Changing the indent level of bullets is wonky

reidpr

One of the things I like to have in notes is bullet lists with multiple levels. Unfortunately, the editing behavior for changing the level of a given bullet is very strange compared to other apps.

To indent a bullet (i.e., make it one level deeper), other apps use simply the Tab key. In Zotero, one must use the indent button on the toolbar.

To outdent a bullet (i.e., make it one level shallower), other apps use Shift-Tab. In Zotero, this appears to be not possible at all. (The outdent button in the toolbar removes the bullet.)

This is with standalone 3.0b3.2.

It would be super awesome if Zotero matches other apps in this regard (e.g., PowerPoint or Keynote), or at least made it possible to outdent a bullet, period.

Thanks!

Reid

adamsmith

Zotero uses 3rd party code from TinyMCE for rich text notes - this does work correctly (i.e. as you describe) in TinyMCE, so it should be possible to get this to work in Zotero.

dstillman

In Zotero, this appears to be not possible at all. (The outdent button in the toolbar removes the bullet.)

The bullet starts at the first indent. You can indent further and outdent from there. If you outdent at the first level, it removes the bullet.

The spacing is a function of the default CSS. The left padding could be reduced.

adamsmith

any thoughts on the tab behavior? I tried that out over at tinymce.com and it works just like reidpr says.

dstillman

Don't know. Either broken from running within XUL or added in a more recent TinyMCE version. We'll upgrade TinyMCE for 3.5 and see if that helps.

reidpr

@Dan, if I'm interpreting you correctly, that's not what I observe. The outdent button removes the bullet regardless of what level I'm on.

Thanks guys. Happy to test - let me know how I might do that.

adamsmith

works correctly for me. Have you looked at the html code?

reidpr

Well, that button doesn't work either (see other post in this category). :)

I can try it in the Firefox version tomorrow.

dstillman

Yes it does. 3.0RC1 is out with a fix for that.

reidpr

OK, I upgraded to 3.0rc1.1 and the HTML button works now.

The behavior is a odder than I initially described. It turns out that in my original note, only some of the lists behaved unexpectedly. (Specifically, clicking the outdent button would outdent and also remove the bullet.) But other lists worked fine.

I retyped the offending lists and now they work fine too. I did a diff of the HTML between the broken and working states and the only difference was that the broken lists had some spaces after the text of some items. I don't know how they got there. (I did have a test list which changed from working to broken somehow, but I lost it in a series of undos that I didn't quite follow which also somehow duplicated a different note. I'll leave that one alone for now.)

The following test note also displays strange behavior, but it's different. Note that there should be four space characters immediately after "foo" -- this forum seems to be removing them. Specifically:

* The indent button indents the line where the cursor is, but also all child items. (Normally only the item itself indents.)
* The outdent button does nothing at all.

<p>test</p>
<ul>
<li>foo:
<ul>
<li>bar
<ul>
<li>baz</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>qux</li>
</ul>

reidpr

So this is still happening in 3.0.1. What are the next steps? Is there a workaround? Should I file a bug?

Thanks!

Reid

dstillman

You can see if the current demos on the TinyMCE site show the same behavior. If not, this will be addressed in a future version of Zotero when we upgrade to a newer version of TinyMCE. We don't touch the TinyMCE code otherwise.

reidpr

A quick test in that demo, and it seems to be OK.

That's a fair policy on the TinyMCE code. When do you expect that future version to appear? I'm happy to test if that is helpful for moving things along.

Thanks for your hard work on Zotero.

Reid

dstillman

We'll upgrade for Zotero 3.5.