Thanks for the suggestions Silverstone!
I especially appreciated the OmniOutliner tip. I have been using it for the past few months for outlining and organizing my notes for longer form writing projects. For some reason, I did not realize that it supports markdown. I will be playing with this a bit more!
Using iA Writer for markdown was one of the first things that I played around with during my transition to DEVONthink. I really am not averse to switching to a markdown approach to my small to medium size notes as I have already been using iA Writer for my longer form writing.
Where I am still struggling is with my typical use case for notes at work. I travel to different sites for my job and quite frequently I like to take notes on a process that I may need to replicate down the road or show others how to do. For notes like these, I like to add pictures so they become like mini-instruction manuals.
In a dedicated note app, like Evernote, this process is extremely efficient and easy. While I am in my note typing away, I simply tap the add picture button and snap a photo. I am even able to quickly markup the photo with things like arrows and text.
I realize I can do this in iA Writer, but I worry I may need to sacrifice some efficiency. I believe it would require me to take my photos separately (in the photos app) if I want to mark them up. I am still intrigued to see if I can make this setup work.
I am also not clear on how I can link the iA Writer notes with DEVONthink. It would be amazing if I could and then even sync these iA Writer documents to some cloud storage that could be indexed by DEVONthink. Then I could use DEVONthink to add metadata to the notes and take advantage of DEVONthink’s search capabilities for finding them later. I would just create any new iOS-based notes with pictures with iA Writer, then.
I do need to learn more about referencing cloud-based folders with DEVONthink works, though. I just tried referencing a folder that has an iA Writer .txt file and the supporting images in it, but DEVONthink did not render the markdown at all. I am sure it is because it is a .txt file. I will need to play around with this a bit more.
One reason why I still like the prospect of Bear is that it is a markdown based notes app that can support the exact photo-based workflow I use with Evernote right in the app. Ideally, I would be able to accomplish this type of Evernote picture workflow right in DTTG. Maybe someday I will be able to and I can get rid of my patchwork app system. I still am pretty concerned about Evernote in general, enough to want to find an exit strategy now, even if just means moving to something else like Bear.
Thanks again for the suggestions. I appreciate them and will play around with them some more!