Quick filter/search box reset when item added or deleted

Oliver Coleman

In the stand alone version (don't know about Firefox plugin version), the quick filter/search box (which appears above the list of items) is reset whenever an item is added or deleted. This may seem like a small thing, but it can become quite tedious when you're adding or deleting individual items and want to filter the items to relevant ones while doing so. For example, in my case I'm searching for articles about something and adding them one by one to my library, but don't want to inadvertently add the same one twice, so being able to filter the list of items while doing so is very handy.

dstillman

There's no reason for deletes to clear the search box (and if they do that can be considered a bug), but the justification for additions doing so is that the added item might not match the search, in which case the items list would be left in an illogical state.

I'm not totally clear on your example, though. Can you elaborate?

Oliver Coleman

If I may, I contest the "list being in an illogical state argument": if the list remains filtered after adding an item (eg by clicking a "Save to Zotero" icon in a browser), then the newly item will simply not appear in the (filtered) list if it does not contain the relevant keyword(s). This might be annoying in the case I gave as an example, but probably means that I need to pick a better keyword (or am just unlucky that no one keyword matches the topic I'm collecting articles for); but it doesn't leave the list in an inconsistent state as the newly added article not showing would be the expected behaviour and not inconsistent (at least in my mind ;)).

So, in my example/case, I'm trawling through Google Scholar looking for articles on "spike timing dependent plasticity" or similar, and adding articles via the Save to Zotero icon. In the Zotero application I have "plastic" as the keyword, as pretty much every article has "plastic" somewhere in the title, so I can see which articles I've already added. Hope this makes the use-case more clear, let me know if it still doesn't make sense! :)

dstillman

if the list remains filtered after adding an item (eg by clicking a "Save to Zotero" icon in a browser), then the newly item will simply not appear in the (filtered) list if it does not contain the relevant keyword(s).

OK, that's a possibility, but that's another thing the current behavior is designed to prevent—I'd say that new items appearing in the list is a requirement. It's possible we could make it such that the search isn't cleared as long as the new item matches the current search, but we'd have to see how feasible that is technically.

Cathryne

same problem in the firefox plugin: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/22250/keep-search-while-deleting-attachements/

Oliver Coleman

"It's possible we could make it such that the search isn't cleared as long as the new item matches the current search, but we'd have to see how feasible that is technically."
Yes please. :)

dstillman

Issues created to track this:

https://github.com/zotero/zotero/issues/68
https://github.com/zotero/zotero/issues/71

Gracile

[Related: When you add a child note to an item, the quick search is cleared. Would be more logical to keep it (since you add a note to an item which necessarily matched the quick search).]

dstillman

Clear-on-delete is fixed for 3.0.8.