I am working on an inventory of home contents for my mom. I’ve collected several hundred photographs and added several custom metadata fields to group items to my taste. Now I would like to leverage this work to ‘publish’ a catalog for her estate lawyer. I’ve reached the current limit of my DT foo. Here is what I think should be possible, what efforts I’ve taken, and the various dead-ends I find myself in.
I would like to be able to select a group of photographs and ‘export’ them as PDF with the custom metadata fields in the style of a museum catalogue.
I started by creating a summary markdown document by pasting item links to the photos in a group. This works nicely, however, I am not able to ‘access’ the custom metadata of the images in the document.
Is there a way to ‘bind’ the placeholders to the ‘source’ photograph ?
Is there a way to ‘copy’ a group of custom metadata fields into a markdown document ?
I have had some success creating an ‘imprint’ stamp, but my preference is to have the metadata associated to the image within the textual portion of the document.
Is there a way to have the ‘imprinted’ data placed in a margin or border region around the image? I have experimented with some of the placement settings but this goal doesn’t seem attainable.
The metadata overview is awfully close to what I would like; I can remove the unwanted fields and get a spreadsheet.
Is there a way to have the image embed directly in the metadata view … ?
While it’s an admirable challenge, you are definitely trying to do things DEVONthink isn’t made for. You are describing features of page layout, web design apps, and graphic applications. Just like hammering a nail with a screwdriver, you may achieve the goal… eventually, but it would be more easily done with the appropriate tools.
Is there a way to have the image embed directly in the metadata view … ?
No. Technically, there is a hack but it’s not officially supported and ends up not being useful at all.
Can you share details of what’s included in your home inventory “catalog”
I use an applescript to generate my version; a list of items sorted by room/name
Each item is organized as a group holding documents/receipts/photos/…
The script retrieves the item name and url from the group and inserts a hyperlink to the item
Yes - the general ‘pattern’ is simple by way of available mechanics. I’ve got a directory structure:
home
floor
room
in each ‘room’ I place photos that I’ve taken and these are associated to a set of custom metadata fields. Type of content, location, associated history, inheritor possibly a value associated
I’ve got a little bit of python that I am now using to process the output of ‘file-> export → Metadata (JSON)’ output for a file. I run my script to generate ‘little’ markdown files with metadata headers representing the fields mentioned above.
I think if I can summarize that with a transclusion file for each room on a floor with a bit of scale control on the images I should be well content. @BLUEFROG I have taken your advice and learned a bit more about MMD and some of additional ancillary support in DT.
Thank you all, and @DTLow I am happy to chat more …
