That’s the thing that really disappoints me - it’s really basic stuff, being able to easily add a comment, and then see the comment when you later come back to the document. It’s not an ‘advanced’ feature at all. I didn’t bother checking that feature out before paying my $150 - just assumed any document organisation program would have it. My bad.
Still, I can hope. I’ll put a suggestion in the Requests & Suggestions part of the forum, see what happens.
To help me better understand where DT could be improved, I’ve looked at some of the suggestions for alternative solutions to annotate a document. I’ve used Evernote for a while now, but I confess that I have used it only casually. But for the life of me, I don’t see how to add annotations to any documents in Evernote-clicking in a window and typing does nothing, unless I am clicking on a text document and then typing just edits the contents of the document. What am I overlooking here?
Thanks Greg, it’s reassuring to see active interest.
You’re right, clicking in a text document just edits the document.
But try clicking on the thin white space just before an image - a (tall) cursor appears. Hit return and backspace one, and you can type as much text as you want above the image (you may have to scroll the image down a little, the white space isn’t always immediately obvious).
Effectively the image appears inline with the text, just like in a word processor.
You can do the same with pdfs too, and it also works for all other documents that aren’t actually directly text-editable. Nice when it’s a file that doesn’t immediately display the relevant info - such as an audio file, or a pdf with a first page that doesn’t have a title - you can put a quick description on the first line so you can immediately see what the file is.
The point of these is that you can add context to images and pdfs, and those comments are obvious and immediately visible when you later revisit the document. In the case of images, having a description makes it much more likely that the image will be returned in appropriate searches. (I know, you can have a very descriptive title, or a large description in the spotlight comments, but this is just so much more elegant, particularly if your comments run for a few lines).
I add comments to Spotlight Comments, but it is rather clumsy. Having to open the Info pane to read the comments is a nuisance and a more slick approach would be welcome.
N
How about incorporating a simple way to annotate a document in the next iteration? Plenty of other software offers it, it doesn’t seem as if it would be hard to do, people are asking for it, and it would make a lot of users a lot happier with DT, including me.
Try this. Install this script in your DT scripts folder. It will allow you to select one or more documents in DT and optionally add the same comment to all documents (appending to existing comments where they exist), or individually edit the comments. You may apply a shortcut key to the script (e.g., by adding “___Cmd-F12” to the name just before the .scpt extension), or use QuicKeys, etc.
-- change the tell to the model of DT that you have installed
tell application id "com.devon-technologies.thinkpro2"
try
set theSelection to the selection
if theSelection is {} then error "Please select some contents."
-- Do you want to edit individual comments, or apply the change to all selected comments?
set theOptions to {"Apply to All", "Edit Each"}
set theChoice to (choose from list theOptions with prompt "Choose:") as text
-- If you want to apply to all selected comments, then do the following
if theChoice is "Apply to All" then
set thePrompt to "Enter Text to Apply to All Selected Comments..."
set theAppend to text returned of (display dialog thePrompt default answer "")
repeat with this_item in theSelection
set thisComment to the comment of this_item
if length of thisComment > 0 then
set the comment of this_item to (comment of this_item) & " " & theAppend
else
set the comment of this_item to theAppend
end if
end repeat
end if
-- If you want to edit each comment individually, then do the following
if theChoice is "Edit Each" then
repeat with this_item in theSelection
set thisName to "Existing comment for: " & name of this_item
set tempComment to the comment of this_item
set tempComment to text returned of (display dialog thisName default answer tempComment)
set the comment of this_item to tempComment
end repeat
end if
on error error_message number error_number
if the error_number is not -128 then display alert "DEVONthink Pro" message error_message as warning
end try
end tell
I just want to add my +1 for a more intuitive way to add comments to a document. I too appreciate the ease of Evernote in having the document and the comments right in the same container. That siad, there are probably limitations based on the way DT is handling the document. So some other pane - perhaps a user selectable option to show and edit various types of meta data in the 4th pane - would be most welcome.
I vote for this as well. In my limited experience with DT, this is my number one complaint.
If not a separate annotation function, an enhanced version of the existing RTF Annotation note would work great.
Whenever I view a file, I would like the option to have it’s associated annotation notes automatically open in tabs or windows.
Whenever I view a file or an annotation, I would like to automatically see a list of all associated annotations or files in the Info panel or elsewhere. This is most important. Right now you only have the URL field or the bar above the document which can only contain one link and is not updated if you delete an annotation file.
The URL field should no longer be used. It’s not flexible enough. DT should maintain bi-directional links elsewhere that allow for multiple annotation notes to be linked to files.
What doubledge just wrote goes for me too. I’d really, REALLY like that capability.
A great example of this implementation is in the program SOHO Notes. They have a similar info bar on the right side that has three expandable sections for tags, comments and attachments. While viewing a file, you can drag any other file to the attachments section and it creates a bidirectional link. You can also right click in this window to create a new doc that is automatically linked to the file you are viewing. When viewing a file with attachments the name of each attached file shows up in this area and you can double click it to open it in a new window. You can seemingly link any number of files to one file and all their names are listed in this window. It’s a many-to-many relationship. As you view a file that has attachments or links it also highlights the file name of all linked files that exist in the main file list window as you navigate your folders. This feature is probably the best thing about SOHO Notes.
I desperately hope something like this makes it into DTP. 
What I’ve started to do is add an annotation, and then move it from the Annotations folder to the folder containing the file I’m annotating.
I like how there’s a little icon next to the files I’ve annotated, but it would be really useful if it linked to the annotation itself.
Michael U
I also think that this would be extremely useful!
Ditto.
Also, when a document is viewed in the lower pane, there doesn’t seem to be any way to see if it has an annotation or get to its annotation file (whereas if the document is open in a separate window, you can see the link at the top and click on it to open the annotation).
I know I’m late to the party, but: If we could use Applescript to set, say, the label of any item with an annotation to a given value, this would be one way to see at at glance which items have annotations. My guess is this isn’t possible, but would love to hear that I’m wrong.
IMHO that is only a workaround, as it is no solution for people who already use labels and so would use information, if those labels were overwritten by “annotated”
Adding the capability to annotate text in DTP would be awesome.
I am not sure what this is supposed to look like.
Hi - not the above poster, but would like to field this since I also think DTP is lacking in annotation features.
Here’s what I’d like to do:
Open a document, say a PDF.
Highlight text - by the way, the Devon PDF thing is really clunky with highlights. Preview’s is good. iAnnotate and a few others are good. I use FoxIt on mobile and that’s good.
Okay, highlight text - and then tag the highlight.
Then you can make scripts to excerpt highlighted passages as organized by tags. I hope you can see the utility in this simple idea.
A multi-level tagging system might help.
This is a really old thread which has been revived and DT has moved on a lot.
I agree that there is lot of room for this to become a native function but their are numerous scripts on this forum which will do all this and have a lot more functionality besides.
korm’s original annotation and tagging script is evergreen: [url]Make an Annotation with Links, Notes, Tags v2]
If you want a little bit more functionality (and the added complexity that goes with it) then try this : [url]Put up Example page]
For certain types of annotation where its important to see the passage in context then try this: [url]Whole page pdf annotating]
and if you want to produce a table of annotations and the source documents from where they originate you could try something like this: [url]Export an index of annotations to a numbers spreadsheet]
Maybe you want to layout your annotations on a timeline: [url]Export to Aeon Timeline]
What about a concordance of your annotations: [url]Create concordance for a selection of records]
With 60 000 posts the forums are a treasure trove of ideas. Explore them.
Frederiko
Scripts are nice and useful for targeted functions, but those want to “just use” DTPO should not have to use scripts etc. to do basic functions including editing and commenting.