Good reading! Makes my boring days at work work more pleasurable.. well.. I’m always bleating about something. Have a nice day!…

If you need to re-edit scanned papers then this is definitively NOT the organizer tool for you. You can use a plain scanner OCR for that.

Having said that, having a way to redirect to an OCR package (if there was a worthwhile one for mac, at least) could be done easily through applescript events internally by the app (click on OCR, have a separate program do the OCR and then link the text to the document).

I also would vote for some kind of hierarchical file listing. Lists and smart lists are a good start, at least.

Couple Kip with an autolaunch desktop scanner (the ones where you feed the paper, and it pulls it, automatically launches the software and scans it in with a popup waiting for more documents or tagging-naming window) and you have the perfect tool for backing up mail receipts and I’m sold.

I also wanted to thank the suggestion of using knox to encrypt the files. Something not all may think of (and that kip could easily integrate, by the way)

The thing does it for me with kip is the workflow you use to get the docs in the system in the first place. It’s so simple it makes me want to do it, not leave them hanging around the house, which is half the battle personally.

Plus, all the docs are stored as pdf’s, so you could definitely run them through some OCR software later to get the text embedded into them. This would make them searchable, although without kip’s tags.

The ideal solution would be for to kip to gain OCR integration, and embed its tags into the file’s spotlight headers. kip developers, I hope you are listening, there seems to be demand here!

Why not add searchable/usable metadata that Spotlight can use?

Scan the document to PDF (or an image, I suppose) and then edit it and add your own metadata (OCR would be best but you’ll likely not be able to get something capable for free)? If you had to scan to image, you could insert that into a word processing document and add meta as text and then save to PDF.

Yes, it’d be more work but wouldn’t it also be more useful?

One question for you guys, though. Paperport used a nifty scanner that was really slim and stood between your monitor and your keyboard. It was an autofeeding rolling scanner, which sensed when you were feeding it a document and would auto-start the software and scan the document without any need to launch the program or press a button. Is there a macosx-compatible scanner out there right now that can do this? Especially useful if it works in color and can work from the keyboard’s USB port (as it’s RIGHT there, although voltage may not be enough).

I am english. So there!

@ Eric - I actually don’t use kip for organisation of any other pdf’s than bills and scanned paper. This to me is what it is designed for. I would suggest Devonthink or Yojimbo for any other pdf’s, but even these aren’t perfect. There isn’t, to my knowledge, a versatile pdf browser / filer / cataloguer on the market that will do everything well.

I am incharge of all documents of a very large Non Profit Organisation. I was seriously thinking of scanning all documents in to PDF and file them in nested folders - tree fashion. Do you suggest I use KIP instead? Please help me

Kip works well when scanning as it is designed exactly for the job intended - just paper. The files end up being around 1-2MB, and I find the quality acceptable for reprinting. You can’t however change the settings (dpi, colour, etc) used, but they work for me. Maybe this will come in a later release. Adding on multiple pages to a document is fairly painless too. I should be a salesman for this app…

Also, please please please review the difference between “its,” the possessive, and “it’s,” the contraction of “it is.” This caused physical pain at several points while reading your otherwise reasonably literate piece.

FWIW, I documented my paper workflow here:

http://www.majid.info/mylos/weblog/2006/05/01-1.html

The Apple Blog details how to organize your important paperwork digitally using Mac apps kip and Knox. kip takes care of the scanning and categorisation, whilst Knox keeps your documents secure. Knox is not an essential, as you could……

@Vuong- iPhoto could handle it yes, using another library would be best. kip however just makes life easy by scanning and handling the organisation in one.

@Brandon and Angel - Good luck!

I’ve been looking for a solution to all these piles of paper!

As for Scanning.. well use of a ADF (Auto document feeder) would be sweet. I thought about getting a newer brother scanner with a ADF and network interface.. thus scanning could be a task done solo; without the use of a computer.. just the computer set up to be NAS/ server for the scanned images to be stored.

then iPhoto could import the docs as needed…

I would start doing this but i want a faster USB scanner and /or ADF feature..

hmmm
Very good home office paper-less office implementation. receipts, bills, important docs other than photos.. nice.