I have a file collection made via Dopus 'Find' which gathers together all the PDFs on my system. When I save a new PDF, a manual for a new camera, for example, is there any way to have the file collection automatically update with the new document or must I do a new 'find' operation?
I have searched but cannot find any reference to an auto-update feature. If the facility does not exist, is there a workaround, a configurable button for example?
There's no auto-update, but there's no reason you can't add the new PDF to the collection yourself - just drag & drop it in.
Thanks - yes, I'm happy to do that but I've just started using Adobe Lightroom 3 which has 'smart collections' where once you set up criteria, it automatically updates with qualifying files.
Lightroom is a specialised bit of professional photographer's software, of course but the smart collections are a very handy feature. Maybe a suggestion for Dopus 10?
You could make a button which updates the collection (by running a pre-defined Find command specifying the appropriate criteria).
As well as Leo's suggestion, perhaps using a date as the pre-defined criterion, does "Adobe Lightroom" present its results in a way that you can just drag them into an DOpus collection?
I see collections as a place to accept individual files. If I want to get at all pdf files on my system, I use something (X1in my case) that can then let me drill down to find files based on different criteria.
No, that wouldn't be relevant to what I want. Lightroom is a dedicated digital assets manager. It does just that.
Lightroom lets you choose any criteria to qualify a file and then scans for qualifying files periodically. For example, pic files on sale at my agent are saved in folders in several places on my HD but all are labelled 'blue', are of type .dng and keyworded 'accepted'. So I set Lightroom to make a 'smart collection' of files fulfilling these 3 criteria.
So, say with pdfs, I have a collection of these. Today, having done my tax return, I save the .pdf of my return. But my Dopus collection doesn't know about it until I drag it into it or do another 'find' for pdfs. In the Lightroom model, it would assume responsibility and scan automtaically for additions, thus automatically keeping my pdf virtual folder up to date.
The auto update facility seems worthwhile to me but not crucial, a nice facility to have. It would certainly be useful for the more untidy among us. My wife writes poetry, all openoffice docs and prefaced 'poem' in the file name. Unfortunately, she scatters them all over the disk and it is up to me to do the housekeeping. A smart collection would be just the job!
FWIW I've been a regular Lightroom user since its beta days, so I'm familiar with their smart collections. I also like to keep my PDFs organized in Opus, and the way I do it is simple, I have a folder dedicated to PDF files. It has subfolders so the PDFs can be categorized so to speak (eg Photography, Home, Software, Travels, etc). If I need to search for a pdf, and occasionally I do, I know it's somewhere within the main pdf folder. Putting Opus in flat view mode and quick filtering it lets me find any PDF I want very quickly.
Yes, effectively bypassing the Dopus collection facility. It was always possible to do that but I was looking for something like the LR3 smart collection which keeps itself updated regardless of where the files are physically located. I use LR3 precisely because it obviates the need for convoluted folder structures. Just bung everything in the same folder (at its simplest) if you want and use the database as it should be used
In other words, using Dopus more like a database than a file manager. Files are accessed by attributes and tags, not by physical location. Anyhow, you can't do it in Dopus so no matter. Just occurred to me that the smart folder idea had mileage in it for many uses.
Maybe this is useful. I once used a function, which is able to send certain filetypes to any chosen place (could be a collection) automatically:
If i copied a bunch of new stuff using this code (actually i used some variation), the files where distributed to their appropriate collection or folder.