in a flat list which soon can be very long. Punakea offers cloud view which I would prefer, but the cloud shows some odd behaviour. Then again, the Punakea data base has to be refreshed manually while Tags has a live view of tags.
And both apps seem to compete in no-developement. No updates for ages on both of them – last news is: "Dear users, our app is Lion compatible, let's get back to bed."
Bless them Ironic guys for OpenMeta, but Leap is not very handy. A typical geek product, I'd say, great idea under the hood, but no feeling for usability whatsoever.
Huda Spot – Well, like I said, I already use DevonThink, so I have no need for another app like that.
Ammonite – a little tool that shows tagged files both in DevonThink and outside of it. But sadly it's either—or, not both at the same time. And odd behaviour and no developement too.
So right now I'm only using the free Tagger to get at least tags to my files so one day when there is the perfect app I have some content to display.
Or do you have a better suggestion?
Sounds like we've been going around many of the same circles. Update on my earlier post: I've recently ended up with the academic reference tool Sente (http://www.thirdstreetsoftw...), which is really the best tool, I think, for academic geeks looking to tag and manage PDFs. The December 2011 upgrade to 6.5 is sweet, and the integration with the companion app for iPad is terrific; it syncs very nicely, so all the tags (QuickTags) introduced in Sente are retained across the "sandbox barrier" and are searchable in Spotlight, etc.
Joel
Brett,
This is sage advice. But I'd love to hear an update from you on the situation with iOS apps and OpenMeta. We've corresponded about the sandboxing issues, but for me the biggest wrench in the tagging works was the discovery -- not widely discussed, but confirmed by the makers of iAnnotate PDF and PDF Expert (and I think this also holds for GoodReader) -- that opening a tagged file in an iOS app permanently strips off the OpenMeta data. That's a deal-breaker for me, since much of what I want tagging for is to be able to use a uniform tagging system for documents and PDFs, but the PDFs go back and forth to my iPad. Am I right about this being a problem? If so, do you see any workarounds?
Thanks for all your work. I just love nvALT. What an elegant piece of software that is.
Cheers, Joel
Hi Brett
Thank you for this very informative post. I just want to add my two cents worth. A bit of experience on the subject. I'll try to be brief. Last summer, I found myself with 1,500 files in "documents" all in folders and subfolders. Even sub folders had sub folders. I decided that a hierarchical sub folder set up was getting too complicated and too cumbersome. Firstly, I cleaned up some old stuff. This is mandatory, first to pare down the volume and then to pursue with the reorganization. Then, I did away with all folders and sub-folders. Next, I got myself a tagging application. I tried Tags but found it heavy on the memory of my system. (After all, Tags is also a Finder) Still I have the app safely tucked in my machine . I got Tagit, free, robust and able to do the job. Ultimately, after cleaning up, I was left with 522 units, which I faithfully tagged. I then set the Finder to put everything in alpha. Last, I got Hazel to identify any untagged files and color any one older than a year. The result: A faster Spotlight, less garbage and a newfound ability to find stuff through Smart Folder.
Remarkbox