Okay, this is aimed exclusively at Mac users, because alas, FoxTrot is Mac-only. But it's a little eulogy for this really very impressive program, which is the Mac's answer to that most august and potent of all search engines, dtSearch.

I use DEVONthink Office Pro to manage a lot of documents I need to search very fast, and in such a way that results are instantly highlighted and instantly accessible. And on the whole, DEVONthink does a pretty good job. But recently, I've had to compile databases of especially large documents (including e.g. EU regulations in multiple languages), and have discovered a major flow in good ole' DEVONthink: while it takes fractions of a second for DEVONthink to compile a list of documents containing (a) search term(s), it can take many seconds - and even minutes - for it to prepare a given document for viewing; i.e. so that you can skip from one highlighted search result to the next.

This has proved extremely frustrating. And then I remembered FoxTrot Pro, previously relegated (to my shame) to a very subsidiary role. I hastily extracted the many documents I had stored in the relevant DEVONthink databases, chucked them in suitable folders and created new indices in FoxTrot. Apart from extracting the documents, this was the work of a few minutes.

I then carried out experimental searches in FoxTrot to reassure myself that it wouldn't have the same issues. To my pleasure, it doesn't. In fact, everything works with mind-blowing speed. It also does a couple of things that DEVONthink doesn't - it tells you precisely how many hits there are in a given document, and allows you to assemble complex search queries using a pleasantly intuitive rule-plus-rule dialog. It even provides a sidebar analysis of documents' locations, file types, languages (yes, really) and authors.

I'm kicking myself for forgetting all about this invaluable resource, and shall be writing one of my Encouraging E-mails to the FoxTrot Pro developers - I fear this little jewel is in danger of being forgotten.

One of my abiding regrets is that there isn't a web server version of FoxTrot Pro. I shall mention this lacune in my Encouraging E-mail and urge them to broaden their appeal to a global audience!

Cheers!
Bill

Bill,

You can set a database preference in DEVONthink to have DEVONthink make a Spotlight metadata index of the document in your database(s). This enables, and speeds, search with not only Spotlight, but Houdah Spot, FoxTrot, and whatever.

If you don't want files stored inside a database, index them.

If your database is mis-performing, then use the "verify & repair" tool and then "rebuild" it. DEVONthink depends on a complex internal metadata store and concordance, and "rebuild" will update that afresh. Delays in showing the content of search results are not normal.

Ah, thanks for that, Paul. I'll take another look at my setup - could well be it needs optimising.

One of the indispensable features in Foxtrot is the proximity search. The proximity search in Devonthink is dismal. The developers don't seem interested in improving it. I have been asking them for many years now.


- searching within the results
- great preview
- fast indexing
- supports all the file types that the QuickLook supports


My life depend on Foxtrot.

A little advise for people who are new to Foxtrot: please don't buy FoxTrot personal. It it is totally useless because it doesn't have the preview. It is waste of money.

"PDF search" (http://www.pdfsearchapp.com/ is much more functional than FoxTrot personal.

DEVONthink Pro does have a great concordance function, it's true. But having rediscovered FoxTrot Pro, I'm wondering why I allowed myself to forget it in the first place!

PDF Search looks pretty darn good, actually - and there's a free trial. Oh dear. To CRIMP or not to CRIMP, that's the question... on the other hand, a free trial...

I've heard there is a new version of Houdah Spot for macOS (v5) coming that has a lot of new integrations -- including with DefaultFolder X -- which also has a new version in the works. The new Houdah Spot will display DEVONthink database results.

More to CRIMP!

Dellu wrote:

"PDF search" (http://www.pdfsearchapp.com/ is much more functional
than FoxTrot personal.

I wonder what it offers over the less expensive DEVONsphere Express and/or HoudahSpot.

Has anyone used foxtrot attaché search? I’ve been moving all my data into finder and really like foxtrot pro. There are no reviews so I’m looking for some advice.

Simon wrote:

Has anyone used foxtrot attaché search? I’ve been moving all
my data into finder and really like foxtrot pro. There are no reviews so
I’m looking for some advice.

The ios app of FT displays only the plain text format of the pdf files. That is just useless to me because I need to see the whole thing: many of my documents contain graphs, and syntax trees. Searching and displaying just plain text is just useless to me.

But, FT doesn't affect your original files. You can use it with Devonthink or Bookends because these two apps have better ios companions.

Dellu wrote:

The ios app of FT displays only the plain text format of the pdf files.
That is just useless to me because I need to see the whole thing: many
of my documents contain graphs, and syntax trees. Searching and
displaying just plain text is just useless to me.

But, FT doesn't affect your original files. You can use it with
Devonthink or Bookends because these two apps have better ios
companions.

Many thanks. I tend to only need text information generally.

satis wrote:

> "PDF search" (http://www.pdfsearchapp.com/ is much more functional
>than FoxTrot personal.

I wonder what it offers over the less expensive DEVONsphere Express
and/or HoudahSpot.

PDF search is better than the rest of the search software because it makes a page-by-page comparison. Others including Foxtrot, Devonsphere and Devonthink ranks files by simply counting the number of words occurring across the whole document (file).

I used to complement this weakness by exploding (splitting) large pdf files into smaller chunks. You can look at: https://wordpress.com/post/dellu.wordpress.com/558

As the comments in the linked page suggest, there are indeed some drawbacks to compare smaller chunks (pages). But, my experience has been, breaking large documents is very useful to spot the right section/document/page.


With PDF search, there is no need to split large files because it indexes each page individually.

Sorry, the link is this one: https://dellu.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/why-you-need-to-burst-your-books

Hm, that is a really interesting feature in PDF Search. I'm going to have to look at it more closely...

Re: FoxTrot
FT attaché does allow you to save copies of docs for transfer to iOS, but I confess I've never done it. You'll find the option in the "Configuration" section of the "Manage Indices" dialog box. You can apply it on an index-by-index basis.

FoxTrot has another very useful feature that people may not be aware of. If you want to take a detailed look at a document in your search results, you can do so by double-clicking it (default setting) or opening it using the context menu's "View in FoxTrot Pro" option. This opens a new view of the document with its own search field. If you type text into this search field, you get an "instant search" functionality (i.e. the system starts to produce results immediately, as you're typing). For really zooming in to detail, this is an invaluable feature. By default, FoxTrot opens documents into a tabbed secondary viewer, so if you're researching annual reports (as I am at the moment), you can open several documents of particular interest in separate tabs in a separate window (from the main FoxTrot Pro search window; which also supports multiple tabbed searches, incidentally).

Re: HoudahSpot
I really want to like HoudahSpot, but I've found that it's so much slower than FoxTrot Pro (or indeed, DEVONthink), that it's simply not worth using as a proper research tool. No idea why this is the case, but slow-slow-slow (even after optimising indexes etc.). This even applies to the latest version, alas, which I tested over the weekend.

I like your thoughtful post on relative importance criteria in search results, Dellu. Interesting point.

Oh dear, PDF Search looks very interesting, too. Love the "save search results as a second PDF" feature...

MadaboutDana wrote:

Re: HoudahSpot
I really want to like HoudahSpot, but I've found that it's so much
slower than FoxTrot Pro (or indeed, DEVONthink), that it's simply not
worth using as a proper research tool. No idea why this is the case, but
slow-slow-slow (even after optimising indexes etc.). This even applies
to the latest version, alas, which I tested over the weekend.

I totally agree with your point on HoundahSpot. It is nowhere close to the fine details of Foxtrot. For searching tools that use the Spotlights database, I find Spotfiles (https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/51082/spotfiles much more faster.

Although, alas, the SpotFiles developer appears to have given up (according to the posts on MacUpdate).

MadaboutDana wrote:

If you want to take a detailed look at a document in your search
results, you can do so by double-clicking it (default setting) or
opening it using the context menu's "View in FoxTrot Pro" option. This
opens a new view of the document with its own search field. If you type
text into this search field, you get an "instant search" functionality
(i.e. the system starts to produce results immediately, as you're
typing). For really zooming in to detail, this is an invaluable feature.
By default, FoxTrot opens documents into a tabbed secondary viewer, so
if you're researching annual reports (as I am at the moment), you can
open several documents of particular interest in separate tabs in a
separate window (from the main FoxTrot Pro search window; which also
supports multiple tabbed searches, incidentally).

Absolutely:


These fine details is what made Foxtrot incredibly powerful.
These feature made Foxtrot an amazing companion to researchers (knowledge workers).


- The separate window is incredibly useful. The absence of the separate window was the reason I find the Personal version of Foxtrot useless.
- the Excerpts in the main window
- the proximity search
- the metadata searches such as the Title, Authors etc of pdf files
- separate search line for Spotlight comments and tags
- the tabbed search
- saving search history (bookmarking)

Indeed, I spend most of my day reading and searching inside Foxtrot. I open the original files in PDFexpert (when I need to carefully read and annotate it) only occasionally.

If I have to use just one application for my research, Foxtrot is indeed going to my choice.
PDF_search is good; but not as powerful as Foxtrot. Comparison of each page is nice feature (as it avoids the need to split the big documents), but, other options such as the proximity search, metadata search etc don't exist in PDF_search. The database that PDF_search creates is also very huge, in comparison to that of Foxtrot & Devonthink.

My database of about 12,000 research articles is:
- 11.44GB in the Finder folder
- 4.49GB in Devonthink (indexed)
- 769mb in Foxtrot
- 9.88GB in PDF_search.

As you can see, the Foxtrot database is very disks-pace friendly as well (i don't know how they did this).

Wow, that really is disk-space-friendly! I've been vaguely aware that FoxTrot's indices are very efficient, but having it spelled out like that is an eye-opener!

And yes, I've just invested in PDF Search (that per-page trick alone is useful, but so is the saving results out as a separate PDF thing).

Don't forget that FoxTrot (Pro, at least) does allow you to save documents out to iOS, as well. You just have to check the right box!

MadaboutDana wrote:

Don't forget that FoxTrot (Pro, at least) does allow you to save
documents out to iOS, as well. You just have to check the right box!

wow, you are right. I never noticed that option before.

Is there any indication that FoxTrot is still being developed? I'm interested, but not in a dead application!

MadaboutDana wrote:

Wow, that really is disk-space-friendly! I've been vaguely aware that
FoxTrot's indices are very efficient, but having it spelled out like
that is an eye-opener!

And yes, I've just invested in PDF Search (that per-page trick alone is
useful, but so is the saving results out as a separate PDF thing).

Don't forget that FoxTrot (Pro, at least) does allow you to save
documents out to iOS, as well. You just have to check the right box!

They actually find an update TODAY. You can follow their updates, or subscribe to beta test here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/foxtrot-search

Foxtrot is very actively developed.

Yes, they're not as noisy as some people (a shame, actually), but they steadily work away at it.

Now that Houdaspot has been released can anyone share a comparison between Foxtrot and Houdah?

I have 71K .eml files and am looking for a good search app.

Simon wrote:

Now that Houdaspot has been released can anyone share a comparison
between Foxtrot and Houdah?

I have 71K .eml files and am looking for a good search app.

Sorry that should have said Houdaspot 5