I have a bunch of PDFs with citation information in HTML files. From those PDF files I want to save information such as this:
The URL I can attach fairly easily, but what about the text?
I could make a PDF annotation, I suppose, but that seems a bit kludgey.
One approach would be to copy/paste the citation information into the Spotlight Comments field of the PDF’s Info panel.
True, but not really an attractive idea, IMO.
So far I’ve settled on renaming them in DT itself with the citation information.
However, I’ve just realized that DevonThink has columns for Description, Author, Title, Headline, and Subject, which I would really like to use:
Here’s an obnoxiously large screenshot showing the columns that I am talking about:
http://images.luo.ma/skitch/devonthink-how-do-i-edit-these-columns-20140218-131634.png
HOWEVER, those columns seem to be “read-only” within DevonThink…
So… how can I use them?
The only one of those ‘extra’ columns that is available for all document filetypes is the Spotlight Comments column, which can be added via View > Columns > Spotlight Comments. If you used the suggestion about to store citation information in the Spotlight Comments field of the Info panel, at least a portion of the citation information would be available in this column. If the citation information is long, it could be viewed while the document is selected if Shift-Command-I is pressed.
The others that you noted are those in Document Properties (Tools > Show Properties), which are editable for only a few filetypes, and not universally editable even for PDF or text documents.
My own preference for adding metadata such as citation information and notes is to create an Annotation note for the document (Data > New from Template > Annotation – a keyboard shortcut is shown). The Annotation note is linked both to and from the referenced document. Annotation notes work for documents of any filetype, and are searchable.
AHA! Annotation notes sound a much better solution, although I really would like to be able to find all documents by a specific author. I’ll figure that out another day, I guess.
Thanks! I wasn’t aware of Annotation Notes so this was really helpful.
Put the Author;s name in the Anntation Note and then you will be able to find as you want. I use Annotations for this and it wrks very well.
They are active and editable in Tools > Show Properties… for document types that support these metadata. For example, when a PDF is selected one can edit Author, Title, Subject, and Keywords in Show Properties… If you were wanting to edit all of a PDF’s metadata you’d need to use Acrobat or some such app.
