Well, Apple has now made the iPad official. We think it looks like a wonderful device and one that will be very useful in the academic world. Now many people want to know what our plans are for supporting the iPad.
The bottom line is that we are excited about the new platform and we will release a version of Sente for the iPad as soon as we can.
We are not yet prepared to commit to any particular functionality, but we think some of the key characteristics of iPad Sente are rather obvious, so there is little advantage to keeping them secret. Here are some of the key features that we expect the application to include:
Mobile libraries synchronized with desktop Sente. Frankly, many of the design decisions that went into synchronized libraries in Sente 6.0 were made with the rumored tablet in mind and we think Sente's synchronization mechanism is well-suited to the task. One library, multiple devices. New references and edits show up everywhere almost immediately. And "download on demand" for attachments means that you can have as many or as few PDFs on your iPad as you want, and quickly obtain any others as needed with a single click.
On-the-go PDF reading, markup, tagging and note-taking. The iPad is clearly much better suited to reading PDFs than the iPhone. To make this most useful, it is essential that users be able to do markup, note taking and tagging as they read. And, of course, all markup, notes and tags will be quickly and automatically synchronized.
We would not normally make such public statements this early in the development cycle -- one never knows exactly what kinds of unexpected hurdles will be found as we work on the software -- but in this case we think our users should know where we are headed. We have been hoping for and planning for the iPad for some time, and we are very excited to be able to begin serious development.
Anticipating the next question... we do not yet know when this application will be released. When we know more, we will tell everyone, but right now we simply do not have a schedule.
Now we want to hear from you. Would you like to see Sente on the iPad? How would you use it? What do you think the must-have features are?
Michael
Michael,
This is great news. I have been struggling with applications - especially as the number of references approaches 2000. I'm a PhD student, so for me there are five major areas that are important with regard to references (1) collecting and capturing metadata, (2) easily searching metadata, (3) smooth connection to citing in Pages or Word, (4) syncronizing, (5) highlighting and note-taking.
(1) collecting and capturing meta data.
I use the functionality in Sente to download metadata. Unfortunately (and no fault of Sente), is that this data needs to be cleansed all the time. Sometimes abstracts are not loaded, sometimes the page ranges are not input consistently, sometimes author or journal names are not consistent. Papers has the ability to review references by author or journal. Within this option, there is the ability to "merge" like authors or journals, that may have been downloaded slightly different but are the same. This is functionality that is useful, especially as the number of references increases, or one wants to look at what an author or journal has published. They also automatically search Google Scholar for recent articles either by that author or journal. I'd like to see this type of functionality in Sente, along with the ability to clean up keywords that may be similar, using the same "merge" option.
(2) easily searching metadata.
Sente 6.0 and above, with the "tag" functionality has made searching even better. I would like to see this on an iPad version as well.
(3) smooth connection to citing in Pages or Word.
I'm learning about the "scanning" option within Sente, which seems to work. EndNote has taken this a step further (somehow they must have worked with Apple), with a built-in option for citing in Pages. Any simple way to cite and connect to Sente would be great.
(4) syncronizing.
Clearly Sente is working this. As the reference database grows with attachments, like you noted, there may be a need to identify which PDF files one would want to sync with the iPad, otherwise, it may take a while to syncronize. I know my first attempt at syncing my library didn't go so well and took a long time. I haven't tried it since.
(5) highlighting and note-taking.
As I read articles, I want to be able to highlight and take notes (as can be done now in Sente 6). If I'm writing a paper, I would want to be able to use either those notes or highlights within the document. It would be great if I could select from my notes/highlights to put into the text of the document I am working on. I also want to be able to syncronize the highlights and notes between the iPad and desktop.
As you start developing, should you need anyone to test, please let me know.
Regards,
Neil
It's quite brave of Sente to come out with this kind of announcement. And the announcement points in the direction of the kind of functionality that users would like to see from a reference management and pdf library/organizer/annotation manager. Congratulations! I'm currently a PC user, but this aspect of my day to day work is important enough to me that if Sente comes through fully with a good workflow for all of these functions, I'll make the switch to Mac.
If the combination of Sente and the iPad (or other tablet/ereader devices) really does change the way that people read and organize their documents, it would be helpful in the future for Sente to include some sort of interface for advanced searching and analysis within one document and/or across all documents in a library. For instance, find all instances of text tagged with a specific term; or, find all instances of a given word within tagged text, or within text tagged with a specific term; find all instances of text tagged with two terms but not with a third, etc. Tags, in this sense, must apply to specific portions of text, and/or to actual annotations themselves, and not just to whole documents.
This is important especially as people begin to read large documents (reports,books) in pdf form. It is not enough to simply tag Moby Dick, for instance, with the tag 'whale'. Rather, you'd want to be able to tag sections of text with 'whale', and you'd want specific sub categories of your whale tag, eg: whale>symbology, whale>history, whale>hunting etc. This implies the need for a hierarchical tag structure, something that is part of Sente's workflow (as part of the quicktag palette).
I'm so glad Sente is headed in a very promising direction, and getting out in front of the pack with an announcement about iPad integration. That's excellent!
Jon
Michael -
This would be fantastic! I'm going to be in the wait-and-see mode in regards to the iPad, but expect that it'll really take off especially when the developers start to get creative with apps. Sente on the iPad could well be the tipping point for me to make the purchase.
For my use, the main thing that I'd need would be access to my full library of pdfs, and the ability to easily highlight, annotate and take notes. The multitouch of the iPad should open up some great options for annotations. It would also be ideal if there could be a way to access my university library's journal subscriptions to download pdfs and import them directly into Sente. Likewise, the ability to save emailed attachments into Sente would be very useful. Neither of these would be a deal breaker for me however. One of the primary appeals of the iPad is to be able to comfortably read and annotate pdfs on the couch, in cramped airplanes, coffee shops, faculty meetings, etc. where a laptop or iphone is really not the ideal tool. It would be fine with me to defer some of the higher levels of Sente's functionality to the OS X version, to gain the portability of the iPad version.
Really looking forward to what you come up with!
Thanks!
Tim
I agree with JohnEP2 that you're quite brave for putting forward this idea so quickly. At the same time, it's nice to see that you're looking a potential new avenues for Sente (and I, for one, am looking at the iPad for the purposes of PDF viewing/markup/notes).
The list you have in your blog post makes for a good first generation version, and is all-inclusive in the things I'd like to see. Of course, I have a feeling that some of the note-taking / markup capabilities might be dependent on what's available in the core OS (since I'm not sure if the iPhone OS has all the core PDF annotation capabilities as Mac OSX). I know some developers have done a workaround with their own annotation system for those wanting to do markup on the iPhone (I've been using "Aji Annotate" do so just this).
For a second - or later - generation of Sente for iPad, I'd consider the possibility of document scans on the device, at least for those created in the mobile version of iWork Pages. That is all going to be dependent, however, on just how much Apple opens up access to documents to other applications on the iPad device (it would not surprise me if they went read-only. After all, this is still the company that won't third-party apps access the calendar database on the iPhone or iPod touch).
All the same, if you do create Sente for iPad, I'll be first in line to pick up a copy. Good luck on this project!
- Jim
I'm very excited about this and had a feeling this was the direction given the cloud syncing.
My own thinking is that note-taking and reading would be the focus on the iSlate (the name they should have used, have you seen this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L68aKVAzwQ4)
I don't think searching for new references and changing metadata would be as much of a priority, so the highlighting, note-taking, and reading experience would have to be great— which I think you recognize already.
Given the portability of the iPad, being able to send people a PDF on the go would be a good thing too— this applies equally to the desktop app as more than a few of your users have suggested.
My big question is the iPhone. Will Sente bypass this completely? I hope it isn't as it is a huge market and still a valuable tool. True, doing notes and highlighting on it are probably not tops on people's lists– but looking through and searching my database and reading pdf's would be great. I'd still love to see a thin client of sente for the iPhone. Papers built a beautiful iPhone app and I think Sente could do the same
I've already put some comments in the thread on the forums.... just adding my "me too" to Danny's suggestion about a Sente client for the iPhone/iPod...
It wouldn't be the primary tool for avid users, but it could be quite helpful for casual meddling with the database....
please... :)
silvo
Fantastic — a very smart move!
Well, that was my immediate impression, followed by "Oh-oh, this might take focus away from desktop features I've been pining for in Sente," and, finally, by the realization that the features needed to make Sente make sense on the iPad, as you've outlined in this blog, are the very ones I've been pining for. PDF reading and markup enhancements and next-generation note-taking all top my list and the iPad will be the best imaginable home for them.
I know that various specific features are already on your list, but this seems a good excuse to reiterate my favs: ability to selectively remove highlighting, split-screen view (for keeping key figures or references in view), within-PDF text search, easier navigation within PDFs (forward, back, by page number, etc.), and user-orderable notes.
Tagging, obviously, is a critical part of the experience, too, since — given any moderately complex QuickTag schema — a lot of tagging gets done while reading articles.
I'd say that synchronized Smart Collections would have to appear on the iPad, for the same reason that they're essential for locating references in the desktop version.
Funny, I'm not usually an "early adopter" of new devices, but I've got to say that an iPad version of Sente, one that approximates the functionality you've envisioned here, would absolutely result in a first-gen iPad purchase for me. I strongly suspect — all the pundits' dire predictions notwithstanding about this "underwhelming," "oversized iPod touch" — that the iPad will be a huge hit, and that many of those purchases will be made by people for whom a particular "killer app" made it a no-brainer. Sente for iPad, yes!
Mark
BTW, I note that Omni group has also made public statements on their blog about their intentions to create iPad versions of all of their apps. Great to see smaller developers as a prominent part of the first wave! It'll be exciting to see what else comes along over the coming weeks and months.
I don't imagine it's going to be a trivial task to write Sente for the iPad, unless you already have a working version for the iPhone. Rather than asking for a comprehensive list of features, I agree with other commenters that browsing the collection and reading and annotating PDFs are the only things it really has to be able to do (in addition of course to syncing with the Mac version). I'd much rather have an app that does those things well without crashing, and that's released fairly soon after the release of the iPad, than one released much later with more features. I think most of us agree that just having an app like Sente on the iPad at all is a pretty awesome proposition.
This is a great idea, and I'd love to see something like this. Like Rick, I'd like to be able to search and browse my collection as well as annotate PDFs on the go. The other functionality, like adding and editing references, seems secondary to me on this platform, but would still be nice.
Is there an ETA?
Now that the iPad is actually available I am starting to think about how I can best use the tool to support my academic reading... Sente for iPad sounds great but if it is going to be months before it is available I may have to rethink my strategy!
Is there an ETA on when you expect to get the first version out the door (to the nearest Quarter?)?
The iPad is out. I am currently using the app called Papers on it and it is amazing. It also has a Mac version and you can sync your papers and collections between both wirelessly. I would like to try Sente on the iPad, when will that be available? I think it is a very important platform for a software like Sente.
Whether or not Sente will be available on the iPad actually has a lot to do with my decision to purchase one or not. Any word on whether or when this might be happening?
You are reading the thread that answered the "whether" question a couple of months ago. Yes, we will be releasing an iPad version of Sente. "When" is not yet clear but I can say that we are working as quickly as we can on this. We continue to be very excited about the iPad as a platform for the portions of Sente that I outlined in my original post. Are we thinking we might release this month? No. Are we thinking it will take us until the Fall? No. Somewhere in between. That is the best I can do right now.
Michael
Just to chime in as a Sente user with an iPad on the way. I think the way to think about the iPad is as a media consumption device more than a media production device. I think the comments above reflect that. People want to be able to read, annotate PDFs and perhaps look through the DB. Thus, close (or indeed any?) integration with iPad Pages seems like a very low priority. Syncing online is key. But also annotations. Note there is only one PDF viewer for the iPhone/iPad that allows annotations. My guess is that will change, but at least it highlights there is an untapped market. This thing (and i've played with my wife's a bit) is being marketed as a Kindle on steroids with netbook features to boot. But at core, the reading functionality (book, web, comics, whatever) is key, and PDFs are what the tweed/elbow patch set read more than eBooks. Anyhow, not to ramble, but just to suggest this may really open up other users to your product: "a PDF annotator that helps sort out the PDFs in a nice DB. Ohh, and look, once you start using it on your iPad it might get you out of Refworks or Endnote..." Gateway drug...
Sorry, one more thought: While importing to the DB on the iPad would be nice, I would put that lower on the list. Computer for intense gathering of data/articles, iPad for reading them. This puts the complex integration with WebKit for hooks, etc., at a lower priority. Not that I wouldn't include them in the 2.0 release. But basic access to the DB and annotation in the 1.0 release seems more important to this (biased) user.
I have an i-Pad and I'm eagerly waiting for the sente app.
Since I plan to write a lot of papers and presentations I'd love to be able to have sente in its full capacities, especially I'd like to be able to insert notes and bibliography and then scan the document, as I do with my mac.
Thanks!
Yes! I want/need an iPad version of Sente.
I see myself using it in collaboration with my laptop version. Not as a replacement. More for reading, marking up, annotating texts than for organizing them.
Though I finished up my big project this past year, I'm sure I'll have more uses for it in the future.
I think Jon is right on. I've been using Yojimbo 2 for about 6 months now and the way they do tags is by far the best approach I've seen. the combination of this way of searching hierarchies and using smart folders is fabulous. I would love a program that when I read an article or book I can highlight the text and tag it. When I am ready to do a tag search it compiles ALL of my tagged sentences into a nice report that also provides book or publication, author, year so I can make the right references in my papers. What I want to to extract the themes that are emerging from the research at the "tagged" level NOT the document level. The iPad offers a fabulous place to do these searches and reviews to write from.
When will Sente be out for the iPad?
I am excited about Sente on the iPad and I am waiting an iPad version before I buy the desktop version. I am currently using Yojimbo and its ability to tag is crucial. I love Sente (using it as a demo now) and adding tagging to both the iPad and desktop version of Sente would be a major upgrade. It is important to me to be able to search for tagged bits of text and to be able to view all searched-for tagged snippets of text at the same time. I would recommend taking tagging one level beyond this by adding the ability to make tag clusters. To my way of thinking, a tag cluster would work like this: display your list of tags on a window that would allow the tags to be dragged around in any sort of relationship to one another; then enable the user to draw a line between any set of two or more tags to create a linked relationship between the tags. Then, allow the user to display another window with all of the linked snippets displayed relationally just as the original tags were arranged. This would be a powerful writing and organizing tool!
Hotwords is a nice feature, too. Don't take that away if you implement these suggested tagging features.
Those are my suggestions to make Sente be an improved academic writing tool. It is already very useful, but could be better.
Now, when will the iPad version be out? :-)
Just to be clear, when I mentioned tagging I am not referring to the current ability to give a tag to an entire reference, such as a PDF of a journal article being tagged as a whole. I would like to be able to highlight a section of text of an article, or an area of a reference, and give that text snippet or area a tag of its own. This way I could have multiple tags related to many areas of any one reference.
Then if I could graphically link tags within an article and between articles of the same library and then be able to display the text or tagged areas of the reference with the same relationship as the link diagram, it would be a very, very powerful tool. It would be like the old note card system, displayed relationally, across many references.
Thanks for listening.
For me and for most of the people there is one must have feature of the music player. I love listening songs and with ipad accessory Bluetooth device I easily enjoys good quality noise canceled music.
However the best part of iPad tablet besides all its popular features is the compatibility of iPad to connect with an external keyboard to make it use like a mac book, as there are people who have problems with touch screen keyboards. For PDF reading, markup, tagging and note-taking, iPad is clearly much better suited to reading PDFs than the iPhone.