advanced search help

realtime99

1. Is there somewhere in the documentation with a clear description of the meaning/use of the Advanced search categories? Most are straightforward, but some are unclear. e.g.:

2. Does 'attachment content' search file names also? e.g. if I search "attachment content contains 'Smith'", will it find a non-OCR'd PDF named Smith.pdf?

3. Is there a good way to search for books that do not have a digital version attached, given the many file formats that digital books can come in? Currently, my strategy is to create separate saved searches for "books with X" that look like this:
* Item Type is Book
* Title contains .epub
And I do that for epub, mobi, pdf, djvu, and chm
5 saved searches total.

Then, I do a saved search for "books without X" that have Item Type is Book and Saved Search is not X.
5 more saved searches.

Then, I do a saved search for "books without digital version" with Saved Search is not X, using the 5 saved searches above.

So 11 saved searches for this list!?

I wouldn't even mind so much if I could put saved searches in sub-folders, but since it looks like this is not a developer priority, I'm wondering if there is a better way to do this until the Advanced Search function is improved.

Thanks!

adamsmith

1. no
2. don't know, but would suspect that not, but it's easy to try out
3. Unless I misunderstand, you can set up a single saved search with the exact same result

match all
- Item Type - is - Book
- Title -does not contain - epub
- Title -does not contain - mobi
- Title -does not contain - pdf
- Title -does not contain - djvu
- Title -does not contain - chm

realtime99

>> 1. Is there somewhere in the documentation with a clear description of the meaning/use of the Advanced search categories?
> 1. no

Will someone do this, or help me do it? I obviously don't know the meaning of these things myself.

One question: There is "item type" and "attachment file type" but what is just "Type"?

2. Seems that the answer is no.

3. This works. I think I got confused because it doesn't work unless you check "Include parent and child items of matching items," which is very unclear wording, I think.

Thanks.

realtime99

Just realized a problem with the strategy proposed for 3. If you don't include parent and child items, it doesn't work. If you do include them, you get items included that *do* have digital versions if the item also has another attachment (such as a note) that doesn't include pdf, epub, etc.

adamsmith

1. I thought there was supposed to be a hover-over explain feature for those. It doesn't work for me on linux, but I've seen people talk about this. It just seems to be a large batch of documentation that few people will ready. Type is actually the one thing that gets people confused most frequently, it refers to the field "Type" as in "Thesis Type," "Report Type" etc.

3. Also check the "show only top level items" and this works. I don't really understand those settings either, I just play around with them when I have a search that includes attachments.

realtime99

1. I don't have hover-over on Windows 7 either. Maybe there could just be a search FAQ somewhere for potentially confusing things rather than a long documentation.

3. Got it, thanks.

>> I don't really understand those settings either, I just play around with them when I have a search that includes attachments.

Could a developer please ask whoever it is that designed those settings to explain them? It's pointless to have them if people can't understand them.

And please, BOOLEAN search, PLEASE!

adamsmith

You basically have boolean search, you just have to use a saved search as and intermediate step if you want to combine AND and OR.
match = all is boolean AND
match = any is boolean OR
So if you want to do something like
(A*B*C)+(D*C)
You create two saved searches with match = all for
A, B, C and D, C and then combine do a match = any search for those two saved searches.

dstillman

I thought there was supposed to be a hover-over explain feature for those. It doesn't work for me on linux, but I've seen people talk about this.

There is, and it works for me. It only works when the menu is open, though—not once you've selected a search condition. (And it only shows up on base-mapped fields such as "Publisher" or "Type".)

adamsmith

ah yes, got it.

realtime99

Can you explain what "base-mapped fields" are? I can't figure out the logic of which fields have hover-overs and which don't.

adamsmith

base-mapped fields are the generic names of fields that appear under various different labels for Zotero items.
E.g. "Title" is the same for all items --> no hover-over
"Type" appears as "Genre", "Letter Type", "Thesis Type" etc. --> hover-over.

Or to re-phrase: You get a hover-over when Zotero is going to include fields that differ from the exact label you're selecting in the search.