I can sympathize with the DT developers.  They're being asked to  
support something that is a) subject to change without notice (Skim's  
note format) b) does not have support of a company to ensure future  
development and c) would require fair amount of code, at least for  
full note display.

Just displaying the notes or adding them to a search index is pretty  
easy, but there are some subtleties with extended attributes.  For  
instance, you'd have to keep a checksum of the EA data itself if you  
use a persistent search index, which I assume is what DT does.   
BibDesk sidesteps this by rebuilding the index whenever a database is  
opened, and observing Skim's save notifications for updates.

-- 
adam

On Mar 28, 2008, at 8:15 AM, Michael Singer wrote:
> Michael,
>
> Yeah -- the search engine is hit and miss. Glad Eric seems to have  
> fixed it.
>
> Thanks for posting the summary. It's clear there's a lot of folks  
> struggling with improving the integration.
>
> And I totally agree with your last post on the DT forum.
>
> Michael Singer
>
>
>> Michael,
>>
>> I'm not surprised you failed to find the threads on the DEVONthink  
>> forums concerning Skim as the site's internal search engine is  
>> decidedly hit and miss. There has been quite a head of steam  
>> building up on those forums from Skim users - almost obviously  
>> because those of us who read a lot of pdfs will be drawn to Skim -  
>> and to DEVONthink as the database. From your post over there  
>> Michael (excellent btw) I expect you've now seen the discussion,  
>> summed up by someone on those forums six months ago writing:
>>
>> "[DEVONthink] heralding itself as the premier content and document  
>> data manager MUST be able to access text entered in PDF files, both  
>> through Preview and Skim. This is a basic reqirement in this age.  
>> (And I believe EagleFiler can handle this task.) This is one more  
>> example of limited handling of metada"
>>
>> To save everyone a lot of reading, the consistent DT response over  
>> the last six months has been threefold. First, decidedly sniffy,  
>> unfairly disregarding Skim as a proprietary format. Second, to  
>> leave one assuming 'the developers' are aware and working on a  
>> solution (probably their own alternative), though as someone in  
>> their forums stated, it's been a long, long wait [don't we just  
>> appreciate Christiaan's responsiveness?] and third, the project  
>> lead Eric Boehnisch has just linked to a suggested workflow, an  
>> approach that requires a disciplined, systematic, organised... well  
>> lets just say the no fuss, drag and drop approach to handling Skim  
>> pdfs _and_ their notes of BibDesk or Eaglefinder stand as  
>> commendable examples of what is needed, and needed now.
>>
>> There's clearly a lot of folk like me with a large DT database of  
>> pdf's but not sure how best to integrate with Skim.
>>
>> http://www.devon-technologies.com/scripts/userforum/search.php?keywords=skim&search_terms=all&search_forum=-1&search_time=0&search_fields=all&search_cat=-1&sort_by=0&sort_dir=DESC&show_results=topics&return_chars=200
>>
>> Michael
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