Just a quick update on our progress on the OCR side. While ABBYY was unable to reproduce the bug that affects the conversion of a multi-page PDF into separate images, we have now written a by-pass that does this before feeding the data into the OCR engine. This has also other advantages, e.g. the ability to run OCR also on very large documents without running into memory problems. We are now writing the new thread handling that we need for this workaround and hope to begin internal testing tonight or tomorrow morning. (more)

Last Friday we had to release DEVONthink Pro Office 2.0 public beta 2 without an embedded OCR engine – which is truly annoying for you and us.

Starting with version 2.0 of DEVONthink Pro Office we are moving from the IRIS engine to the ABBYY FineReader engine which produces way smaller PDFs, is more accurate, and much smarter to embed into our application. Where the IRIS engine was an external program remotely controlled by DEVONthink, the engine provided by ABBYY is a true framework that we can directly embed and control. You will see this soon in a much improved ‘OCR Activity’ panel and no other OCR windows popping up for every page. (more)

Just in time we have released the second public beta of DEVONthink (and DEVONnote). This beta comes with many enhancements, e.g. simple PDF editing abilities (splitting files, merging files, copy/paste for PDF pages), a new RSS preferences panel, and a more responsive web interface that now also displays QuickLook previews if possible. In addition, DEVONthink Pro Office nearly also came with a brand new OCR engine but technical difficulties with embedding the engine properly forced us to delay this feature but we will deliver it as soon as we and ABBYY are able to find the problem. Read more about the update on our news page. (more)

We have promised that we would release DEVONthink 2.0 as a public beta before Christmas, and that is just what we have done today. All three editions of DEVONthink as well as DEVONnote are immediately available for downloading as 2.0 public beta. We have also updated all product pages as well as the feature comparison for all editions. Read yourself what’s new in DEVONthink 2.0 and DEVONnote 2.0 and have a look at our short news article, too. Finally, don’t forget to actually download the trial. (more)

We’re just preparing beta 4 for our tireless beta testers with many minor changes including the new icon set. Time to direct your attention to some of the substancial changes we have made to DEVONthink 2.0. (more)

While our beta testers are dissecting the current beta 2, I’d like to share some more information about the upcoming new version. This week: The new file formats that you can work with in DEVONthink 2.0. (more)

I promised to keep you all updated on the progress we make with DEVONthink 2.0. Today I am proud to tell you that we have just seeded the very first beta of DEVONthink Pro Office 2.0 to the closed beta testers group. Some features are still missing, especially interface-wise, but it’s already stable enough and useable. And while we continue adding the planned functionality it’s now up to our great beta tester community to put it through its paces.

DEVONthink Pro Office 2.0 - what’s happening? Well, we hope to release very soon the first public beta but in the meantime here are a few prelims to whet the appetite!

This week: DEVONthink Pro Office 2.0 — built-in web server completely revamped. (more)