No, you can’t customize this. This may be possible at some point in the future, maybe 3.x but bugs are priority now.
hmm, I don’t have such a template in my New -> From Template to create an annotation file (I know it exists in DT2 - in DT3 there is no one, also checked to “look for more…” on your web server, no annotation template)
it’s directly above the annotation field in the inspector, clicking on the small arrow (see @BLUEFROG 's screenshot)
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- Auto-sort from Global Inbox directly to open databases
- Custom metadata
- Single-window interface (almost)
Plus more than a year of extremely reliable sync to DTTG using a personal WebDAV server.
Is this worth the 100€ upgrade? Lots of stuff I still don’t like about DT, but I’m using it for everything, the company stays away from subscription fees and support is very reactive. So yes.
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Encrypted databases is another new feature I’m using from day 1. It allows me to get rid of Notational Velocity that I had used for encrypted notes so far.
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Thanks for pointing out where to create annotations. The manual says
Choose Data > New from Template > Annotation to create an annotation file.
…but that option is not available in the Data menu.
I asked support, and the documentation is out of date for that (part of things being in beta). If you select the drop down menu of the Annotation item in the inspector, you get the option.
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What I am loving is the relative ease with which I was able to swap over to beta. A few minor tweaks to keyboard maestro and Hazel and I was off and running. DT3 is a visual masterpiece.
Also, documentation is my favorite thing (Thats for you Blue!)
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Also, documentation is my favorite thing (Thats for you Blue!)
Thanks. Edits to make but I’m pretty proud of it.
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I’ve been using DTPO for 8 years, primarily for home use to manage scanned docs from a Scansnap scanner. I also have databases for business records, taxes, hobbies, etc… I haven’t been much of a power user but this DT3 beta has gotten me to dig deeper, start reading the docs and see what I’m missing (lot’s, it turns out!).
My favorite feature so far is the ability to see my search results in icon view. Maybe this could be done in DT2 but I have never been able to find it. I often need to search the thousands of PDF’s I have scanned looking for that one document, and in DT2 all I ever saw was a list of files and had to use Quicklook to scan through them since they mostly had file names based on the scan date. I admit I have not been a “filer”, most of these scanned docs remain in my global Inbox (untagged and un-annotated). Now being able to see thumbnails of my PDF’s I can more easily scan through the search results to find the doc I’m looking for.
I’ll try not to be too embarrassed if you tell me this was possible for the last 8 years 
My intention is to get my global inbox under control one of these days but that is going to be a big project.
Not sure if this has been mentioned above somewhere, but I am absolutely loving the ability to “see” occurrences of my search term in the Search ‘inspector’, and have this ‘update’ each time I select a different file.
I have found this exponentially much quicker (than DTPO2) in working through a mass of PDFs, in order to find a particular phrase/quote that I remember reading somewhere…
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My intention is to get my global inbox under control one of these days but that is going to be a big project.
Here’s a blog post on the topic that may be helpful:
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Thanks, that is helpful.
Could you describe in more detail how you transitioned from BibDesk to DT and/or how you integrate the two? I have about 7000 BD records with linked PDFs and am reluctant but also tempted to try this.
Happy to explain what I’m doing. In BibDesk, I only keep a single bibtex-database that contains all my literature so I can cite it in LaTeX. This database contains no pdfs. The only “integration” between BibDesk and DT is that I copy the bibtex citation command (e.g. \cite{muller2018overconfidence}) to the top of the annotion of the pdfs (of research articles) that I keep in DT. So whenever I want to cite an article, I can either get the citation from BibDesk, or, more likely, from the article’s annotation in DT.
My setup in DT is as follows. I have a literature (pdf) collection (sorted alphabetically in groups A…Z, where I sort the articles by first Author name, e.g. Muller (2018 AER) A survey on experiments on overconfidence.pdf). Each of those articles exists only once in DT. The real action happens in the annotation. When I read an article, I sometimes use a color highlight (different colours e.g., for “standard highlight”, “errors”, “interesting methodology” etc.) in the pdf only as needed, just to be able to quickly find certain parts in the text; and simultaneously, I take written notes in the annotation file (For simplicity, I do not use any other fancy pdf-annotation tools). Each paper I’m writing (or project I’m working on) has a project code, e.g. “(prj1)”. For each project, I use several standard tags for the literature workflow. First a pdf gets the tag “(prj1)new” if it is potentially relevant and I want to mark it for later. Then, when I come back to it, I read it and decide whether it gets the tag “(prj1)no” (irrelevant for the project) or “(prj1)coll” (for “literature collection”) if it is relevant but not clear yet in which way I will use it. In the annotation file, I take general notes and I also write project specific notes, where each project gets a separate paragraph (marking it with the project code “(prj1):”). Finally, when I have decided to cite the paper, I copy my exact formulation into the annotation and mark the pdf with tag “(prj1)cited”. Thus, I can see at a glance how and where I have previously cited a given pdf.
The project tags are also used in order to collect the relevant papers at a glance when I work on the project. For each project, I have a project group with all project-related material. In this group I have a separate smart group for each of the project’s literature tags, so I can see the state of the literature workflow for this project at a glance and easily scroll through the papers (and now in DT3 also see the annotations automatically). For instance, I can see that the smart group “(prj1)new” contains 10 new articles that I have to look through, and decide what to do with them.
Over time, a pdf article collects several project tags (i see that I have cited it a lot), and the annotation contains several project-specific entries. The idea is that I can see at a glance what this article means to my work, how I cited it and why. This makes it easy to reuse my notes for future projects.
I also like the fact that annotations in DT are RTFs. This makes them extremely flexible. Suppose I have some scanned handwritten notes about an article or have done some calculations in, say, Mathematica. Then i can put links to those documents into the annotation. I can also put pictures or other objects directly into the annotation. Thus, the annotation is the central place that contains everything that is relevant for me regarding a certain research article, and I can never miss that information in the future.
The second major reason why I keep pdfs in DT is that I maintain a “wikipedia-style” collection of interlinked RTF files in which I collect knowledge about certain topics and methods. There, I can easily put DT-links to my pdfs. And, finally, I make use of replicants of each pdf as needed without the need to ever duplicate them.
I think that DT (together with BibDesk) provides everything I need. I’m aware that many of you here are fond of automation and scripting, and that my workflow can be improved. However, I have become more and more aware of the fact that changing your workflow (and using a lot of different software) distracts me from actual work (although it is a lot of fun), so I settle for “good enough”, in order to focus on my work 
cheers!
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I have been super busy and not paying attention to the forums so I was pleasantly surprised to be notified about the beta. This is an insta-purchase for me:) My experience with the developers is that any issue/bug I may experience will be addressed. I haven’t dug to deep yet into features but DT3 simply looks amazing. DT2 was looking a bit dated.
Edit: Technically not an “insta-purchase”- My wife and kids are purchasing DT3 for me for my 40th birthday in a couple days. They’ve been after me for a gift idea so this seemed appropriate lol!
Thanks for this long post. I think the hard part for me to adjust is that for me the Bibdesk record is at the center of things - I generally don’t know or care what a particular file name is, and may have several separate files (article, notes at various times, etc.) linked to a single record. And the x-bdsk:// urls are how I refer back to items in my notes. What I like most about the system you describe is the tagging system that allows for a review of how you have been using the literature. That has been definitely missing in my system, at least in an organized way. And it could be implemented in BD keywords as easily as in DT, I think.
Tom,
your workflow strikes me as particularly efficient. Thank you for sharing.
@tom12 Many thanks for the description of your DT setup. I was especially intrigued by the use of tags to follow the status of your literature reviews e.g. (prj1)new. In my personal case I have many projects (usually one per satellite mission or similar) each implemented as it’s own DT group. So (prj1) would actually be a group such as “NewRadarSatellite” or whatever the name of the mission is. I probably have 15 to 20 new projects hence groups per year.
It occurred to me that the Tags for each project could be generated in an automatic way using Smart Templates which would take the name of the project name from the group name and generate the Tags for each stage of the literature review e.g. NewRadarSatelliteNew, NewRadarSatelliteNo, NewRadarSatelliteColl and NewRadarSatelliteCited which can be expanded depending on the various stages one follows.
Unfortunately a quick check in the Smart Groups templates tells me the scripting (seems to be AppleScript) is above my level of competence. I’ve also not found relevant Smart Group examples that focus on Tags rather than groups or notes. In my case the project name can change and the script would be a way of enforcing the tags are updated accordingly. Anyway perhaps some else sees an advantage of this approach too and can contribute. I’ll continue manually for the moment.
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So (prj1) would actually be a group such as “NewRadarSatellite” or whatever the name of the mission is.
Perhaps you would be helped by Group Tags (see Help > Documentattion > Getting Started > Tagging > Group Tags, which also links to Getting Started > DEVONthink Simplified > Groups)?