The answer
$scope.$watch('$viewContentLoaded',
function() {
$timeout(function() {
//do something
},0);
});
is the only one that works in most scenarios I tested. In a sample page with 4 components all of which build HTML from a template, the order of events was
$document ready
$onInit
$postLink
(and these 3 were repeated 3 more times in the same order for the other 3 components)
$viewContentLoaded (repeated 3 more times)
$timeout execution (repeated 3 more times)
So a $document.ready() is useless in most cases since the DOM being constructed in angular may be nowhere near ready.
But more interesting, even after $viewContentLoaded fired, the element of interest still could not be found.
Only after the $timeout executed was it found. Note that even though the $timeout was a value of 0, nearly 200 milliseconds elapsed before it executed, indicating that this thread was held off for quite a while, presumably while the DOM had angular templates added on a main thread. The total time from the first $document.ready() to the last $timeout execution was nearly 500 milliseconds.
In one extraordinary case where the value of a component was set and then the text() value was changed later in the $timeout, the $timeout value had to be increased until it worked (even though the element could be found during the $timeout). Something async within the 3rd party component caused a value to take precedence over the text until sufficient time passed. Another possibility is $scope.$evalAsync, but was not tried.
I am still looking for that one event that tells me the DOM has completely settled down and can be manipulated so that all cases work. So far an arbitrary timeout value is necessary, meaning at best this is a kludge that may not work on a slow browser. I have not tried JQuery options like liveQuery and publish/subscribe which may work, but certainly aren't pure angular.