I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to annotate files, and organize my annotations in DTP – which is the final repository for my files & documents. I’ve tried various approaches that users have suggested here, and was advised by DTP staff to post this query so that others could trade ideas about their work process.
I should explain that I work on articles and books. So, I’m struggling to figure out an annotation and an annotation-organizational approach that allows me to group annotations for specific projects (e.g., articles - say, on the War of 1812), as well annotations that crossover my projects and contain global themes (e.g., for books - such as on early American history).
My annotation workflow basically involves:
b[/b] Clipping documents on Mac & on iOS (i.e., DTP & DTTG) – more specifically, saving documents as a PDF format (which seems better for annotation) – and saving them on a synced DTP database.
b[/b] Read and do a cursory annotation on files, with highlights, notes, etc.
b[/b] Review annotated files, and select annotated passages that were especially noteworthy and important.
I’ve been trying to figure out the best approach for organizing those “noteworthy and important” annotations in DTP.
Naturally, there are several ways to annotate, and various approaches for organizing annotations. DTP serves as one of my central apps, especially for storing, consolidating and organizing files. So, it’s important for me to incorporate an annotation approach that works with DTP.
Here are the three main approaches that I’ve tried…
b[/b] I was really impressed with the “one thought, one note” approach to annotation. That led me to to the “Make an Annotation with Links, Notes, Tags” script that was created and further developed by users @korm, @Frederiko, et. al. ([url]Annotation Pane (Annotation with Links, Notes, Tags v3)])
That script help isolate certain key annotations, affix notes to them, and organize them in multiple groups – in this case, tags. Furthermore, when clicking on “Page” link (created by the script) it refers back to the exact portion of the annotated text, and highlights it with an animated flash – making it easy to spot the original text, making it enormously convenient time-saver feature.
b[/b] @korm kindly suggested Marginnote as an alternative way to sync and annotate files. Marginnote is a terrific app with many creative and useful ways to annotate, such as allowing users to create outlines / MindMaps of notes within the margin (hence the name), as well as affixing hashtags to annotations (which kind of work like tags). Also, one can annotate and sync files within Marginnote’s Mac and iOS app interfaces, and that’s a huge plus.
b[/b] Highlights is a solid app for extracting the annotations from a document, and compiling them into a stand-alone file of consolidated annotations. It’s also possible to make further annotations in Highlights, or tweak existing ones, and export a file from Highlights into DTP tags (though it takes a bit of finagling).
All of the apps and approaches are really terrific; the users and developers put a lot of thought and care into their respective approaches. What follows isn’t a knock on any of them. Also, I might be misapplying these apps and approaches and/or ought doing something entirely different. But before I get to that, the larger limitations I’ve faced w/ the annotation - tag process include:
b[/b] I’ve been advised to maintain most of my work projects in a single work database (though I concede this might be a mistake). That can create a problem with tag systems since there are only one set of tags per DTP database. So, I struggle with either having a complicated tag system for various projects within a single database or creating multiple databases for each individual project. If I do the former, I’ve got a sprawling tag system that’s hard to navigate; if I do the latter, it means that each tag system is narrowly focused, yet segregated from other databases, and therein separated from work projects where there might be overlapping subjects.
b[/b] That problem of separate tag system also goes to one of the main problems that I mentioned above: I haven’t yet figured out how to create a DTP tag system for specific projects as well as for global / crossover themes.
b[/b] While I appreciate the tagging process, I’ve learned what people mean when they say they’ve come burdened with “tag farming.” Tags are definitely a handy tool. But I’ve also found that I often expend more energy organizing my annotations w/ them than actually reading, annotating, and synthesizing the material. Again, I could be doing tags all wrong – this is just my experience with them.
So, here are the limitations that I face with my approach when using the aforementioned script and apps…
b[/b] The “Make an Annotation with Links, Notes, Tags” script is truly remarkable, and @Frederiko’s latest incarnation of it is really smart and elegant. Unfortunately, I do my much of my first reading and annotating on an iPad (I’m dyslexic, so it’s much easier for me). That means, I have to add another layer of work when I take an annotated file from the iPad (even if it’s synced within a DTP/DTTG database), and then process the same file through with the script in DTP.
While I love the way the script highlights annotations through the Page links, and allows me to add a note to a particular annotation, I’d just refer to the above section on the problems I’ve faced with tags and tag management.
b[/b] Marginnote is an awesome annotation app, but…so far it doesn’t interface with DTP, so right now there’s no way to export the annotations it creates (along with their hashtags) into DTP. I’m told that Marginnote might soon integrate with DTP in some way, and might even be able to port over their annotations into DTP tags (perhaps via Highlights).
b[/b] Highlights is also a super app. Unfortunately, there isn’t an iOS version of it, like Marginnote. The Highlights creator was kind enough to create a better interface with DTP, and enable Highlights to export files so that it “splits documents into a folder of files with one annotation per file.” While the latter feature is a great way to segment annotations with DTP, I’d ideally prefer export annotations that have tags instead of every annotation. That means, when users export annotation files to DTP, one has to delete Highlight-exported files that don’t have tags. Also, Highlights can’t import DTP’s tags (or hashtags from Marginnote). That means users have to create a “pick-list” in order to select @tags while using Highlights – or just write in each tag for annotated files (which can be time-consuming).
Again, these are all great apps and approaches, and I’m grateful for the hard work that their developers invested in them. I’m totally happy to consider another approach or app. I’m just trying to figure out how best to solve the annotation process and the craddle-to-grave and annotation-organizational process with DTP.
So, what’s your annotation / annotation-organizational approach? Any suggestions for a better approach for what I’m aiming to do?
Thanks for your help.
Thanks,