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Press release edited by Applelinks senior editor Kirk Hiner

DEVONtechnologies Ltd. has updated its freeform database and information manager DEVONthink Personal Edition to version 1.9 and has released DEVONnote 1.6.

Following DEVONnote 1.5 (released beginning of November), DEVONthink 1.9 is the second and largest update to DEVONtechnologies' range of applications. Version 1.9 comes with a completely overhauled user interface and more than 200 new functions, commands, file formats and other improvements.

The most notably new features are: automatic linking of words to other documents with the same name (automatic Wiki-style links), user-definable labels, an improved "Go" menu for easier navigation, an "Action" button for people with a one-button mouse, a completely rewritten search function and a command for synchronizing the database with files on disk. Importing and exporting is now handled by a flexible plug-in architecture, the accompanying AppleScript scripts have been improved and new scripts have been added, DEVONthink now supports all major QuickTime features such as zoom or automatic playback, and PostScript files are automatically converted on-the-fly to PDF. For PDF documents, the integrated PDF-to-Text engine has been updated to version 3.0, and DEVONthink 1.9 better supports texts in Asian languages.

The user interface has been completely revamped and cleaned up, many commands are found now in more logical places, and unnecessary options have been removed or replaced by others. A new log panel keeps the user informed about files that could not be imported or any other incident. Additionally, to keep the most important functions always at hand, many new commands have been added to the contextual menu and can also be accessed via an "Action" button. This, together with many more minor interface changes, enhances the user experience and makes DEVONthink a lot easier to use than previous versions.

DEVONthink Personal Edition already works with the database core of the forthcoming Professional Edition, which is significantly faster than in previous versions. DEVONthink Personal Edition 1.9 indexes text documents 6.5 times faster than Mac OS X 10.3 and 2.2 faster than the latest build of Mac OS X 10.4 ("Tiger"), XML files even up to 2.7 times faster than "Tiger."

The text editing capabilities have been significantly extended, including a new sub-menu for inserting bullets, page breaks and the current date and time, as well as for embedding a picture into rich texts, an option for displaying invisible characters such as spaces, tabs, line and page breaks and enhanced character, word and paragraph statistics.

The new preference panel allows users to configure DEVONthink not only much more easily, but also to modify DEVONthink's behaviour to a much wider extend. Finally, the integrated Safari-based web browser is easier to navigate and supports Java, JavaScript and plug-ins. Last but not least, the new backup function maintains one or more automatic backups of the database and restores them with just one click.

Version 1.6 is a minor update to DEVONnote 1.5, released on the 4th of November, and adds a new command for merging two or more documents into one large rich text document, the possibility to create more than one automatic backup of the database and the ability to add or remove columns in vertical and horizontal split views. Also, the integration with PhotoStickies has been improved, as has the overall user experience. DEVONnote 1.6 inherits a new revision of the database core from DEVONthink, is slightly faster and more stable.

DEVONthink and DEVONnote require at least Mac OS X 10.2.7 or higher with 256MB RAM recommended. Both are immediately available for downloading from [url=http://www.devon-technologies.com]http://www.devon-technologies.com[/url]; DEVONthink must be registered after the trial period for US $40, DEVONnote for US $20.

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