Sorting in the library window

JonEP

It would be very helpful to be able to sort by multiple columns in Zotero's center pane. As an example of how this would be helpful, in a few cases, I have thirty or so papers by the same author, and would like to sort by Creator and then by Title (and not by year, which would be the default order for sorting, after Creator is selected as the principal sort column). Similarly, it would be interesting to sort by Type and then by Publication, or by Creator and then Publication. Then again, it would be interesting to sort by publication and then view the articles in chronological order (rather than alphabetically by Creator).

Some audio-library programs (perhaps Media Monkey or even Itunes) allow a behavior where clicking on a column heading assigns it primary sort status, and a shift+click on another heading assigns secondary sorting status...

dstillman

iTunes doesn't do this—I'm not familiar with any software that does. There's also no built-in support for this in Firefox, so it would require a custom implementation, probably custom styling of the tree headers to indicate what was going on, etc.

A more straightforward alternative could be to base the sort hierarchy on column order. So after clicking on a column, it would then sort by the other columns, left-to-right, and dragging them around would alter the order.

JonEP

MediaMonkey (www.mediamonkey.com) is a semi-open-source media library program (for Windows only) that allows you to sort by multiple columns by clicking on the heading of the first column for the principle sort variable, and then using control + click on 2ndary, 3rtiary, etc. column headings.

Anyway, it would be great to be able to arrange a sort by moving the columns around, too. I would find it quite useful. Thanks.

Jon Rubin

One quick way to get much of the functionality you're after is simply to create a saved search of the creator you're interested in. You can then sort by publication and (at least from my very quick test) it sorts by year in any case. Unfortunately (for your interests) sorting by Type then seems to 'second sort' on Title.
Regards, Jon.

JonEP

Is it possible to second one's own request? I find it would be helpful to have some sorting function so that the database could be sorted by, for instance, name, then publication type and then date (so that you could see all of the recent journal articles by a certain person in chronological order). Is this a possiblity? I'm happy with Dan's suggested column-dragging approach to doing it, or even some kind of excel-like sort function. But I keep finding myself trying to do this and looking for work-arounds.

Thanks!

mark

I agree - secondary sorting would be nice. The usual interface for this (used in a couple programs I work with) is click for primary sort, shift-click for secondary sort. I find it very useful.

JonEP

Sorry to keep harping on this-- but I'm wondering if there are any plans to improve sorting in the zotero library window?

Two issues:

1. If Creator is the sort field, only the last name of the creator is used, after which sorting is by date. This is problematic: I have articles by Ernst Bloch and Maurice Bloch intermixed with each other, causing my head to spin. Wouldn't it be possible to sort by Lastname, Firstname?

2. I'd suggested earlier that there be some way to set sort order for columns. Whether it is dragging columns around, or just a dialogue to allow a sort order to be set, it seems to me that something, at least, ought to be done. The present de-facto sort order is creator, date... If one has a large collection, including tens of articles by a given creator, and one is not familiar with the exact chronological order of that author's production, it is very difficult to navigate to the correct citation (yes, there are ways--I know you can type in a search term, or create a collection). It would be nice if the user could set the sort order, allowing us to set it to sort by lastname, firstname, title

Would it be too hard to have a ticket submitted to address this? Or, perhaps, could someone indicate if there is already a ticket or some other plan to address sorting issues?

Thanks.
J

JonEP

Just checking in--any plans to improve sorting in the library window in the future?

I have thirty references for which the creator column reads "Scott" -- and they are written by seven different authors. Just changing the Creator field to Lastname, Firstname would help me avoid confusion, although it would really be great if the larger issue of sorting by multiple fields (including all fields from the bibliographic Info tab, including custom fields) were addressed.

mark

Let me pile on too (for a second time). I would be very happy with secondary sorts (the first issue in this topic); and frankly, on the second issue, the fact that Zotero only sorts by surname should be considered a major bug.

JonEP

Every three months or so I resurrect this request, and am doing it again here.

Would it be possible to develop better sorting for the central pane of zotero's interface? Here are two options, in order of preference:

1. Column-based sorting. Drag the columns to order the sort. That way, it would be possible to sort by author, then by title of the work, then by date (I have several authors in my collection with 30 works or more, and I don't remember the year that each was published, so I'd like the secondary sort to be by the title of the work, not by the date; more than that, I'd just like to be in control). Please note that for this option, as for the second, it's important that sorting of author names be lastname, firstname, and not merely lastname as it now stands. For option 1, this could mean either creating a firstname column, or just making sorting by lastname, firstname the standard.


2. Barring that, would it at least be possible to have a setting that would allow for sorting by lead author by lastname, firstname, instead of lastname? I've got Karl Marx and Groucho Marx all mixed up!

Thanks,
Jon

dstillman

would it at least be possible to have a setting that would allow for sorting by lead author by lastname, firstname, instead of lastname?

Ticket created for this.

(Unfortunately (for me) it's not quite as simple as just adding firstName, since it's sorting by a virtual "firstCreator" field (which is also what's displayed in the list) rather than "lastName". "firstCreator" doesn't include first names, can be a concatenation of multiple names, and pulls from the editor or contributor fields if there are no authors. So there probably needs to be another virtual sort field internally that includes first names and that doesn't switch to "et al" after three, since for sorting it should just keep using the creator names until it finds a difference.)

1. Column-based sorting. Drag the columns to order the sort.

I suggested this, but it seems the main problem is that creator-based sorts would then default to sorting by title as the secondary field, since title is the left-most column by default. Maybe that's fine, but author-date is the standard sort order, and it's what it does now if firstCreator is selected.

Maybe it should be column-based secondary sorting using only the fields to the right of the selected one?

dmiller

I have a closely related request: Rather than limiting the sort options in the center column to a drop down list, it would be really helpful if libraries could be sorted by any of the fields in the Info section.

JonEP

Hi, I thought I'd revisit this since Zotero's sorting features were the subject of today's Zotero blog post (http://www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-basics-sorting-through-your-items/).

Dan asks if it should be column-based secondary sorting using the fields to the right of the selected one. I'm not sure I understand what that means--would it still be possible to, for instance, line up creator, then date, then title, from left to right, so that the sort would be by those three items? If so, that would be great.

Really, whatever works so that it is possible to get references sorted according to multiple criteria. I haven't used Endnote in a long time (thanks zotero!) but I believe Endnote was able to do this, perhaps with some sort of dialogue?

Hope this can be made to happen. Thanks.

dstillman

would it still be possible to, for instance, line up creator, then date, then title, from left to right, so that the sort would be by those three items?

Yes, that's what I mean. Or, if you kept Title on the left but then had Creator followed by Date and clicked to sort by Creator, the secondary sort would be Date, with Title being ignored because it was to the left of the sort field.

JonEP

Sounds great!

JonEP

Forgive me for what might be rude behavior, but, before this thread drifts away, what's the next step? Can I request that a ticket be created for it? Or should I assume that the issue's been raised and that when folks at Zotero feel like there's enough demand a ticket will be created...? Thanks so much.

mark

here's (again) a little more demand

Timothy Roach

I will add another voice to this - a more versatile sorting would be very useful!

t.kmetz

I am surprised by the second respondent saying he "is not familiar with any software that does." EndNote has secondary, tertiary, quaternary, and quinary all on a preferences page (which lets you choose any field). I prefer Zotero and am not switching back to EndNote. However, it is not even accurate to say that Zotero has primitive sorting options. Because you will notice that when you create a bibliography it doesn't mirror the sort order in the center pane. Instead it imposes the sorting that is inherent in the style. So really it is more accurate to say that Zotero has no sorting options. Now this is a good thing when you actually want to comply with the style. But there are plenty of instances when you just want it to sort in the way that you want. So what is needed is a preferences page which goes all the way up to a quinary sort, and then it should also offer you a check box option to have your sorting preferences override the style's sorting convention when creating a bibliography.

dstillman

I am surprised by the second respondent saying he "is not familiar with any software that does." EndNote has secondary, tertiary, quaternary, and quinary all on a preferences page

I don't use EndNote, so I'll take your word on that. My point was that it's quite rare in software in general, and it's not supported by Firefox's tree views, so we'd have to come up with a custom implementation, which is what the rest of this thread has been about.

However, it is not even accurate to say that Zotero has primitive sorting options.

Please don't waste everyone's time with statements like this.

Because you will notice that when you create a bibliography it doesn't mirror the sort order in the center pane.

It's not supposed to—it's supposed to generate output that's valid in the chosen style—and I can't recall anyone else requesting this. If you want output that follows the sort order, sort a collection and create a report from it. Report customizability, including the ability to generate bibliographic entries instead of the metadata tables, is planned, but that's discussed in other threads.

mark

@t.kmetz — note that this thread is about sorting in the library window, not in word processor-plugin generated bibliographies (where it makes perfect sense that sorting is done according to style selected).

If you examine the library window, you'll see several columns on which you can sort, and you can add more. So your comment that Zotero has no sorting options is quite mistaken. The issue some of us have is that we could use at least secondary sorts on other columns in the library window.

adamsmith

additionally, capabilities for section bibliographies (e.g. separate bibliographies by language or item type etc.) is introduced with CSL 1.0 (which is currently being implemented into the 2.1 alpha version of Zotero) - it will take some time until Zotero takes advantage of this. There are a bunch of threads on this, search if you're interested.

lfriedla

I strongly prefer having author (creator) as the left most column when I scan my bib. Title first makes little sense to me (e.g. the names of obscure reports and tertiary documents are mixed together with major authors). I do understand that I can create groups that will sort these files, but still,there are many times when I want to scan a bib by author. I can do this of course, by browsing the rightmost column, but it's counterintuitive. Endnote (as well as Sente and Bookends) allow you to set the order of columns. I understand that there may be a Firefox limitation re its tree structure. But being able to scan from left to right, by author column first, then title, seems pretty basic to me.

fcheslack

@lfriedla You can drag and drop the column headers in Zotero's middle pane.

PaperPiper

Hi,

indeed it would be a very favourable (and essential) function to have the ability to sort Authors last than first name. A general sorting-priority function like the filter function available in MS Excel would be ideal.

arggem

You can drag and drop the column headers in Zotero's middle pane.

The things you learn from hanging around the forums. I guess I should have tried this earlier, but it never occurred to me.

PaperPiper

arggem,

the post about the drag and drop functionality to customise the visual positions of the individual columns was recognised.
However, this post is mainly considered about getting the ability of different priorities in the order of sorting, for instance:

Sort-order-priority: 1st: Surname; 2nd: First name; 3rd date added; ....
as well as a visualisation:
Sort-order-indication like an arrow (ascending or descending) and a number for priority (1st, 2nd, 3rd,...)

And maybe even a clear button that brings you back to default ;-)

I guess that would many people please to see.
Thanks

JonEP

While it would be fine to have a column with the creator's first name, it would also be just fine if the Creator column were populated with "Lastname, Firstname" entries, so that it would automatically sort according to actual author. It's very confusing to have the publications of Ben Anderson and Perry Anderson interspersed with each other and sorted by date!

It's also quite difficult (as noted before) to have to try to remember the release date of a specific article to find it among the tens of articles written by a an author with the last name of Smith. So if I could drag my columns to creator, title, date, then I'd be able to find the specific Smith I was looking for, and then locate the title alphabetically.

Any chance any of this might make it into a future iteration of Zotero? We'd all be quite grateful!

JonEP

Hi and sorry to be insistent - well, sort of sorry :)

With everyone's zotero libraries growing at a rapid rate, and thus increasing the jumble of entries, I just wonder if there are plans to take on the issue of sorting in the library window? We're all looking forward to the standalone version of Zotero, and I'd love to see this feature as one of the added draws of the next generation of Zotero. If plans are not formalized in the development tracking system, would it be possible to do that?

Thanks.

EDIT: by the way, as Dan mentions above, there is a ticket for the lastname, firstname sorting, slated for version 2.1, so that's a start...

mark

I have posted in this thread multiple times and I will do so again because I am really surprised that the main UI of a piece of bibliographic software can apparently go without one of the most basic bibliograhic sorting principles for such a long time — namely disambiguating authors that share last names.

fbennett

A prototype client with multilingual support that I've been working on has implemented a second "shadow" field column, used exclusively for sorting. This column can be used to address the lastName + firstName issue (as well as handling sorting by alternative scripts), but it will take some time to work its way into the production version of Zotero.

This one is not an easy problem to solve, beneath the surface, but a solution is coming.