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mrobe / senteAssistant

Sente Assistant is a free software add-on to improve the experience of using notes in Sente.
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Not opening #3

Open DesBw opened 8 years ago

DesBw commented 8 years ago

Hello, I am not able to open the Sente Assistant App. It just flashes VisualWorks menu for a second and fades away. What is going on here?

clicking on the Sente Assistant as well as show sente note is giving me not result. Can you help me please?

mrobe commented 8 years ago

Sorry, Third Street Software has given up on Sente, so I am no longer supporting Sente Assistant.

On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 10:37 PM, Dellu notifications@github.com wrote:

Hello, I am not able to open the Sente Assistant App It just flashes VisualWorks menu for a second and dies away What is going on here? i am using mac 1011 (El Capitain)

Can you help me please?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/mrobe/senteAssistant/issues/3.

DesBw commented 8 years ago

are you sure Sente will not be supported?

On Fri, Dec 25, 2015 at 9:08 AM, mrobe notifications@github.com wrote:

Sorry, Third Street Software has given up on Sente, so I am no longer supporting Sente Assistant.

On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 10:37 PM, Dellu notifications@github.com wrote:

Hello, I am not able to open the Sente Assistant App It just flashes VisualWorks menu for a second and dies away What is going on here? i am using mac 1011 (El Capitain)

Can you help me please?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/mrobe/senteAssistant/issues/3.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/mrobe/senteAssistant/issues/3#issuecomment-167208440.

mrobe commented 8 years ago

Third Street Software (TSS) used to run a user forum for Sente. Their support staff would answer questions and they issued tickets for bugs.

Over two years ago, they quietly stopped issuing bug tickets, and stopped fixing bugs. Then, they stopped answering certain questions from users. They no longer said anything about what would be fixed in future releases, or what their development priorities were. They stopped answering my questions about issues with Sente APIs.

By this time, many customers started openly questioning the future of Sente. Many posted questions about bugs on the forum, and got no answers. People then questioned whether Sente had become abandonware. When confronted, TSS at first denied that there were any issues with development of Sente, and then they simply ignored these questions.

At this point, a number of customers started discussing alternatives to Sente, such as Zotero, Papers, etc. People discussed their decisions to stop using Sente and their experiences with other apps. I could not get any answers about problems with Sente, so I gave up on Sente Assistant. Finally, TSS killed the user forum and pulled the site. All of our discussions about issues with Sente, work-arounds, the future, etc. — they're are gone.

Draw your own conclusions.

On Sat, Dec 26, 2015 at 12:54 AM, Dellu notifications@github.com wrote:

are you sure Sente will not be supported?

On Fri, Dec 25, 2015 at 9:08 AM, mrobe notifications@github.com wrote:

Sorry, Third Street Software has given up on Sente, so I am no longer supporting Sente Assistant.

On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 10:37 PM, Dellu notifications@github.com wrote:

Hello, I am not able to open the Sente Assistant App It just flashes VisualWorks menu for a second and dies away What is going on here? i am using mac 1011 (El Capitain)

Can you help me please?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/mrobe/senteAssistant/issues/3.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub <https://github.com/mrobe/senteAssistant/issues/3#issuecomment-167208440 .

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/mrobe/senteAssistant/issues/3#issuecomment-167246626.

DesBw commented 8 years ago

Yes, I have seen that the forum is down. Checking out about the assistant a few days ago, i used some workaround to access the forum. In any event, it is really frustrating they are leaving it. I really hope that this all is untrue: for one fact that they have releases of to the 19th of December. Even if barely advertised, Sente has been the smartest PDF managing software out there. I was also thinking to lecture a class of university students on how to use the App (indeed, how to organize their references at large, and Sente in specific). I have already wrote about it before too (https://dellu.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/workflow-with-sente-devonthink-scrivener-using-hazel-and-dropbox-as-glue-part-1/). But, it is damn unfortunate if it is going away.

I wrote them about this issue a couple of hours ago. I hope they will reply.

And, by the way, I get the assistant working. Great job man!

Cheers,

On Dec 25, 2015, at 11:51 PM, mrobe notifications@github.com wrote:

Third Street Software (TSS) used to run a user forum for Sente. Their support staff would answer questions and they issued tickets for bugs.

Over two years ago, they quietly stopped issuing bug tickets, and stopped fixing bugs. Then, they stopped answering certain questions from users. They no longer said anything about what would be fixed in future releases, or what their development priorities were. They stopped answering my questions about issues with Sente APIs.

By this time, many customers started openly questioning the future of Sente. Many posted questions about bugs on the forum, and got no answers. People then questioned whether Sente had become abandonware. When confronted, TSS at first denied that there were any issues with development of Sente, and then they simply ignored these questions.

At this point, a number of customers started discussing alternatives to Sente, such as Zotero, Papers, etc. People discussed their decisions to stop using Sente and their experiences with other apps. I could not get any answers about problems with Sente, so I gave up on Sente Assistant. Finally, TSS killed the user forum and pulled the site. All of our discussions about issues with Sente, work-arounds, the future, etc. — they're are gone.

Draw your own conclusions.

On Sat, Dec 26, 2015 at 12:54 AM, Dellu notifications@github.com wrote:

are you sure Sente will not be supported?

On Fri, Dec 25, 2015 at 9:08 AM, mrobe notifications@github.com wrote:

Sorry, Third Street Software has given up on Sente, so I am no longer supporting Sente Assistant.

On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 10:37 PM, Dellu notifications@github.com wrote:

Hello, I am not able to open the Sente Assistant App It just flashes VisualWorks menu for a second and dies away What is going on here? i am using mac 1011 (El Capitain)

Can you help me please?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/mrobe/senteAssistant/issues/3.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub <https://github.com/mrobe/senteAssistant/issues/3#issuecomment-167208440 .

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/mrobe/senteAssistant/issues/3#issuecomment-167246626.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

Honame commented 8 years ago

wow! I was surprised that they took down the forum but didn't know what mrobe just said. It is sad indeed. I wouldn't mind to migrate to Zotero or Mendely if I could only migrate my PDFs with annotations along to use them directly in one of those apps. I was even convincing my colleagues of using Sente instead of Mendeley and EndNote, I will not anymore. Dellu, have you had any word from them? Does anybody knows where this is being discussed? I mean another forum or something? Any idea of migrating to other app with the least of pain? BTW, mrobe, great work with Sente Assistant!

Regards,

honame

mrobe commented 8 years ago

Indeed, I wish it were not true, but I'm afraid that it is.

A number of Sente users (not just me) posted messages in their forum asking again and again about the future and TSS simply ignored us. Not just once, but many times for months. I say "ignored" because they answered other very simple support requests. It is clear that they transitioned Sente into maintenance mode or a condition of quasi-abandonware but refused to communicate their decision to their customers. So, I had no choice but to bail out.

Honame, I am in the same position as you. I would like to migrate to another application but with all of my annotations. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any simple way to do this. There was a fair amount of discussion on the Sente forum, while it was still open. To answer your question, I don't know of any other forums where this is being discussed.

A number of people had good experience with Bookends and finally that was my choice too. It seems to be the closest to Sente in terms of functionality, and the developer is very responsive. I have exchanged e-mails with him and he was very communicative, even when I wasn't a customer (yet). However, I don't think it is possible to import all annotations and have Bookends work exactly as in Sente. It's close, but not quite, as Sente uses a non-standard approach.

The difficulty is that Sente represents annotations as rows in its own library database, while Bookends represents them as annotations in the PDF file. Sente does include a feature to "export PDF with annotations" but IMHO it is broken, as Sente creates a separate annotation for each line of text in the PDF file.

I have given some thought to a work-around, but the only way I can see to do this would be to modify Sente Assistant to read the proprietary annotations from the library and add standard annotations to the attached PDF files. I have spoken with a third-party developer of a PDF framework that I could use with SA, and he claims it is not complicated to do this. However, the APIs to his framework are not documented and I need his help. I have sent a number of emails asking for assistance, but since he works on this in his spare time, I haven't gotten the details yet. When he explains how to do this, and if it is not too complicated, I will try to update SA once more to do this and post a new version here. This would add some "migration away from Sente" functionality for all of us who are trying to move to another app while rescuing our annotations.

I'm sorry I can't offer a timetable for this, as it's not really under my control now. Hopefully sometime this spring.

On Sat, Jan 9, 2016 at 6:15 AM, Honame notifications@github.com wrote:

wow! I was surprised that they took down the forum but didn't know what mrobe just said. It is sad indeed. I wouldn't mind to migrate to Zotero or Mendely if I could only migrate my PDFs with annotations along to use them directly in one of those apps. I was even convincing my colleagues of using Sente instead of Mendeley and EndNote, I will not anymore. Dellu, have you had any word from them? Does anybody knows where this is being discussed? I mean another forum or something? Any idea of migrating to other app with the least of pain?

Regards,

honame

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/mrobe/senteAssistant/issues/3#issuecomment-170125763.

DesBw commented 8 years ago

Yes, Mikael has replied my email: he said "We continue to support and maintain Sente on a daily basis". My understanding is, probably they will support it for some time; but won't be any developments. But I am not sure, really. In any event, I think bookends is the best app, closest to sente, to export your references to. Your notes and pdf files will be imported intact. Personally, I have decided to continue to use Sente until some Mac update breaks it for good.

Dellu On Jan 8, 2016 10:16 PM, "Honame" notifications@github.com wrote:

wow! I was surprised that they took down the forum but didn't know what mrobe just said. It is sad indeed. I wouldn't mind to migrate to Zotero or Mendely if I could only migrate my PDFs with annotations along to use them directly in one of those apps. I was even convincing my colleagues of using Sente instead of Mendeley and EndNote, I will not anymore. Dellu, have you had any word from them? Does anybody knows where this is being discussed? I mean another forum or something? Any idea of migrating to other app with the least of pain?

Regards,

honame

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/mrobe/senteAssistant/issues/3#issuecomment-170125763.