Upgrade StorageA few quirks and a small feature request
Hi,
I'm not sure if it's a bug or not but if one starts searching for metadata for a number of files and then clicks upon the various folder groups, while the pop up is still open, one gets a messy situation where the gui doesn't read what is in the database and asks one to restart ZS. I know you're in Alpha Phase so I though I would leave a note if it helps I can generate the error for you and send it along. I'll keep trying to break it and post stuff here over the next while :D
As to the feature request, if it's not being to cheeky (The last paragraph is the essential stuff, the first two are jibber jabs)
I'm a bad librarian, I've had a little collection of PDF's which I've roughly sorted into two large folders, one for books and another for papers and a number of subfolders for various categories over the years. There has never really been a tool to sort it all nicely so my sorting has become somewhat robust and mature and even though it's all still in subfolders I can usually find what I need. If not I use pdf search to scan everything until it finds any document with the key words I asked for. I've been waiting for something that will search through the pdf's get all the nice bibliographic info and give me a searchable database, rename the files in the format title-author while leaving the file where it is, that's more usefull when looking at file names in explorer, and that doesn't re-organise all my folders.
So far I've tried
> Callibre that re-organised all the files into folder according to the format Author\Title.pdf which took a while to undo.
> Mendeleey is nice in that it gives one bubbles to format how the file should be renamed, and doesn't mess up the folders unless you give it permission to do so, though entering data with Mendeleey is a little tedious, though viewing the PDF when you type in the info really helps.
> Zotero is really nice when you use link-to-file you can both enter the data easily, though you have to open the pdf externally to view it and keep on alt-tabbing to enter the data. It's data lookup is second to none.
At present I'm building my library properly atlast using Zotero, and porting to mendeley as I go along :D best of both worlds for now :)
The features I would like to request are :
1) A subfolder search so you specify a main library folder and it recursively searches the subfolders, like a Mendeleey does when you select a main library folder. If the user has an organised structure you can use this to assign preliminary tags to all the files.
2) The tags are a really nice feature and usually are ranked according to importance so it may be nice if one can sort a libarary as follows \Library\Media_Type\First_Tag\Title-Author.pdf this would group the pdf's in the folders of importance. Folders for secondary tags could then be used to add dynaic links the the man file
For example : If a file is called say conference proceeding on "elephants, hearing and other senses" by "A. Author" and one assumed the tags where, "Pachiderms" and "Auditory", then one would place the file under \Library\ConferenceProceedings\Pachiderms\Elephants_Hearing_and_Other_Senses-A_Author.pdf and under the folder \Library\ConferenceProceedings\Auditory you could place a link file that would link to the main file.
(Media type may have to be dropped in some cases especially for small libraries, or if it's viewed that some one browsing for pachiderms would not care to look both under books, articls and conference proceedings)
3) A nice feature for data entry is to have highlighted text slotted into the various information points by short cut key/dragging so you open the document, highlight a section of text and press 't' for title, ctrl+tab switches through the media types.
4) Tag clouds could also be really nice. that way one can quickly switch between topics. Where one views the tag for the current document and any documents with that tag are quickly scanned and shown in a bundle of titles, while the tags for each documents appear as branches from the present tag, I think they also call these node link diagrams.
5) For PDF's in particular, none of the database tools modify the tags on the pdf's themselves, pdfs appear to have features similar to MP3's in that sense so the smartest way to save bibliographic data would be to store it in the files metadata, I think it's called, but I've not seen a single app that does this yet. I think if it's an HTML it would be stored in a HTML tag in the header but I'm not sure and I wouldn't have a clue for things like djvu files and the like.
Thanks for the terrific software, I'm really using it quite a lot lately.
I'm not sure if it's a bug or not but if one starts searching for metadata for a number of files and then clicks upon the various folder groups, while the pop up is still open, one gets a messy situation where the gui doesn't read what is in the database and asks one to restart ZS. I know you're in Alpha Phase so I though I would leave a note if it helps I can generate the error for you and send it along. I'll keep trying to break it and post stuff here over the next while :D
As to the feature request, if it's not being to cheeky (The last paragraph is the essential stuff, the first two are jibber jabs)
I'm a bad librarian, I've had a little collection of PDF's which I've roughly sorted into two large folders, one for books and another for papers and a number of subfolders for various categories over the years. There has never really been a tool to sort it all nicely so my sorting has become somewhat robust and mature and even though it's all still in subfolders I can usually find what I need. If not I use pdf search to scan everything until it finds any document with the key words I asked for. I've been waiting for something that will search through the pdf's get all the nice bibliographic info and give me a searchable database, rename the files in the format title-author while leaving the file where it is, that's more usefull when looking at file names in explorer, and that doesn't re-organise all my folders.
So far I've tried
> Callibre that re-organised all the files into folder according to the format Author\Title.pdf which took a while to undo.
> Mendeleey is nice in that it gives one bubbles to format how the file should be renamed, and doesn't mess up the folders unless you give it permission to do so, though entering data with Mendeleey is a little tedious, though viewing the PDF when you type in the info really helps.
> Zotero is really nice when you use link-to-file you can both enter the data easily, though you have to open the pdf externally to view it and keep on alt-tabbing to enter the data. It's data lookup is second to none.
At present I'm building my library properly atlast using Zotero, and porting to mendeley as I go along :D best of both worlds for now :)
The features I would like to request are :
1) A subfolder search so you specify a main library folder and it recursively searches the subfolders, like a Mendeleey does when you select a main library folder. If the user has an organised structure you can use this to assign preliminary tags to all the files.
2) The tags are a really nice feature and usually are ranked according to importance so it may be nice if one can sort a libarary as follows \Library\Media_Type\First_Tag\Title-Author.pdf this would group the pdf's in the folders of importance. Folders for secondary tags could then be used to add dynaic links the the man file
For example : If a file is called say conference proceeding on "elephants, hearing and other senses" by "A. Author" and one assumed the tags where, "Pachiderms" and "Auditory", then one would place the file under \Library\ConferenceProceedings\Pachiderms\Elephants_Hearing_and_Other_Senses-A_Author.pdf and under the folder \Library\ConferenceProceedings\Auditory you could place a link file that would link to the main file.
(Media type may have to be dropped in some cases especially for small libraries, or if it's viewed that some one browsing for pachiderms would not care to look both under books, articls and conference proceedings)
3) A nice feature for data entry is to have highlighted text slotted into the various information points by short cut key/dragging so you open the document, highlight a section of text and press 't' for title, ctrl+tab switches through the media types.
4) Tag clouds could also be really nice. that way one can quickly switch between topics. Where one views the tag for the current document and any documents with that tag are quickly scanned and shown in a bundle of titles, while the tags for each documents appear as branches from the present tag, I think they also call these node link diagrams.
5) For PDF's in particular, none of the database tools modify the tags on the pdf's themselves, pdfs appear to have features similar to MP3's in that sense so the smartest way to save bibliographic data would be to store it in the files metadata, I think it's called, but I've not seen a single app that does this yet. I think if it's an HTML it would be stored in a HTML tag in the header but I'm not sure and I wouldn't have a clue for things like djvu files and the like.
Thanks for the terrific software, I'm really using it quite a lot lately.
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dstillmanSorry, but this is way too long and contains many unrelated issues. Start individual threads for individual issues or requests, and please be as concise as possible.
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