The capture menu item in DTTG is a very convenient way to extract some passage from a document (in particular pdf), and, if needed, to add some ad hoc notes. In my view, it would be drastically more useful, if an item page link or (once implemented in DTTG - hint :-), item selection link, is placed into the capture document, along with the captured text. In addition, an option text + highlight would be most useful, where the selected text in the original pdf becomes automatically highlighted along with the capture (with the highlight color currently chosen in the edit menu). With these minimal additions, a fast connection between the original text and the capture is established.
Collecting information in this way is somewhat orthogonal to annotation files. With capture, I can produce quick references to individual locations across many documents I encounter. They get accumulated capture by capture in the Global Inbox, but can easily be merged into a single document in DT on the Mac (that’s my workflow: study, think, collect with DTTG, then collate, organize, process with DT).
Fair enough. Mostly I was thinking about pdfs, because that’s the dominant document type I read (journal articles, books, etc.). But it could really be any document, including webpages, where I can make a text selection and DTTG offers the copy command (e.g. Keynote, Pages, Word previews, webarchives). It’s a trivial step from copy to capture. For each doc type, capture would add the resource locator, i.e. the item link for DT internal files, and the URL for webpage. For item links, DTTG would choose the tightest possible one. If I understand correctly, that’s just the item link for anything but pdf. For pdf it would be the item page link (or some day, hopefully, the item selection link). Btw., when capturing from a webpage, this is already implemented, as the URL is attached. I would prefer the URL/item link to be included in the captured text (as a plain text or rich text link depending on the chosen format for the note), but that’s a personal preference.
While testing out different file types, to see if they offer the capture command, I found something odd: When I select some text in plain, rich, markdown and webpages, sometimes capture appears and sometimes not (but copy is always offered up) Feels at this point random, but I have not looked much into it. For pdfs, it consistently works.
In summary, a wide-ranging, fast, capture utility for all resources in which one can select/copy text, adding a resource locator such that the origin of the captured snippet is preserved, seems like a most useful tool. And it’s essentially already there.
Looking again, I might have misinterpreted what document you are referring to? You meant the resulting document? In that case, my suggestion refers to the “text” type of capture-note, i.e. Rich/Formatted/Markdown/Plain text note.
The rationale: My workflow involves creating such snippet items from a wide range of documents as I work on a certain topic and jump from doc to doc and webpages on a random walk. These snippets end up in the Global Inbox, and later on, in DT I will consolidate this information into summary documents. One way of getting a lot of snippets quickly into a summary document is to use the merge command in DT. When merging, there is only one URL field for the new document, and the URLs/item links have to stay with their respective snippet paragraphs in the new document.