In DEVONthink, annotation files (not to be confused with other kinds of annotations, such as annotations in PDF files) are accessed via the Annotations & Reminders inspector panel.
Personally, I find that editing an annotation file is more conveniently done in a separate window instead of the little box in the inspector. I wanted to have a keyboard shortcut to quickly open an annotation file in a separate window, but it does not seem possible to target the “Open” command in that pull-down menu via macOS’s built-in shortcuts facility, nor have I been able to invoke it directly via Keyboard Maestro.
Thankfully, it is possible to write a short AppleScript program to tell DEVONthink to open the annotation file in a new window, and this in turn can be set up as an action in a utility such as Keyboard Maestro with a keyboard shortcut. Here is such a script:
tell application id "DNtp"
try
repeat with theRecord in (selection as list)
if (exists annotation of theRecord) then
set annot to get annotation of theRecord
set annotRecord to get record with uuid (get uuid of annot)
open window for record annotRecord with force
else
set rec_name to get name of theRecord
display alert "Document has no annotation" message rec_name
end if
end repeat
on error error_message number error_number
if the error_number is not -128 then
display alert "DEVONthink" message error_message as warning
end if
end try
end tell
(The code is also available from one of my GitHub repositories.) The script will handle multiple selections, and open each annotation file in a separate window. It will show a warning dialog if a document does not have an annotation file associated with it.
Maybe this will be useful to other people too. (And if there is a better way, I’d be happy to hear about it.)