Become familiar with these terms to get the most out of working with DEVONthink Personal.
Interface elements
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Contextual Menu: The menu that appears when you right-click (or Control-click) something; the contextual menu gives you access to frequently used commands that deal directly with the clicked object. Read more about the available contextual menus in the Documents and Windows chapters.
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Item list: A list of items stored in the database. Items can be documents, groups, or smart groups.
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View/Edit Pane: A part of the DEVONthink Personal main and document windows that lets you view a document or, if possible, edit it. The view/edit pane displays the content of your documents depending on their type. [Read more...]
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View (1): The layout for a DEVONthink Personal main window. You can change the layout using the commands found in the View menu.
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View (2): The display for the various document types inside the the view/edit pane or a document window. [Read more...]
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Window: DEVONthink Personal uses three different types of windows: main, document, and other windows. Main windows show lists of items and, in some views, also the contents of the selected document, whereas document windows show documents separately.
Documents & groups
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Database: A collection of all documents stored in DEVONthink Personal. DEVONthink Personal only manages one central database.
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Document: A file in the database; for example, a plain or RTF text, a PDF, or an image. Technically a document is an entry in a database with text, RTF, or image content. Sometimes referred to as 'content'.
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Default Destination: The default destination group for incoming data. In DEVONthink Personal this is the special Inbox group.
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Group: A collection of documents or other groups inside the database. Similar to a folder in the file system. [Read more...]
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Inbox: A special group for data coming in to a database.
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News Feed: A news feed is like a web page but splitted into multiple newsbits. A feed reader or web browser can split the feed 'page' into its parts and show each of them as a separate news and/or store it in a local database. DEVONthink Personal can store feeds in a database and displays them like a group which contents are updated live from the Internet as the connected feed changes. Older news bits are kept, new bits are added and marked as unread. When you add a bookmark that points to a feed to a database, DEVONthink Personal tries to add it as a proper feed document if possible. DEVONthink Personal can also be defined as the system's RSS reader in Safari's Preferences.
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Replicant: A document or a group that appears in more than one place in the database. Unlike an alias in the file system, a replicant is not a real document pointing to another file (usually the original), but only a second entry in the table of contents for the very same document. Consequently, there is no original; when you replicate a document you'll end up with two replicants. [Read more...]
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Smart group: Not a real group but a 'saved search' that appears like a group. Every time you visit this smart group, DEVONthink Personal runs the attached search and displays it as the content of the group. Create smart groups using the search window or the smart group editor. DEVONthink Personal creates a number of pre-defined smart groups when you create a new database.
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Trash: Stores all trashed items until you finally physically delete them using Application > Empty Trash.
Tags
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Tag: A tag is a different visual representation of a group. All documents contained in a group which has not been excluded from tagging, have the group's name 'attached' as a tag. Tags represented by a regular group appear grey in all list of tags.
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Ordinary tag: Tags created e.g. through the Tag bar or other means are created in a special top-level group named 'Tags'. They are called 'ordinary tags' and in all list of tags they appear blue.
Item properties
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Flagged/Unflagged: Items can be checked or unchecked for your personal use, e.g. for creating a to-do list, for maintaining a shopping list, or for writing a list of project tasks.
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Locked/Unlocked: Items can be locked to keep them from being unintentionally modified.
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Read/Unread: Items can be marked read or unread which is useful for captured or automatically downloaded news items or documents that you want to read later. Unread items and groups containing unread items are shown in bold.
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