Add Citation dialog closing behavior

User000

In the LibreOffice/Microsoft citation plugins, can the "Add/Edit Citation" dialog stay open after a citation has been inserted? That way one could add multiple citations without having to re-open the dialog each time.

I have tried looking for a setting for this and have not found it. I thought that there might be a way to keep it open, as the document in LibreOffice is able to be edited while the dialog is open. It would be great if this could be done for the Legacy dialog, but if it is available for the non-Legacy dialog that would also be great.

I tried searching the forums for anyone reporting on this, but had no luck finding it.

The closest I got was: https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/addcitationdialog_raised which is concerned with keeping the window on top when it is created.

adamsmith

The dialog inserts the citation in the place of the cursor at the time it was opened - in fact, one of the things Zotero does when opening the dialog is to place a placeholder in the text where the citation is going to be. I don't see how keeping it open would help -- presumably you want to insert citations in different places in the text.

User000

Thank you for the response.

To me it seemed natural for there to be an option to keep the window open. As it stands, it feels the slightest bit tedious to have to re-click the button to create the dialog, rather than adjusting a dialog that is sitting waiting patiently in the background.

To your point about citations being placed in different places in the text, yes, I agree. However, one could imagine that the program could insert the placeholder in the document either once the dialog re-gains focus or on pressing the actual insert citation button.

adomasven

We wouldn't want to do that since we have already have problems in certain cases in getting the citation dialog to appear and focus correctly for some users, leading them to think that the plugin is broken. Keeping it open in the background is likely to lead to even more user confusion and smaller probability that the window will always come to the front when required.

To your point about citations being placed in different places in the text, yes, I agree. However, one could imagine that the program could insert the placeholder in the document either once the dialog re-gains focus or on pressing the actual insert citation button.

Zotero does not have access to the cursor in the document unless the plugin in Word is specifically interacted with, so this would also not be possible to implement (and there are a number of other reasons why it would be a bad idea).

User000

Thank you adomasven for the response.

Duly noted about existing issues and the likelihood of increased issues with this alternative use case.

At this point it is clear that that there is no setting for keeping the dialog window open, and there are reasons for the current design.

I think that the question is answered. I would close the thread, but I believe that that is not an option (please correct me if I am mistaken).