10937 DEVONtechnologies' DEVONthink applications are superb information management tools. DEVONtechnologies insists that DEVONthink is not a "database," and of course it's much more than a database program, although it serves as one quite well, and I use it for that purpose, but the real genius of DEVONthink, and why I wouldn't want to have it missing from my production tools suite, is that it does so many other useful things extremely well.

Two of these capabilities that I find especially useful are that DEVONthink can open both MIcrosoft Word documents and PDF documents with formatting intact and as editable text.

I don't use Word, but Word files are almost unavoidable, especially if you interact much with the Windows world. There are a number of Mac word processors that can open Word .doc files, but DEVONthink, which I keep open all the time anyway, is a very handy and convenient .doc file "can opener," and can also save documents in Word (although not with full Word formatting support), and well as RTF, RTFD, and OmniOutliner file formats, and additionally to your iPod or as an html formatted Website document.

I love PDF, the cross-platform lingua franca for formatted files, but PDFs can be cumbersome since many don't open in OS X's Preview PDF utility as selectable, editable text but rather as graphics. There is always the lumbering behemoth of Adobe's free Adobe Reader application, but it takes forever to start up and is a ponderous (although gratifyingly capable) resources hog when running.

DEVONthink, on the other hand, opens PDFs by default as editable text, and can export them in any of the file formats noted above. Way cool.

Then there is built-in OCR, which is supported by the top-of-the-line Professional Office variant of DEVONthink, and which is also extremely handy if you have occasion to convert text from a graphic file or hard copy scan into editable, searchable computer text.

DEVONthink Professional supports standard flatbed scanners and the Fujitsu ScanSnap, and allows you to either scan documents directly from within the application or by importing already scanned files. The embedded ReadIRIS optical character recognition (OCR) technology makes the PDFs it creates searchable while maintaining their layout, and places an invisible but machine-readable text layer behind the scanned image.

The built-in capture function supports all flatbed scanners compatible with Image Capture (the scan framework of Mac OS X, incarnated as the Image Capture application). Scanners (except for the Fujitsu ScanSnap) with automatic document feeder are not supported due to shortcomings in the current implementation of Image Capture.

You can also import already scanned files into DEVONthink Professional Office and run OCR on them. The document is saved as a searchable PDF in the database.

For my purposes, these file conversion and data capture features combines with its database and powerful organization and search capabilities are plenty enough reason to keep DEVONthink around, although they are only a fraction of what DEVONthink can do. The program also incorporates a RTF word processor/editor, which is servicable, although not exactly feature-rich, and I miss the customized AppleScript support in my favorite word-cruncher, Tex Edit Plus, so I tend to only use DEVONthink's word processor for rudimentary editing.

DEVONthink also incorporates a Web browser based on Apple's Safari Webkit. This has the potential of being very cool and convenient, but at this point the implementation is not terribly user-friendly, with no conventional address field, navigation controls or Bookmark support. Needs work.

There is also email archiving and Web sharing built into DEVONthink Professional Office if those features appeal.

DEVONthink, especially the Professional Office version, is not cheap, but you'll look long and hard to find another application that will do nearly as much for you for the money (and if you want a taste of the same basic technology at a really friendly price, check out DVONthink's "lite" counterpart, DEVONnote, for $19.95).

DEVONthink Professional Office requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later.

DEVONthink Professional Office sells for $149.95. Users of DEVONthink Personal or DEVONthink Professional are able to upgrade for the price difference of $60 or $100 respectively.

For more information, visit:
http://www.devon-technologies.com

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Charles W. Moore

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