The ability to add annotations to documents works on iOS, but currently, as far as I can tell, support for custom annotation templates is yet not available. The last comment I can find in this forum about the topic, from @BLUEFROG, mentions this is on the list of planned future features.
Is the feature still planned, or is it available and I just haven’t figured out how to use it?
If it is indeed not yet available, does anyone have a good workaround or scheme for how to easily use custom annotation templates on iOS?
For additional context: The specific use case that is causing me some frustration right now is annotating PDFs (specifically, academic papers). My template for this case on macOS is a .md file stored in the expected place (~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink 3/Annotations.noindex). The template contains raw HTML and placeholders. Even if the placeholders wouldn’t get expanded, it would still be useful to have the rest of the custom structure when making annotations while reading papers on an iOS device.
A workaround might be to set “empty” annotations for all records that got no annotation record.
Here’s a quick script, I didn’t try to use a template (and it’s not really tested)
-- Create and set Annotations
tell application id "DNtp"
try
set theRecords to selected records whose annotation = missing value
if theRecords = {} then error "Please select some records."
repeat with thisRecord in theRecords
set thisRecord_AnnotationGroup to annotations group of database of thisRecord
set thisRecord_Annotation to create record with {name:(name without extension of thisRecord) & " (Annotation)", type:markdown, source:""} in thisRecord_AnnotationGroup
set annotation of thisRecord to thisRecord_Annotation
end repeat
on error error_message number error_number
if the error_number is not -128 then display alert "DEVONthink" message error_message as warning
return
end try
end tell
This would of course create a lot of unnecessary annotation records, however it might help.
The point of Pete’s approach is to pre-create the annotation documents (with the desired template) by using automation on a Mac, so they are available in DTTG when desired.