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FTPro to Search Journal Citations - Some Thoughts [message #429] Sat, 08 October 2016 15:09 Go to next message
Jeffrey Weimer
Messages: 4
Registered: October 2016
Junior Member
Hello!

I am test driving FTPro to search in PDF journal articles. I want to note
some of my initial findings for anyone so interested.

I am comparing FTPro to Papers. FWIW, I also use Mendeley. Its search
engine is only useful to do a quick-and-dirty finding. I've also tested
EndNote and generally found it too cumbersome (and way too costly for its
feature set).

I did a test run on my library database. For this specific case, I did a
search on the terms:

--> Papers: all:chlorosilane AND all:glass
--> FTPro: *chlorosilane, glass

Papers returns a set of 16 results with significance ranking.
Interestingly, it does NOT find articles where the terms are in the titles
(this is something I've asked about on the Papers support sight).

By comparison, FTPro returns 7-19 items in the "around one line" search and
75 in the broadest search (it has 0 items at "next to"). In the "around one
line" search, it returns the article with the terms in the title. I can see
immediately the phrase that uses the terms.

I would note one odd behavior. When I adjust the slider and redo the search
for "around one line", I get different return results randomly. Sometimes I
get 7 hits, sometimes I get 19 hits.

As a final note, I would add that I've compared DevonThinkPro as well. For
my needs, I find FTPro to be cleaner in its UI, have a more intuitive
approach to searching, and return more useful results.

Hope this helps anyone who is also comparing FTPro vs a dedicated citation
manager (and vs DTP).

--
JJW
Re: FTPro to Search Journal Citations - Some Thoughts [message #470 is a reply to message #429] Mon, 06 February 2017 23:26 Go to previous messageGo to next message
elviades
Messages: 2
Registered: February 2017
Junior Member
I have also some interesting absurd properties with Foxtro pro. Indexing
two identical files (duplicates), one of them ranks higher, the other one
ranks about 10 steps lower. I don't know what is happening.

But, the proximity searches in Foxtrot are much cleaner than Devonthink.
The slides are very useful too.

On Saturday, October 8, 2016 at 3:09:47 PM UTC+2, Jeffrey Weimer wrote:
>
> Hello!
>
> I am test driving FTPro to search in PDF journal articles. I want to note
> some of my initial findings for anyone so interested.
>
> I am comparing FTPro to Papers. FWIW, I also use Mendeley. Its search
> engine is only useful to do a quick-and-dirty finding. I've also tested
> EndNote and generally found it too cumbersome (and way too costly for its
> feature set).
>
> I did a test run on my library database. For this specific case, I did a
> search on the terms:
>
> --> Papers: all:chlorosilane AND all:glass
> --> FTPro: *chlorosilane, glass
>
> Papers returns a set of 16 results with significance ranking.
> Interestingly, it does NOT find articles where the terms are in the titles
> (this is something I've asked about on the Papers support sight).
>
> By comparison, FTPro returns 7-19 items in the "around one line" search
> and 75 in the broadest search (it has 0 items at "next to"). In the
> "around one line" search, it returns the article with the terms in the
> title. I can see immediately the phrase that uses the terms.
>
> I would note one odd behavior. When I adjust the slider and redo the
> search for "around one line", I get different return results randomly.
> Sometimes I get 7 hits, sometimes I get 19 hits.
>
> As a final note, I would add that I've compared DevonThinkPro as well. For
> my needs, I find FTPro to be cleaner in its UI, have a more intuitive
> approach to searching, and return more useful results.
>
> Hope this helps anyone who is also comparing FTPro vs a dedicated citation
> manager (and vs DTP).
>
> --
> JJW
>
Re: FTPro to Search Journal Citations - Some Thoughts [message #472 is a reply to message #470] Wed, 08 February 2017 10:24 Go to previous message
D Levy
Messages: 15
Registered: July 2012
Junior Member
Hello

I also use FT Pro and DevonThink for managing a large store of journal
articles. I find I need both.

FT Pro is the fastest, most accurate, most finely-specifiable way of
searching. The filtering by age, file type, location, etc. allow some
coarse adjustments that help. I wouldn't like to be without it. One
other unique feature of FT Pro is that after a complex query, the
internal viewer highlights different search elements by color. This is
valuable because some search terms are, of necessity, very frequently
found, but what one actually seeks is a different term which is
infrequent. Using color allows me to find these quickly. As I noted,
so far as I know this is unique and very useful.

DevonThink (Pro Office) is also very useful in two different ways.
First, I do quite a bit of the management of the articles within DT,
e.g. converting non-searchable PDFs to PDF, noticing those that are
misfiled or duplicates, etc. Second, the more important feature is the
see also functionality which works by word frequency comparisons. I
find that this often finds papers that I would not have realised are
related or would not have realised have relevant sections because I
would not have searched on some words. This is invaluable in the early
stages of researching a topic.

David.

David Levy
Department of Philosophy
University of Edinburgh

On 6 Feb 2017, at 22:26, elviades«~at~»gmail«|dot|»com wrote:

> I have also some interesting absurd properties with Foxtro pro.
> Indexing
> two identical files (duplicates), one of them ranks higher, the other
> one
> ranks about 10 steps lower. I don't know what is happening.
>
> But, the proximity searches in Foxtrot are much cleaner than
> Devonthink.
> The slides are very useful too.
>
> On Saturday, October 8, 2016 at 3:09:47 PM UTC+2, Jeffrey Weimer
> wrote:
>>
>> Hello!
>>
>> I am test driving FTPro to search in PDF journal articles. I want to
>> note
>> some of my initial findings for anyone so interested.
>>
>> I am comparing FTPro to Papers. FWIW, I also use Mendeley. Its search
>> engine is only useful to do a quick-and-dirty finding. I've also
>> tested
>> EndNote and generally found it too cumbersome (and way too costly for
>> its
>> feature set).
>>
>> I did a test run on my library database. For this specific case, I
>> did a
>> search on the terms:
>>
>> --> Papers: all:chlorosilane AND all:glass
>> --> FTPro: *chlorosilane, glass
>>
>> Papers returns a set of 16 results with significance ranking.
>> Interestingly, it does NOT find articles where the terms are in the
>> titles
>> (this is something I've asked about on the Papers support sight).
>>
>> By comparison, FTPro returns 7-19 items in the "around one line"
>> search
>> and 75 in the broadest search (it has 0 items at "next to"). In the
>> "around one line" search, it returns the article with the terms in
>> the
>> title. I can see immediately the phrase that uses the terms.
>>
>> I would note one odd behavior. When I adjust the slider and redo the
>> search for "around one line", I get different return results
>> randomly.
>> Sometimes I get 7 hits, sometimes I get 19 hits.
>>
>> As a final note, I would add that I've compared DevonThinkPro as
>> well. For
>> my needs, I find FTPro to be cleaner in its UI, have a more intuitive
>> approach to searching, and return more useful results.
>>
>> Hope this helps anyone who is also comparing FTPro vs a dedicated
>> citation
>> manager (and vs DTP).
>>
>> --
>> JJW
>>
>
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