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![]() | Tagging | ||
DEVONthink Personal supports tagging in a way that makes groups and tags interchangeable. While this concept may sound a bit strange at first you will soon discover why it is a smart way to approach tags and group and to bring both together.
Technically, tags and groups are identical: both are simply entries in a table that are somehow 'attached' to an item, usually a group or document. The difference is that tags are visualized as 'labels' attached TO the item while groups are visualized as groups CONTAINING the item. They are presented differently but internally they are the same. DEVONthink Personal treats groups as tags and tags as groups. When it shows you the tags associated with an item it presents you with a list of all groups that the item is part of and that have not been excluded from tagging.
The same happens when you replicate the document into multiple groups: It is tagged with the names of all enclosing groups (that are not excluded from tagging) of all its replicants. When you assign a tag using DEVONthink Personal's user interface, move a document, or replicate it to another group, this is what happens:
Every DEVONthink Personal database contains a top-level group named 'Tags'. It is used whenever you add a tag to an item e.g. through the tag bar, for which not yet a group exists. In this case DEVONthink Personal creates a group for the tag in the Tags group and places a replicant into it. When you rename a group here all items associated with it (means: that have a replicant here) will show this change. When you delete the tag from the item the associated group in the Tags group is deleted, too, when the last replicant contained in it is deleted.
To use tags for selecting documents, finding them, or browsing tags DEVONthink Personal offers the following options:
Wherever tags are shown, ordinary tags (tags created in the special Tag group) appear blue, tags that are also regular groups appear grey. Tags, e.g. in the Tag bar, also show a pop-up menu when you click their downward triangle. It shows related tags which can be added to the item, and tags represented by a group can be revealed.
DEVONthink Personal also honores aliases added to groups. You can add 'alternative names' to a group in it's Info panel and later use these alternative names as a tag.
Groups that you don't want to use as tags can be excluded from tagging. Select it and open the Info panel. Check Exclude from ... Tagging and the group will no longer be shown as a tag for items contained in it.
OpenMeta is an open standard for storing tags with files in the file system. Using OpenMeta applications can add tags to files and let other compliant applications read them. DEVONthink Personal supports OpenMeta when importing and exporting files. Files stored in the database are not tagged in OpenMeta-style but assigned tags will be added to the files as soon as you export them. |