Working document is a Markdown file, though the system would also work with Rich Text; and the student essays are in either an indexed folder or imported Group. (It doesn’t matter which.) Then I do the following:
- Copy the item link of the Markdown file.
- Set that item link as the URL property of each essay in the folder, either by a Smart Rule as below, or by checking URL in View => List Columns… and pasting manually into that column for each essay in the list view. (Or you can just paste into the URL field in the Generic tab in Properties, which can be useful if you have late single entries to add; and @saltlane has a great tip below about doing it with Batch Process.) This sets the Markdown file as the Annotation file for each of the essays.
- Now select all the essays in list view, choose Copy Item Link, and paste into the Markdown file. This gives you links in your Markdown file to each of the essays.
- Optionally, replace “[” with “# [” to turn the linked essay titles to Markdown headers. As well as showing in your chosen heading style in the document, they’ll appear as items in the Markdown file’s Table of Contents. This is particularly neat in WYSIWYG view for links (Settings => Files => Markdown and check “WYSIWYG images & links”). I write my overall feedback on each essay under the header for each.
- Open any essay in a separate window (or open the Markdown file in a separate window and click on the link to any essay); maximise the window to fill the screen; drag the Inspector pane’s separator leftwards to maximum width or your preferred optimum; and select the Inspector’s Annotations tab.
You’ll then have your essay in the left-hand (Preview) pane, and your comments document in the right-hand (Annotations Inspector) pane; and can move between essays by clicking on the appropriate link in the Inspector pane. You can also include links to other documents you may need to call up as you go.
Sometimes it’s more convenient to write comments directly into the online marking system (Turnitin or whatever) and then paste them into the Markdown file for my records. But doing it in DT has the advantage that you can move very rapidly between different essays (“Ah, I linked to a reference in my feedback on that earlier essay that would be relevant here as well; now where was it…?”).
I think I’m only scratching the surface of what you can do with this setup, which is particularly useful when you have a folder full of documents you need to write notes about one by one, but can also be used for any kind of writing where you have an assortment of source documents to call up Scrivener-style. Just set your working MD or RTF file to be those documents’ Annotation file via the URL trick, and do your writing in the resized Inspector pane.