Series title not wrapping in item pane, standard layout

tectonic

There seems to be a problem when viewing references with long 'Series' entries in the item pane. Unlike the Title and Book Title fields, this does not word-wrap when the series title is long, resulting in ambiguities between different publications of the same organization unless the pane is made very wide. Also, the three-dot drop-down menu beside the Series name is unavailable, because when the cursor moves over it, the field containing the series name extends slightly to show more (but still not enough) of its contents. An option to wrap the series title and any other long fields should be provided, but I wasn't able to find one.

I'm using Zotero 7.0.3 with MacOS 14.4 on an M3 Macbook Pro.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u3110799/jqmvy5kracpd1gcfnup1.png

AbeJellinek

This is the case for all non-wrapping fields. There's currently no way to configure which fields wrap.

Also, the three-dot drop-down menu beside the Series name is unavailable, because when the cursor moves over it, the field containing the series name extends slightly to show more (but still not enough) of its contents.

That isn't a three-dot menu - it's an ellipsis indicating that there's more text in the field than can be shown on one line. The gap between the text and the ellipsis is a known issue.

AbeJellinek

(To access the field's menu, right-click it, or Ctrl-Click on macOS.)

AbeJellinek

And series titles aren't normally that long. It looks like you're putting the publisher's name in the Series field. Possibly more appropriate for the Publisher field? Then you'd have less ambiguity in Series.

tectonic

Sorry, my mistake on the '3-dot menu'. In the field above there are some menu options that appear even if I left-click on the 3-dots. This menu-like behaviour made me think that it was a menu.

I am trying to be helpful here, and also to see if there's something I've missed in the documentation, or (if not) whether there's a use-case that the developers could take a look at as a feature request, to make the product even better.

For the Serial name the full entry is Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists Special Publication. It's difficult to remove the publishing organization from the serial name for the following reasons. For most of the journals I publish in, if the volume has a volume number, it's treated as a serial publication, meaning that the reference list should name the series and the volume number but *not* the publisher or place of publication. Most of the available styles respect this.

Here is a bibliographic entry for the paper in question, cited correctly (I think) in Chicago author-date style.

Hiscott, R.N., and G.V. Middleton. 1979. “Depositional Mechanics of Thick-Bedded Sandstones at the Base of a Submarine Slope, Tourelle Formation (Lower Ordovician), Quebec, Canada.” In Geology of Continental Slopes, edited by L.J. Doyle and O.H. Pilkey, 27:307–26. Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists Special Publication 27.

To remove the publishing organization from the series name, I would have to go through my 6000+ entries cutting and pasting the organization name into the publisher field for most book chapters, and then edit the CSL for book chapters in most of the journals where I publish, to make the reference list look the way it does currently. This would not be worthwhile for the minor improvement in ease of use that I was seeking.

Other similar series that I cite, where there's important information in the tail end of the series name that I would like to see while browsing, are:
Geological Society of London Special Publications
Geological Society of America Bulletin
Geological Society of America Memoir
Geological Society of America, Special Paper
Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Earth Sciences
Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth
Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface

Series titles may not 'normally' be this long but they are a fact of life in my field.

Thank you for your patience,

John Waldron

tectonic

Further to the above:

1) The easier fix would be to switch into the 'stacked' view, which shows longer series names, but I happen to prefer the standard view as it allows me to see more entries.

2) If this is not the correct place for a feature request, please let me know where to better send it. I'm quite a long-term user of Zotero, but this is my first foray into the forums.