Since the release of Sente 6.0 we have had a lot of useful feedback from users. Early on we recognized that one of the most important messages we were getting from users was that the way that Sente 6.0 filed and named attachments in the library bundle was a problem. We made a commitment to address this issue, and we have begun testing a new approach that I would like to describe here.
First, some background. In 6.0, if you asked Sente to store attachments within the library bundle (which is required if you want attachments synced) they were given a name based on an internal identifier. This was great for us because it let us sync attachments with confidence that we were not going to accidentally overwrite files on any of the machines on which a synchronized library was installed. However, it caused a number of problems for users, including:
- Sending one of these files to a colleague gave them a file with a long, incomprehensible filename
- Requiring the attachments to be held within the bundle made them less accessible to other programs, like DEVONthink
This is changing in Sente 6.1, due out in a few weeks. In this new release, you will be able to specify how attachments will be filed and named, much like in Sente 5. For example, you can have your files organized by journal, year, author and then named with the title of the paper. Or organized by year and named with the author's name + year + title.
Also, you will be able to have attachments filed outside the library bundle and still synchronized. So you can place your PDFs in ~/Documents/Sente instead of the bundle and still have them synchronized across multiple computers. Further, the location can be different on each synced computer. It can even be in the bundle on some computers and outside the bundle on others. The folder hierarchy has to be the same on all computers, but the starting location can be different on each.
There is a catch to this, however. We have to know that the file 2007/Smith/My Paper.pdf is intended to be the same on all computers because when it is updated on one computer, it will be copied to all others, and we have to be confident that we can simply replace the similarly filed/named file on each machine. For this reason, the folders in which Sente attachments are filed must not be used for any other files. That is, you cannot intermingle other PDF files with your Sente PDF files, for example. For this reason, when filing outside the bundle, Sente will always insert a folder with the library name in the path. For example, if you specify ~/Document/Sente as the root folder for filing attachments for "My Library" Sente will start the filing in ~/Documents/Sente/My Library.
There are some other limitations on the new approach. For example, the file naming patterns are hard-coded into Sente (as opposed to being bibliography formats, as in Sente 5). This is done because we have to know that the naming scheme is supported on all synchronized copies. We will add new options based on user requests, but you will not be able to create your own formats using bibliography formats.
Sente 6.1 also includes the ability to refile all existing attachments based on a new scheme. For example, you can convert from having PDFs organized by journal and year, to being organized by author and year. Sente will automatically move and rename all attachments for you. However, this cannot be done once synchronization has been turned on for a library. If you need to do this, you will need to make a new copy of the library, set up attachment filing the way you want it, and then turn sync on for the new library. You can move the entire attachment hierarchy on any copy of a synced library (e.g., you can move it from within the bundle to somewhere outside the bundle, or from Documents/Sente to Documents/PDFs); you just cannot change the organization or naming below that level once sync is turned on.
Here is a shot of the attachment configuration screen:
One other change we have introduced since 6.0 was released is that we no longer support "mixed state" for attachments. That is, if you have told Sente to file all attachments inside the bundle with a particular filing/naming scheme, all attachments in that library must be filed in that way. You cannot have any attachments in that library stored anywhere else.
We are still encouraging users to store attachments within the library bundle because it is much easier to make many common changes (e.g., just move the entire library from one location to another and everything will still work). But we are also making it easier to handle changes like the migration from one computer to another even when the attachments are filed outside the bundle.
We are currently testing these changes internally and expect to make them available to a few outside testers in the next week or two. Not long after that, we will make the official release of Sente 6.1 with these changes.
I have one request for clarification, and one request for a naming style:
Please clarify. From the screenshot, it looks like you can both rename and store the file within the bundle. Do I read that right? If so, that works for me.
Request for a naming style. Please include something like I described on my website a number of years ago. Of course, back then I was naming things manually, and I could do things like use two digit representations for the year and abbreviations for the journal name. In the last few years in Sente I've been living with spaces in my file names (and four digit years), and I can still deal with that.
Thanks,
John
Hi John,
Yes, you will be able to have attachments renamed/refiled AND stored in your bundle in 6.1.
We will have something close to what you are hoping for as a rename style, but not exact. We, of course, will welcome your feedback on the styles.
Michael
All's Well That Ends Well...
Many thanks Michael and the others
Year, Journal, First Author, Last Author, page.pdf for me, please :)
To add something useful: I never bothered about the page number in the filename until I realized that - especially in the gossip section of Nature - there were too many attachments that would otherwise bear the same filename... Of course any other identifier would be fine...
silvo
Hi all
Thanks a lot for listening to our worries. For the time being I have switched back to syncing libraries by hand and having attachments stored outside the bundle. As soon as Sente 6.1 is available I'll try the new (much improved) system.
Just a couple of things:
a) About the renaming "style", I happen to have a mix of journal articles, books and other stuff (lots of statutes, government publications, reports). I had to tweak the file renaming style so that the results were more or less consistent for different reference types. I just hope you take into account that the less usual reference types sometimes don't work well with standard renaming styles.
b) The most important thing for me is to be able to modify the attached files with an external app. That seems to work fine as long as they're stored outside the bundle. Will this be possible with the new system with internally stored attachments? And with external but synced attachments?
Thanks a lot for your work.
Best regards
Manuel Aguilar Hendrickson
Good news. Thx.
How I name attachments: All stored in a flat folder outside Sente. Naming pattern: "/family name of first prime contributor i.e. author or editor/ /year of publication/, /title of article, chapter or publication/" (/ indicating fields)
This sounds fantastic, Michael. Thanks to the Devonthink users for being at the forefront of pushing for these changes, but attachment organization and access really has so many implications that I believe all Sente users will benefit in one way or another. Two questions and a suggestion:
• Related to Manuel's question above, will external edits (e.g., in Preview or Skim) be synced properly? (Mind you, that will eventually become a non-issue as a few more features, like (top priority) ability to remove highlights, split screen view, internal text searching, etc., get rolled into Sente. At some point soon, I anticipate I'll no longer be opening my Sente attachments in an external program at all.)
• (Seems an obvious "yes," but just to be sure...) If attachments are filed in the bundle, will it be possible to place a an alias to the bundle's Attachments folder on desktop or in dock for independent (of Sente) access to that folder?
• Suggest a folder hierarchy option for first letter of first author's last name (i.e, 26 folders "A" though "Z"). I have so far (or more accurately, in Sente 5 era with external attachments) tended to store PDFs in a flat folder, named by first author's last name & year, and then keep the folder sorted on the filename column. (When hunting for a PDF at the OS level, I don't always remember article title or the journal in which an article was published, but almost always remember that I'm looking for a particular paper by, say, Cinkosky et al., so that works for me.) I suppose at some point I'll have too many PDFs for a flat folder and will want to create sub-folders (copying and re-syncing the library as necessary). Given my preference for finding papers by first author, it may seem obvious that I'd then want to organize by subfolders for first author last name, but I'd then end up with innumerable folders for authors with just a single paper in my library. A set of 26 folders alphabetizing by the first letter (Cincosky et al. under "C") would make a lot more sense.
Thanks for the hard work,
Mark
Great news, Michael.
My preferred format is first author surname_their initials_year_incrementing letter for multiple items per year.file extension
eg foucault_m_1975_a.pdf, foucault_m_1975_b.pdf and foucault_m_1975_c.pdf
In Sente 5 the closest I was able to get to this was:
Foucault M 1975.pdf, Foucault M 1975 2.pdf and Foucault M 1975 3.pdf
I prefer to not have spaces in filenames for ease of moving around different file systems. The incrementing numbers in the second listing were automatically inserted.
What might help if I wanted to reference the file easily, might be adding the filename to the identifiers listing so that it can be checked easily within Sente ie without having to navigate to it using the Finder.
Thanks.
Duncan
I like Mark's and DuncanB's ideas. For me, organizing by year seems a little bit too arbitrary and lacking in meaning, while organizing by author results in far too many folders with one document. Alphabetized folders aren't intrinsically meaningful, but they give a manageable number of folders with a reasonable number of documents in each, and as Marks says it's generally fairly easy to remember the first author of a work. Although the naming scheme Duncan suggests looks ideal, the one he cites from Sente 5 looks acceptably close to me.