keyboard shortcuts

stroom

For frequent and consequent keyboard shortcut users, Zotero does not seem to offer a lot of support. Only a handful of shortcuts, and no support to actually learn them (by showing them in menu's, or when hoovering over clickable links).

E.g. jumping to tags, call number, title, etc. A lot of the citations I put in Zotero are not automatically imported. As far as I know in those cases almost everything has to be done by mouse. Using Zotero daily and pretty intensive, it would speed-up working with Zotero hugely for me if keyboard shortcuts would be added.

Or am I missing a plugin or some feature?

dragonfly

Pursuing a similar goal I installed these to experiment with shortcuts ..

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/customizable-shortcuts/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/zutilo-utility-for-zotero/

Zutilo can be expanded.

stroom

Thanks, although I'm not sure it works for me.
The first link does not offer extra shortcuts, but it's helpful, it also shows the Zotero/Zutilo shortcuts (although buried under all other shortcuts).

Zultilo is (almost ;) perfect and I use it quite some time now. It includes a limited selection of optional shortcuts I do use.

So I cannot seem to add my own shortcuts to e.g. Call number, can I?

What do you mean by expanding Zutilo?

dstillman

E.g. jumping to tags, call number, title, etc. A lot of the citations I put in Zotero are not automatically imported. As far as I know in those cases almost everything has to be done by mouse.

You can quickly tab from an item in the middle pane through every field in the Info pane, and you can switch between right-pane tabs via the keyboard and tab into tags as well. We're not going to add a different shortcut to focus every field in the Info pane. It's possible to create a shortcut for pretty much anything in Zutilo, but you'd have to ask the developer for help with that — I'm not sure he's willing to provide code for every random action someone might want, though, so you might have to figure out the code yourself.

You can view most of the available shortcuts in the Shortcuts pane of the Zotero preferences. In Zotero for Firefox, the toolbar button icons also show their shortcuts in the tooltips.

bwiernik

Is there any way to disable the Ctrl+Tab shortcut between tabs on the info pane? I rarely want to move between Info and Notes/Tags/Related, but frequently want to switch between entering data in Zotero (in Tab mode) and the page where I'm getting information to enter.

stroom

@Dan. To be honest your answer surprises me. It’s a pity that you are obviously not into shortcuts in general. Every program should be able to be used mouseless, and Zotero is in that sense obviously ignorant. And I consider Zotero as truly terrific in it's deployment, I use it absolutely daily, cannot do without it, but this a serious flaw. It’s a miracle program, but decent shortcut behavior would make me work at least twice as fast.

What you are suggesting is that I hit TAB 27 times (at least, more if there are more authors) to get to a Call number (at a Journal Article) without mouse. That's not workable.

Do you have a solution for Adding authors? If I add one, I have to click the plus for the next, if I use TAB, I end up in the Abstract field. The Plus is as far as I try not to be reached without mouse.

The scarce keyboard shortcuts are not shown but hidden in pref’s, not encouraging anyone to use them.

Just some examples to show that Zotero can be much faster, more efficient, more mature.

I sincerely hope you will reconsider.

adamsmith

You can add multiple authors by shift+return.

I don't disagree that some aspects of Zotero should be more easily accessible by keyboard (nor do I think Dan disagrees with that), but the idea that every Zotero field should be accessible via a one-keystroke shortcut is just not workable. There are more fields than keys on a regular keyboard and I'm not aware of any "mature" software that offers that degree of shortcut overload (which, btw., I for one would find massively annoying because it's predestined to conflict with system shortcuts).

Using the keyconfig add-on, you're able to add any shortcut you want, but it requires digging into the respective code, as you have to actually pass the respective Zotero command.

I know some folks have also worked with Zotero and Pentadactyl.

dstillman

To be honest your answer surprises me. It’s a pity that you are obviously not into shortcuts in general.

No, we strongly believe in keyboard shortcuts, and most of the Zotero interface is accessible via the keyboard (with a few notable exceptions, such as moving items to collections, which will eventually be fixed). I'm saying that your suggestion — that the specific field that you yourself are interested in merits a specific keyboard shortcut — doesn't make any sense. Someone else could come along tomorrow and ask for the same for Place, or ISBN, or any other field. Adding a built-in shortcut for every field is impossible.

What you are suggesting is that I hit TAB 27 times (at least, more if there are more authors) to get to a Call number (at a Journal Article) without mouse.

You don't need to hit Tab 27 times. You can press and hold Tab to focus Call Number or any other field in about 2 seconds.

If that's not sufficient, we've fortunately built Zotero on a platform that allows you to create shortcuts for anything you want, and someone created a plugin to help you do that. We just don't have the time to provide the custom code for every random action someone might request, so you'll have to figure that out yourself.

Do you have a solution for Adding authors?

Shift-Enter adds another creator row.

The scarce keyboard shortcuts are not shown but hidden in pref’s, not encouraging anyone to use them.

You're vastly overestimating the number of people interested in using keyboard shortcuts. In any case, we highlight some of those in the menus in Zotero Standalone. In Zotero for Firefox, there's not really a place for most of them. A couple of them that duplicate existing buttons could be added to the button tooltips, but, for example, there's no good way to show the shortcut key for focusing the search field in the interface itself. However, advanced users can check the "Advanced" section of the prefs (a pretty normal place for configuring and learning about keyboard shortcuts) and discover that there's a shortcut and it's based on the Ctrl/Cmd-K used to focus the Firefox search bar (which, by the way, isn't listed the Firefox menus either).

stroom

Thank you for your replies. I did not have expressed myself clearly, using ‘shortcuts’. What I also (wrongly, I know) consider a shortcut is a key-combination under ALT. As in Word: Alt+H+AI is (increasing indent), ALT+S+R+F (adding cross reference), ALT+X+Y+1 (adding Zotero citation). Word has more options than Zotero, but 100% of Word is reachable through keyboard. Once you got used to it, you are twice as fast.
That’s what I actually mean: Zotero 'should' be reachable through keystroke-combinations (KSC), which is not the same as - but including - direct shortcuts. Sorry for the misunderstanding, my mistake.
Holding TAB does function, but takes too much time. TAB–switch speed varies, so I miss the target, SHIFT_TAB etc. A slow mouse gesture is faster.

Thanks for the shift return! I’ll check on Pentadactyl.

Keyconfig is a no-go for me. Too deep under the hood. And if I do not use a certain function, I forget the KSC. So I believe adding shortcuts or KSC’s is only useful if you actually SEE them. Same with my Word examples: I forget them I do not use certain functions for a while, but easily pick ‘m up again if needed, because they are showed in front of me.

Like clicking for files in Windows Explorer. Take an hour to learn Total Commander and you gain a few working days per year ;). But that’s what I mean with ‘hiding’ shortcuts in prefs.
This also slightly responses to Dan’s remark about the amount of users who are interested in KSC’s: I do not speak for a group, and do not estimate. Although I know more people who are allergic to mice… Rightfully so if you want to save time and wrist problems. If you do not suggest the options, people will not use it.

I hope this clarifies a bit, and I surely hope you will implement KSC’s. But hey, as mentioned, I adore Zotero’s functionallity, and it being freeware, who am I to complain?

dstillman

Zotero 'should' be reachable through keystroke-combinations (KSC), which is not the same as - but including - direct shortcuts. Sorry for the misunderstanding, my mistake.

There's no misunderstanding here. We're just saying that we can't add a shortcut to focus each field, since it would require hundreds of shortcut keys. But you can create the ones you want if you want to.

stroom

Sorry Dan, you are wrong. Please reread my post. KSC is not the same as shortcut. It does not require 100's of shortcuts, just ALT+.. keystrokes. I would call it a Windows convention. Check Word or something like that. You can reach 100% of Word with KSC, apart from shortcuts.

Is there a way to rename attachments (with Rename associated file) without mouse? Seems not possible.

dstillman

It doesn't matter what you call them. Our point is that there are hundreds of item fields in Zotero (and there will be an unlimited number later when we support custom fields), so accessing individual ones would require devising that many key combinations, and that's not something we're going to do when you can trivially access them via Tab.

Actions should be accessible via shortcuts, and the ones that aren't currently will be added eventually, as I've said. But fields aren't actions — they're data — and we have another mechanism (Tab) for accessing those.

If someone wants to write a plugin that lets you focus specific fields directly, or document some boilerplate code that you can customize with your field of choice and assign to a shortcut, they're able to do so.

Is there a way to rename attachments (with Rename associated file) without mouse?

Not currently, no, unless you use Zutilo or keyconfig as described above.

stroom

Ok.
Maybe I'll dive in keyconfig after all.
Zutillo does support Modify attachment path, not Modify attachment name (?)
I would definitely use custom fields, great.

dragonfly

@stroom
@adamsmith
@Dan_Stillman

I preface my suggestions below by pointing out that my personal interest in Zotero is more for asset management (links, bookmarks, notes etc.) rather than citation management. I started exploring ways of extending Zotero as a tool for managing my personal working data. My current environment is Ubuntu 14.04.

Dan Stillman wrote above ...

If someone wants to write a plugin that lets you focus specific fields directly, or document some boilerplate code that you can customize with your field of choice and assign to a shortcut, they're able to do so.

In fact the Firefox add-on Custom Buttons provides a useful means of attaching buttons to custom scripts which call the Zotero javascript API.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/custom-buttons/?src=dp-dl-oftenusedwith

Note that each Custom Button so created has Button Settings with optional "hot key" for those preferring KSC.

I have also installed All-In-One Sidebar ...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/all-in-one-sidebar/

and set this as vertical toolbar to display to the left of my browser canvas (although you can choose different settings).

All Zotero buttons and custom buttons are placed on AIOS toolbar using the Customize function in Firefox.

I could give an example of Custom Button applied to Zotero but I'll leave that for others to explore and decide if this is a useful path. And we might be straying into zotero-dev territory.


Here is the link to javascript API ...

https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/client_coding/javascript_api

And here is the link to Custom Buttons tutorial ...

http://custombuttons.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=986

John_muccigrosso

I'm in sympathy with the overall idea that Zotero needs more keyboard commands.

The ones it does have should also be in menus and not just hidden in the prefs. (Talking standalone here.) Also, they shouldn't be only shift-command.

Zutilo is good for this and I've set up commands to focus on the library pane (I know, there already is one in the prefs), focus on the items pane (oddly not in the prefs), shift the focus among the various sub-panes (info, Notes, etc). These seem like a minimal set for good keyboard navigation within Zotero. I might also suggest commands for adding common item types (New book, New article, etc).