Upgrade StorageSuggestion/Feature Request: Enhanced note taking features
First of all, I want to express my gratitude to everyone involved in Zotero's development. Zotero 7, Zotero for Android and other improvements really are game changers for me.
Since there is always room for improvement and it is important to set priorities in a big project like Zotero, I understand that not all of our requests can be fulfilled. But Zotero is so close to having a full and seamless note-taking feature with annotation tags, standalone notes and related items. It also has native integration with Word, something which is achieved by tweaking in other workflows.
When we are discussing academic writing and tools that can help with our workflows with my colleagues, I notice there are some functionalities missing from Zotero that keep people from comitting to a full workflow wholly inside Zotero.
Functionalities missing in Zotero in my opinion are:
1. An easy indexing option with showing relations.
This might be achieved with graphs or easier use of related fields. In the current state, it is cumbersome to see relations in the long chain without viewing the item's full information and losing sight of previous item's data. A "Related" column in the main view would do the job.
2. Adding tags and related items directly from keyboard.
This would make indexing notes smoother. This can be achieved by easier jump to tags and related field which is something i mentioned earlier.
3. Adding a standalone note from an individual annotation.
Child notes are hard to move and index at this state. If indexing gets better, this might not be needed. This option should also include the parent item as a relation naturally, since adding note from annotations feature does so.
4. When an item is cited in a note, creating a relation between that note and the item cited automatically.
A similar implementation was requested in a different way earlier. https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/108268/bi-directional-link-between-citations-in-notes-and-items
This would enhance outlining in Zotero. Since my main need is a full-fledged note taking experience in Zotero, some other outlining improvements might be considered.
5. An outline view for headings and sub headings.
I know this one might be a far pitch but this would also improve outlining with existing notes and annotations. For now we are limited by copying content from notes and annotations to an outline note. If we want to see only headings, we can only use headings at this state. If we want the content and headings in an outline note and have the option to see whole outline at a glance, this cannot be achieved without exporting to another word processor. As a side request, number of sub headings can be increased.
6. Getting item's title as the heading for notes created from annotations.
I don't know anyone else experience the same problem with this, but when a note created from annotations, it gets a generic title. This makes searching from the Word plugin confusing. I know there will be a correspondence between selected item in Zotero and import note function, but this still requires searching in Zotero, which is not ideal for writing without distractions. Instead of a generic title, parent item's or PDF's title can be given to the note.
7. Option to search by tags in quick dialog dropdown in Word plugin.
This is interchangeable with 6. Following from my point for non-distractive writing, tagging a note with chapter name or number and retrieving notes from searching by that tag is easier than opening Zotero and searching for tag and then selecting the note.
8. Adding child notes to a standalone note.
Another far pitch. This is not that necessary if the indexing options improved.
Since there is always room for improvement and it is important to set priorities in a big project like Zotero, I understand that not all of our requests can be fulfilled. But Zotero is so close to having a full and seamless note-taking feature with annotation tags, standalone notes and related items. It also has native integration with Word, something which is achieved by tweaking in other workflows.
When we are discussing academic writing and tools that can help with our workflows with my colleagues, I notice there are some functionalities missing from Zotero that keep people from comitting to a full workflow wholly inside Zotero.
Functionalities missing in Zotero in my opinion are:
1. An easy indexing option with showing relations.
This might be achieved with graphs or easier use of related fields. In the current state, it is cumbersome to see relations in the long chain without viewing the item's full information and losing sight of previous item's data. A "Related" column in the main view would do the job.
2. Adding tags and related items directly from keyboard.
This would make indexing notes smoother. This can be achieved by easier jump to tags and related field which is something i mentioned earlier.
3. Adding a standalone note from an individual annotation.
Child notes are hard to move and index at this state. If indexing gets better, this might not be needed. This option should also include the parent item as a relation naturally, since adding note from annotations feature does so.
4. When an item is cited in a note, creating a relation between that note and the item cited automatically.
A similar implementation was requested in a different way earlier. https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/108268/bi-directional-link-between-citations-in-notes-and-items
This would enhance outlining in Zotero. Since my main need is a full-fledged note taking experience in Zotero, some other outlining improvements might be considered.
5. An outline view for headings and sub headings.
I know this one might be a far pitch but this would also improve outlining with existing notes and annotations. For now we are limited by copying content from notes and annotations to an outline note. If we want to see only headings, we can only use headings at this state. If we want the content and headings in an outline note and have the option to see whole outline at a glance, this cannot be achieved without exporting to another word processor. As a side request, number of sub headings can be increased.
6. Getting item's title as the heading for notes created from annotations.
I don't know anyone else experience the same problem with this, but when a note created from annotations, it gets a generic title. This makes searching from the Word plugin confusing. I know there will be a correspondence between selected item in Zotero and import note function, but this still requires searching in Zotero, which is not ideal for writing without distractions. Instead of a generic title, parent item's or PDF's title can be given to the note.
7. Option to search by tags in quick dialog dropdown in Word plugin.
This is interchangeable with 6. Following from my point for non-distractive writing, tagging a note with chapter name or number and retrieving notes from searching by that tag is easier than opening Zotero and searching for tag and then selecting the note.
8. Adding child notes to a standalone note.
Another far pitch. This is not that necessary if the indexing options improved.
These methods require some kind of a view that allows organizing them directly.
For example I use a collection to sort my notes into their respective types, but not being able to see their relations without selecting an item requires me to keep an index of all of them. If there was an option to see related items in a column, this would enhance the notes feature by a lot.
For 6, my point stands still. It is not just about having the search option in Word plugin. If there was an option to determine what would be the title of extracted annotations, this would enhance this function by a lot.