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This has resulted in most Mac users accumulating a lot of PDF files, and while more and more programs are acquiring the ability to open and read PDFs, organizing and searching all those PDF documents is another matter. Perhaps you've wished there was something like an iPhoto or iTunes application for cataloguing and organizing PDFs. Well wish no more, because there is - a demoware utility called Yep.
To install Yep, just drag the Yep application icon from the mounted disk image into your Applications folder. Yep locates all the PDFs on your computer, and displays them in a simple, intuitive, iPhoto-like interface. You can tag, sort, move, rename and more to all your PDFs, but it doesn't stop there. Yep can also help organize data files you have in hard copy, since it includes integrated support for many scanners with which you can import your paper stuff and archive it in PDF documents on your hard drive that can be accessed using any application that reads PDF files and edited with many.
Instead of creating a multi-nested hierarchy of folders in which to store your PDF documents, Yep's simple, powerful tag feature allows you to tag and retrieve documents easily. To augment tagging, there is a collection organizer similar to the ones in iTunes and iPhoto that facilitates the creation of ‘smart collections’ in which you can organize hundreds or even thousands of, say, academic papers on your computer.
With Yep version 1.6 comes a way to see your documents in a hierarchical ‘Finder-like’ view with an enhancement the Finder doesn't have; if you click on a folder in the Tracking Locations panel, you will see all PDFs in that folder and below.
You can create PDF documents with Yep, store them wherever you want to, or just leave them where they light on the save. Any document in Yep can be tagged, commented on, emailed, printed, viewed and shared. Yep taps into OS X's Spotlight search engine, which makes creation of its own index faster.
Microsoft Word documents and all other proprietary document formats can be saved as PDFs, which Yep will then keep track of. However, happily, Yep doesn't store your PDFs in a proprietary database of its own that obliges you to continue using Yep to get at your stuff. Documents are stored on your hard drive wherever you want them located with filenames that you choose. Yep leaves all the existing PDFs on your hard drive in their original locations as standard PDFs that can be read by Preview, Adobe Reader, or what-have-you.
Yep is not hard to use. In fact, as you use Yep, the entire process becomes more automated - as tags that you actually use are automatically assigned to relevant documents.
Yep’s main interface window has three panels:
In the Central Panel Yep displays all your PDF documents as thumbnails, or optionally in list view. List view lets you sort your documents by criteria such as as title, creation date, and so forth.
The Left Panel lists Tags, Collections and Tracking Locations - the three modes you can employ to organize and select documents. Clicking on a tag in the tag panel selects all documents with that tag. Clicking on a saved search in the collections panel will show all documents that match your saved search. The Tracking Location panel allows you to browse your PDFs in a fashion similar to the Finder, without other types documents cluttering the process.
The right panel is called the Details Panel. With no documents selected this panel displays facts, like the total number of PDFs Yep is tracking. With one or more documents selected, you can edit various properties like creation date, author, tags and notes.
When you click on a document in the central panel, whether in list view or not, it will be selected. You can select multiple documents simultaneously, allowing you to add tags or notes, delete, move and more to many documents at one time. Yep also allows you to select and copy text in PDF documents as text and paste it into a word processor or text editor.
Tags (also known as keywords), are the central organizing feature of Yep, and can be added to any document. Simply click on the document and add tags on the right. You can select one or any number of documents at a time and edit all their properties at once. You can also have Yep look through all the selected documents and add tags to them automatically using the ‘Auto-tag’ button in the details panel.
To add Tags, select a document (by clicking on it once in the Normal View), then in the Details panel, simply click in the Tags box, and start typing new tags. Right-clicking on a tag brings up a menu of editing options. As you click in the Tags box a window appears to the left of it, offering up suggestions for new tags. Click on any tag in this window to add one to your document. Any tags you add are automatically added to the Spotlight comments for the PDF file Yep is looking after. This will allow you to easily find all your Yep documents when using Spotlight searches from the Finder.
When you click on a tag, Yep shows you all documents that are assigned that tag. There is also an option for dynamically creating tags from the folders where your PDFs are located. You can set “Show Path Elements as Tags” from the button below the tags panel. When you do a search with Yep, and press the ‘Save Search’ button, your search is saved as a collection in the collections tab.
Since PDF file icons (especially documents containing text) tend to all look pretty much alike, Yep provides a tool called "The Loupe" (or magnifying glass) that allows you to preview a document's contents without opening it.
Double clicking on a PDF allows you to read the PDF page by page in Yep or in your favorite PDF reader application. New in version 1.6 is the full screen PDF viewer. If you select a document you can read it full screen by using the Documents Menu ‘Open Fullscreen’. Exit the fullscreen viewer with the escape key, and the keys ‘1’ and ‘2’ switch you between single page and two page viewing.
Yep’s main window PDF viewer also has a search engine. Select Find under the Search menu.
The back/front and home buttons at the top left behave similarly to a web browser. The Home button shows you all your documents.
You can scan single or multipage documents directly into Yep. When scanning multiple pages, Yep makes PDF documents using a compressed format that strikes a balance between a good quality representation and a reasonably small PDF file size. You can scan documents into Yep using the scanning software that came with your scanner, a scanner that supports TWAIN, or a scanner that supports ImageCapture.
To scan a document in, press the ‘+’ button in the lower part of the window. If you see the message “No scanners detected” it means that your scanner software probably does not sup- port ImageCapture. If this is the case, you can try to set the preferences for your scanner using the "scanning" pane in Yep’s Preferences dialog.
I found that the ImageCapture option worked just fine with my Epson Perfection 4870 Photo flatbed scanner. If you need or want to use some other 3rd party scanning software, such as the software that came with your scanner, there are ways. Check the Yep documentation. Yep also supports the Fujitsu ScanSnap.
For each page you can crop, rotate and constrain in order to get an image of the page that you want to look at. Yep also has a black and white scan mode that makes scans of text documents such as legal documents or fax documents store in black and white, saving disk space. You can set the compression level when scanning color documents. If your document has multiple pages, don’t press the ‘Done’ button until you have scanned in all the pages that belong in the same document.
Yep allows you to combine multiple images into one PDF document. There are two ways to create a PDF in Yep from an image such as a png, jpeg, or tiff image. The quick way is to simply select the images that you want in your PDF in the Finder, then drag them into Yep, or onto Yep’s icon. Yep will make a single PDF out of these images.
The other way to make a PDF from images in Yep is through the scanner ‘+’ button at the bottom of the main window. Press it, then use the settings window to select TWAIN scanning. Now you can drag images one at a time into Yep, rotating and cropping as necessary. Using this method you can make a single PDF document that holds several image
Before you save, you can add information such as tags, comments, author, url, etc to the document. The more information you add at this stage, the easier the document will be to retrieve in the future. When all is configured satisfactorily, press the ‘Done’ button.
Yet another way to import files to Yep is through ‘printing’ them using the PDF menu, which is handy if you're in a application such as Microsoft Word, and want to archive a document. Yep doesn't even have to be running for this step, since the document will simply be saved to Yep’s Pending Documents folder.
If you want to capture web pages from Safari into PDFs in Yep, so that you can archive them for future reference, Yep 1.6 has added a new one click method for doing this called "YepShot."
Once YepShot is configured, when you are in Safari, and on a Web page you want to to archive or perhaps read as a full screen PDF, click on the YepShot bookmark in the browser, Yep will launch, and use the URL of the page you are at to build a PDF document.
The demo version of Yep is fully functional and will allow you to track tag and manage all the PDFs on your computer. The demo version will expire after a few weeks, at which point you will have to register in order to continue using it.
Yep is a very cool application for managing PDF files. Its disadvantages are that it does not support PDF document editing, and that it only deals with PDF files, unlike say, DEVONthink, DEVONnote, or Yojimbo, which support many file types as well as PDF document editing. Of course, with Yep, PDF-only is part of the point. You can import, create, sort, search, and organize your PDFs without a bunch of other file types cluttering up the process. Its integration with the Finder and lack of a pesky proprietary database are pluses as well. Yep is a pretty powerful, mission-focused utility that does a lot for its reasonable price.
New in version 1.6.1:
• French translation added
• Control-clicking on page in PDF viewer now gives options to rotate or delete the clicked page
• Creation date field no longer includes time be default (time can be turned on from preferences)
• TWAIN settings no longer remain disabled when TWAIN is selected
• Yep can now follow a document when it gets moved to another hard disk
• Fixed bug that caused Yep to slow down when more than 500 documents are selected
• Added menu item to Documents menu to optionally write keywords and author directly into PDF files
• iDisk support improved
New in version 1.6
• Collections can now be put into folders and sub-folders
• Loupe now available in list view (also, new loupe option to show entire document)
• Ability to join PDFs (drag one PDF on top of another)
• Fullscreen PDF viewer
• YepShot bookmarklet for creating PDFs of webpages
• New support for Fujitsu ScanSnap
• Files can now be dragged into tracking folder list from Finder
• Cache files now thrown out after period of inactivity
• Tags column available in list view
• All tags window no longer floats
• Tags of hovered over document now highlight in tag cloud
• Finder info now an option from contextual menu
• Typing with thumbnail view focused will now select documents
• Some serious bugs that caused some meta data to be lost in certain situations now resolved
• iDisk now works
• Many other bugs and small features
System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
System support:
PPC/Intel
Important note for Yep 1.1.2 users: Yep have have begun charging $34 for the newer Yep 1.2. After purchasing Yep 1.2, all upgrades up-to, but not including, Yep 2.0 will be free
$34.00 Demoware
For more information, visit:
http://www.yepthat.com/
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Charles W. Moore
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