I agree with Joscha. I think we should probably default to the "recursive" behavior described by him - not sure if we want to pref it as an option, hidden or not.
ps: I tried to post this in a thread on zotero-dev before but my message was somehow deleted...
I don't know what's up with google groups. It's deleted one of my recent posts, too.
I'm open to that—and I agree with adamsmith that it shouldn't be a pref—but how would assignment via number keys work? Right now you can toggle tags on and off with their associated number keys. What is the behavior on the first key press if a child tag is displayed on the parent but the parent doesn't have the tag? Is the tag removed from the child item? It can't really be added to the parent, because there would be no change in the interface. But then if you press the key again, it would be assigned to the parent.
I don't know what's up with google groups. It's deleted one of my recent posts, too.
It didn't delete any posts—it just flagged them as potentially spam. (Annoyingly, it doesn't send us notifications when that happens—they just go straight to the moderation queue.)
Great feature (and obviously a lot of work, cf. previous grumbles)!
Just out of curiosity: why did you finally chose the "GTD model" rather than the Thunderbird one? (i.e. small color swatches rather than coloring the entire line)? As I wrote in my previous post, I wonder if it's not too subtle (but I don't have any strong opinion on this).
So users could, for example, have a "read" tag that is assigned to specific attachments and not the parent item and still see the tag color in the item list.
Just to throw this out there, but say you have multiple attachments for an item and you use the "read" tag to mean "have read" (as opposed to "unread" or "to be read"). You mark one attachment as "read" after reading it, but the other one is still unread. The parent item would now show up as "read".
This is probably not the most frequent use case, but I just wanted to point out that this sort of behavior may be undesirable. So I think this option should be toggleable.
Just to throw this out there, but say you have multiple attachments for an item and you use the "read" tag to mean "have read" (as opposed to "unread" or "to be read").
I think you don't. There's a reason unread mail in a mail client is in bold text, sometimes with an extra icon. Unless you just really feel like you don't have enough color in your life, I think doing it that way makes more sense (perhaps in combination with the feature fbennett proposed on the dev list, to automatically tag an incoming item).
But there could certainly be other problems with recursive display, in addition to the one I raise above. (And on that issue, pref or not, we need clear, desirable behavior for when it's turned on to do it at all.)
Just out of curiosity: why did you finally chose the "GTD model" rather than the Thunderbird one? (i.e. small color swatches rather than coloring the entire line)?
I think a lot of people will appreciate the additional flexibility, and I thought the whole-row approach would quickly make many items lists rather unbearable to behold.
The swatches (and the item type icons, for that matter) would ideally get bigger when people increased the Zotero font size, though—right now they don't adjust.
(I did borrow the number-key assignment from Thunderbird. As I noted in the commit message, I'd actually like to have the '0' key unassign all colored tags, as it does in TB, but I'm concerned about doing that without an undo feature.)
I think the number keys should just assign the tag to the selected item. If a parent item is selected, it gets the tag and the color appears. If a child item is selected, *only* this child item gets the tag and the color appears for the child item *and* the parent. So the number toggling remains unchanged, tags are only assigned to the child item (which I think is an important feature) but the color appears for the item with the tag + it's parent.
Right, but this does not answer Dan's question in the post above.
What is the behavior on the first key press if a child tag is displayed on the parent but the parent doesn't have the tag? Is the tag removed from the child item? It can't really be added to the parent, because there would be no change in the interface. But then if you press the key again, it would be assigned to the parent.
What I think may make sense is toning down the shade of the color (through transparency perhaps?) when the swatch is coming from the child instead of the item itself. Then pressing the key on the parent when a child already has a tag, would add the tag to the item and turn the swatch fully opaque. When pressing the key again, it would only remove the tag for the parent item and leave the attachments as they were, turning the swatch partially transparent again.
You could also make modifier (I'd say Shift) + number toggle tags for item + attachments (based on the tag status of the parent item). So, say, the attachment has a tag, but parent doesn't. Pressing Shift+1 would add the tag to all attachments and the parent. Pressing it again, would remove it from all attachments and parent. That way, you can still remove a tag from attachments without having to expand the item.
Edit: Thought for this to work, the color choices might have to change.
Red (255:0:0), Blue (0:0:255), Green (0:128:0), Yellow (255:255:0), Orange (255:128:0), Purple (128:0:255). The others might clash a bit with the faded colors. But... that does cover the 6 slots, so we can just not offer additional options :-)
The transparency idea is clever, but on its own it would be too hard to tell what was faded and what wasn't (even if we did limit ourselves to primary/secondary colors, which I don't have any desire to do). There might be some other variation that would work, though: outline + transparent center, striped, etc. (Just the outline isn't great because we use the empty attachment circle to mean something fairly different.)
Modifier + number is also too complicated, I would say, and I don't think it's necessary to be able to assign tags to child items from the parents—it just might be nice to be able to clear child tags, particularly since if you're using one for "to read" you don't have to actually open the parent to view the attachment. I would say that '0' could perhaps clear colors from both parent and child items, but, again, I'm a little nervous doing that without an undo.
The transparency idea is clever, but on its own it would be too hard to tell what was faded and what wasn't (even if we did limit ourselves to primary/secondary colors, which I don't have any desire to do). There might be some other variation that would work, though: outline + transparent center, striped, etc. (Just the outline isn't great because we use the empty attachment circle to mean something fairly different.)
I like the outline + transparent center idea, because it makes it easier to implement with arbitrary colors and I think it will look nice and intuitive (at least it would be somewhat intuitive to me).
Modifier + number is also too complicated, I would say, and I don't think it's necessary to be able to assign tags to child items from the parents—it just might be nice to be able to clear child tags, particularly since if you're using one for "to read" you don't have to actually open the parent to view the attachment. I would say that '0' could perhaps clear colors from both parent and child items, but, again, I'm a little nervous doing that without an undo.
The problem with assigning '0' to clear all colors is that... it clears _all_ colors. What about making modifier + number simply clear that color from parent and child. It will have nothing to do with assigning tags. The whole point of my proposal above was to make it possible to clear the attachment tags. Assigning tags to all child attachments was just a side effect.
Edit: Also, regarding the current color choice... I think it looks quite plain. How about some more vibrant colors?
Another options would be to use the empty color "box" for tags and change the logic for the attachment circle. The reason why I suggest this is that I think the colored tags are the more important feature and should get priority in terms of optimal implementation and appearance. The other thing is that I wasn't really convinced that an empty circle indicates a kind of warning (your attachment is missing).
The other thing is that I wasn't really convinced that an empty circle indicates a kind of warning (your attachment is missing).
It's not a warning. The column is part of the new on-demand download functionality, which is the new default file-syncing mode. The indicator shows you whether you have a file locally or not. (In addition to on-click downloads, there should be a context-menu option to download attachments in batches in case you're going offline, but that hasn't been added yet.)
I think an empty shape makes more sense for an attachment without a local copy of the file than for a child tag on a parent, but I'm happy to hear other suggestions.
okay, I didn't get that. For me it looked like empty circles indicate that the file can not be found, which can actually be useful. I guess it works like this for people who do not sync their library.
ps: And I agree that is makes sense for attachments without a local copy.
Hi, having used Zotero now for a while, I realized that I'd like to be able to use a color scheme to mark items - as many others do...
I am pleased to see that the release in April 2013 will have such a feature.
Since I don't dare to use the beta version right now, I'd like to know whether it will be possible to sort items according to their markers. For example, I'd like to see all items with red squares next to each other since that's the ones I still need to read, etc...
If not, any chance to implement a sorting feature? How about using extra columns (a user-dependent number of them) for those markers?
Thanks for making Zotero available - it's a live saver!
I'd like to know whether it will be possible to sort items according to their markers
No, but the colored tags always show up at the top of the tag selector in the bottom left, so quickly viewing the items you need to read will be as simple as clicking the associated tag (which will also show as red in the tag selector).
no, sorting isn't possible in the current implementation (though obviously you can filter by tags, so it'd be easy to _just_ see red items).
I'm not aware of any plans to enable sorting by tags/tag colors.
I've updated to version 4.x and I still can't get colored tagging to work. Is it available in this version or not, and if it is, how do you use it? For such a simple request that's been asked for over and over the last five years I'd think you guys could finally get it right. Is it there or not?
This is just one thorn that among many that have us looking at commercial packages. You get what you pay for sometimes.
@wayne: Suppose you win a car in a lottery for free - do you complain about its colour? Please behave and respect the work put in by the people working on Zotero.
@ Adam and Dan: I am convinced that there are 10000 satisfied users (often silent like myself) for each wayne-type person. Thank you for being so helpful.
alinghi: Are you using the default (small) font size, or a larger one? Right now the color swatches don't resize when you choose a larger font size, which they should. I think it's an appropriate size for the smallest font size, though.
Just said goodbye to Endnote. It was a smooth transition to Zotero. Like everything, Just missing one thing - the 5 star rating system... Can you please, please add something like that?
Thanks.
I just searched for the colortagging feature. Sounds like this feature now is available.
Can you please tell me which version I have to use, to get this feature. I´m missing the last update so maybe I just missed it. (Im using zotero at work so I always have to call the admins for updates)
By the way, Zotero is a great feature and I am very glad it exists ;) to simplify my research.
Thanks!
Upgrade Storage
Just out of curiosity: why did you finally chose the "GTD model" rather than the Thunderbird one? (i.e. small color swatches rather than coloring the entire line)? As I wrote in my previous post, I wonder if it's not too subtle (but I don't have any strong opinion on this).
This is probably not the most frequent use case, but I just wanted to point out that this sort of behavior may be undesirable. So I think this option should be toggleable.
But there could certainly be other problems with recursive display, in addition to the one I raise above. (And on that issue, pref or not, we need clear, desirable behavior for when it's turned on to do it at all.)
The swatches (and the item type icons, for that matter) would ideally get bigger when people increased the Zotero font size, though—right now they don't adjust.
(I did borrow the number-key assignment from Thunderbird. As I noted in the commit message, I'd actually like to have the '0' key unassign all colored tags, as it does in TB, but I'm concerned about doing that without an undo feature.)
You could also make modifier (I'd say Shift) + number toggle tags for item + attachments (based on the tag status of the parent item). So, say, the attachment has a tag, but parent doesn't. Pressing Shift+1 would add the tag to all attachments and the parent. Pressing it again, would remove it from all attachments and parent. That way, you can still remove a tag from attachments without having to expand the item.
Edit: Thought for this to work, the color choices might have to change.
Red (255:0:0), Blue (0:0:255), Green (0:128:0), Yellow (255:255:0), Orange (255:128:0), Purple (128:0:255). The others might clash a bit with the faded colors. But... that does cover the 6 slots, so we can just not offer additional options :-)
Modifier + number is also too complicated, I would say, and I don't think it's necessary to be able to assign tags to child items from the parents—it just might be nice to be able to clear child tags, particularly since if you're using one for "to read" you don't have to actually open the parent to view the attachment. I would say that '0' could perhaps clear colors from both parent and child items, but, again, I'm a little nervous doing that without an undo.
Edit: Also, regarding the current color choice... I think it looks quite plain. How about some more vibrant colors?
I think an empty shape makes more sense for an attachment without a local copy of the file than for a child tag on a parent, but I'm happy to hear other suggestions.
ps: And I agree that is makes sense for attachments without a local copy.
I am pleased to see that the release in April 2013 will have such a feature.
Since I don't dare to use the beta version right now, I'd like to know whether it will be possible to sort items according to their markers. For example, I'd like to see all items with red squares next to each other since that's the ones I still need to read, etc...
If not, any chance to implement a sorting feature? How about using extra columns (a user-dependent number of them) for those markers?
Thanks for making Zotero available - it's a live saver!
Stefan
I'm not aware of any plans to enable sorting by tags/tag colors.
This is just one thorn that among many that have us looking at commercial packages. You get what you pay for sometimes.
https://github.com/zotero/zotero/commit/d2f028d797c5c0ae3d77d54a5bbabaa5cd4a961b
Plus numerous follow-up changes.
Right-click on a tag in the tag selector and select "Assign Color…" to use it.
@ Adam and Dan: I am convinced that there are 10000 satisfied users (often silent like myself) for each wayne-type person. Thank you for being so helpful.
This is a very good thing!
But it is really small. Can we do more visible?
Thank
I use the large size. I think the color should be like the book logo. The same size. Thus, it is more visible quickly.
Thank
Would it be difficult to enable 9 colored tags? There are even 9 colors to choose from!
My idea is to give each item three tags using red/orange/green to indicate the following properties:
1: no access/partial access/full access
2: unread/reading/read
3: unimportant/somewhat/important.
I don't want to use the Extra column to carry any of this information.
As an aside, disabling the book/article/website logo would be fine for me.
Thanks for the six colors!
Bye.............Stefan..............
Thanks..............Stefan.............
Thanks.
I just searched for the colortagging feature. Sounds like this feature now is available.
Can you please tell me which version I have to use, to get this feature. I´m missing the last update so maybe I just missed it. (Im using zotero at work so I always have to call the admins for updates)
By the way, Zotero is a great feature and I am very glad it exists ;) to simplify my research.
Thanks!
Karo