I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts on Together now that I’ve heard Yojimbo…

“Yojimbo stores everything in a SQLite database tucked away in your user library. While I’ve never had any trouble with the database, I came across many comments on the web from people worried about corruption. If the database gets corrupted, all of your data is potentially hosed. That’s a bit worrisome.”

Coming across people ‘worried’ about corruption is far different than finding corruption, and not worrisome by itself.. The rest of my comment regarding SQLite would echo what the barebones representative said.

I agree that if you want one application to put your life in, yojimbo isn’t it. But if you want it for a particular purpose, as a type of inbox and storage for info that has no other home, it works great. It’s polished, easy to use, and easy on the eyes.

Here’s the message:

“I came across your Yojimbo review today. Thanks! There are a couple of clarification I’d like to make, and a couple of related observations as well.

Regarding the quick input panel:

While this is handy, you need to know that it only handles text (a note, bookmark, password, serial number, or web archive).

The quick input panel can handle images, as well as the types listed above. The attached screenshot should show that. (I selected your thumbnail in Safari, chose “Copy Image” from the contextual menu, and typed F8). I’ll discuss “files” a bit more later.

(NOTE FROM TROY: I’M NOT GOING TO PUT THE SCREENSHOT REFERENCED HERE, BUT SUFFICE IT TO SAY THAT IT DOES INDEED WORK. THE TRICK IS TO COPY THE IMAGE FROM THE CONTEXTUAL MENU. I WAS USING ⌘-C, WHICH ONLY COPIES THE REFERENCE TO THE FILE)

If you copy a file (a RTF, Doc, image file or PDF, for example), you can’t import it with this function.

When you choose Edit->Copy in the Finder, you aren’t really copying the file, you are copying a reference to the file. As you noted, if you want to import the contents of a file, you need to use another mechanism than the Quick Input panel

According to the developer, Yojimbo will ‘examine the clipboard, and guess what kind of item you wish to create, and will default to that editing panel.’ If Yojimbo guesses incorrectly, you can select a different item type by using keyboard shortcuts. This feature works well for me. One thing I don’t get, though, is why the drop-down menu includes ‘image’ as an item choice since this quick-entry method doesn’t properly import images copied to the clipboard.

It’s entirely possible we have a bug in the image support, but as you can see from the attached picture, it works for me.

(NOTE FROM TROY: IT WORKS JUST FINE – JUST BE SURE TO USE ‘COPY IMAGE’ FROM THE CONTEXTUAL MENU. THE ‘CONTEXTUAL MENU’ IS THE ‘RIGHT CLICK’ MENU, JUST TO BE CLEAR)

And speaking of tags, an inspector just for tags would be handy: a place to view them, batch change them, delete them. It would also be nice if Yojimbo would label orphaned tags in this list that are no longer being used. Note that it’s currently not possible to change or delete a tag.

It’s not intuitive, but the Preferences window will list all the tags, and let you delete them. You cannot rename them at this time.

The problem of orphaned tags isn’t as simple as it appears. Because .Mac syncing is a core component of Yojimbo, there’s not a simple answer to the question “Are there any items not tagged ‘my_favorite_tag’?” On any single machine, the answer is easy and obvious. But if you are syncing with .Mac, the answer becomes ambiguous.

That said, improvements to tags, tag visualization, etc. are all on the short list for a future release. Not that it helps you today.

One more thing: If you open the Quick Input window, and click the triangle to the right of Name, you’ll be able to apply tags right from that window.

I also need to comment briefly on how Yojimbo data is physically stored. While some PIMs store your stuff in what’s called a flat file structure (in other words, directly in the Finder), Yojimbo stores everything in a SQLite database tucked away in your user library. While I’ve never had any trouble with the database, I came across many comments on the web from people worried about corruption. If the database gets corrupted, all of your data is potentially hosed. That’s a bit worrisome.

While you’ll find people “worried”, I don’t think you’ll actually find any users that have lost data. SQLite is used all over the system, and has proven itself to be very robust and reliable. But no matter how reliable something is, backups are still an important part of using a computer.

One more thing to consider with Yojimbo is that it duplicates a file upon import. So if I drag a PDF into the application from my Documents folder, it will still be in my Documents folder.

Here, we’re about to get a little esoteric. Technically, there is no file duplication, as Yojimbo isn’t tracking files. The data from the PDF is read in, and stored in the aforementioned database.

I could delete the original files, but then I’m relying on one database to store all of my precious files.

To be pedantic, you’d be storing “data”, not “files”. It would be in one file, but I don’t see that as a reliability problem. All your files are stored on one disk, with one volume wrapper, and one catalog. Damage to that catalog, wrapper, or disk could also lose files.

But much like not worrying about database corruption, I don’t worry about catalog corruption, either. I keep frequent backups of my data, and as you’ll hear all over the world, backups are your best defense against disk failure.”