Hi,
I find custom metadata incredibly useful for cross-linking.
Basically I have created several “link categories” using rich text fields. In the “related” category, if a document is related to e.g. three others, their names and item links get pasted in the respective field. Then, via search, I can later find all the documents which contain a link to document x in that link category. I also have categories for e.g. the topic summaries, which a given insight in my Zettelkasten have been “transcluded into”. The point being: I intend to use custom metadata extensively.
However, currently DTTG doesn’t support custom metadata at all. In order to at least access all these cross-links on my Ipad and not be completely “locked out” from them, I tried to get used to always pasting links into custom metadata fields and additionally into the Annotations field. For this purpose, created a template with the categories as headings and a macro that makes it relatively easy to “double-paste” items on Mac.
But really, this is still quite a pain and feels inefficient. In the end, I decided that maintaining such a system with duplicate entries is unsustainable, i.e. any later change would always have to be manually done in two places to keep it current.
So I have for now surrendered to the fact, that due to custom metadata not being available in DTTG, the iPad will be used mainly for reading and annotating documents.
Based on my enthusiasm about the usefulness of custom metadata, I would love to see this become available on DTTG! Even just a viewer that makes it possible to see the metadata fields’ contents and follow contained cross-links would add tremendous value for my use case.
Editing capabilities would be a cherry on top, but let’s be honest: In the end iOS devices are more suited to content consumption than real work, for which I would probably use the macbook anyway.
Thanks for considering.