Upgrade StorageMerge Items from Group Library to My Library
Suppose you have a Group Library and My Library. You have an entry which exists in both libraries but have differences within the notes, tags and maybe even the pdf.
When I try to copy this item from the Group Library to My Library, I cannot copy it, as this entry is already within My Library. Usually this would be what you expect.
But as there are differences within the Tags, PDF or Notes of that entry, the desired behavior would be to merge it within to your library (and leave the Group Library item untouched).
This becomes even more confusing when you drag and drop the item from the Group Library into a subcollection of My library, you are allowed to "copy" it there, but what actually happens is, that only your local copy gets referenced to that subcollection and you lose all tags, notes etc.
What I think would be the best approach: if one drags and drops an item from one library to another where the same (actually only a similar) entry already exists, merge those two entries with all its content (pdf, notes, notes of pdfs, tags, ...).
When I try to copy this item from the Group Library to My Library, I cannot copy it, as this entry is already within My Library. Usually this would be what you expect.
But as there are differences within the Tags, PDF or Notes of that entry, the desired behavior would be to merge it within to your library (and leave the Group Library item untouched).
This becomes even more confusing when you drag and drop the item from the Group Library into a subcollection of My library, you are allowed to "copy" it there, but what actually happens is, that only your local copy gets referenced to that subcollection and you lose all tags, notes etc.
What I think would be the best approach: if one drags and drops an item from one library to another where the same (actually only a similar) entry already exists, merge those two entries with all its content (pdf, notes, notes of pdfs, tags, ...).
Consider the following:
TagA in entry of Library1 and TagB in entry of Library2, after the drag&drop from Library2 to Library2 there should be TagA and TagB in Library1 and only TagB in Library2.
Same should happen with all entries within the parent item (e.g. notes, pdf etc.). Of course if the entries are exactly the same, this can be omitted.
Why not having two PDFs if they are really different? Then I would like to decide for myself whether to keep them both or I want to delete any of the two. I often have two PDF versions in one entry (e.g. a draft and a final submission).
I am just wondering what should be done if one has notes directly added to the PDF entry (i.e. not in an extra "node-entry" but when you click on the PDF), and the two PDFs are exactly the same. Then Zotero would have to duplicate the same PDF to be able to handle both notes.
For that case I would also be fine to just copy the new notes to the end of the existing notes and just keep one PDF (so we don't need any merge-option popups).
What do you think?
Still leaves the note as you point out.
Then there's also actual metadata: what to do when you e.g. fixed capitalization in the title of one item -- we'd need a merge dialog after all, because how is Zotero to tell?
If Zotero does not know how to merge, just copy it and the user ends up with two entries and has to handle that himself.
1) give people the option to actually duplicate the item
2) have to have the ability to circle through multiple of these.
(the alternative is the sync conflict merge, but I think that's not as good as an interface, but on the upside has 2) covered)
So just we're clear -- I'm not saying this is somehow impossibly hard or shouldn't happen. I'm just saying it's not trivial either from a technical or from a UX perspective and it won't happen super quickly.
I am unable to exactly replicate this behavior. I have an item in both group library and My Library. When I drag-drop the item from group library to a collection on My Library, the My Library entry gets added to the collection BUT item did not lose any tags.