Upgrade StorageNew/compact “Add/Edit Citation” bar deletes pre-existing content
Hi guys!
I am, so to speak, a potential high-profile defector from the Mendeley camp (I'm currently the admin of a nearly 6000-member-strong Mendeley users Facebook group). I am fed up with its issues and will likely jump ship to Zotero whatever the outcome of this particular gripe, as it seems more stable and future-proof.
However, I am missing a few things terribly from Mendeley: one of them is the simple, two-click (or one-click-plus-macro) citation editing interface. It's one of the few UX details that they got right.
See, I get that you were trying to replicate that with the new “Add/Edit Citation” bar, and even managed to do so when it comes to ADDING new citations; however, its functionality is incomplete, buggy and misleading in its name since currently it cannot EDIT citations (not on my setup, at least), as it discards whatever contents were inputted. Functionally, it's no different than just deleting them altogether and starting over.
The only way I can seem to edit an already existing citation without destroying its content in the process is by using the classic citation window. It's extremely powerful, but I'd rather use it only for editing existing citations or adding more complex citations from scratch, as its interface is rather busy, and probably use the new bar – yes, even by default – just for adding new and simpler ones.
The thing is, and to make matters worse, if one leaves the new bar on by default, toggling to the advanced, classic window entails destroying the content in the process (unless, of course, one goes to the trouble of manually changing the default in Zotero's preference window, bhat that would be sheer insanity). This is a bit of a catch-22 that makes the compact interface utterly useless.
If you want me to do a video demo or something, I'll be more than happy to do so.
I am, so to speak, a potential high-profile defector from the Mendeley camp (I'm currently the admin of a nearly 6000-member-strong Mendeley users Facebook group). I am fed up with its issues and will likely jump ship to Zotero whatever the outcome of this particular gripe, as it seems more stable and future-proof.
However, I am missing a few things terribly from Mendeley: one of them is the simple, two-click (or one-click-plus-macro) citation editing interface. It's one of the few UX details that they got right.
See, I get that you were trying to replicate that with the new “Add/Edit Citation” bar, and even managed to do so when it comes to ADDING new citations; however, its functionality is incomplete, buggy and misleading in its name since currently it cannot EDIT citations (not on my setup, at least), as it discards whatever contents were inputted. Functionally, it's no different than just deleting them altogether and starting over.
The only way I can seem to edit an already existing citation without destroying its content in the process is by using the classic citation window. It's extremely powerful, but I'd rather use it only for editing existing citations or adding more complex citations from scratch, as its interface is rather busy, and probably use the new bar – yes, even by default – just for adding new and simpler ones.
The thing is, and to make matters worse, if one leaves the new bar on by default, toggling to the advanced, classic window entails destroying the content in the process (unless, of course, one goes to the trouble of manually changing the default in Zotero's preference window, bhat that would be sheer insanity). This is a bit of a catch-22 that makes the compact interface utterly useless.
If you want me to do a video demo or something, I'll be more than happy to do so.
If that's not what you're seeing, can you provide exact steps to reproduce whatever it is that you're seeing in a new document? If you can't reproduce it in a new document, see Debugging Broken Documents for an existing document where you're seeing this.
The document is a brand new, blank document on Microsoft Word 16.35 (20030802). So, as you can see, I have pretty much everything up to date, and would never mess around with existing documents as I am a recent switcher (I would, of course, start redoing some papers with Zotero just to get a feel for it). As for syncing, I'm using ZotFile to sync my PDF library on a Google Drive folder.
And the steps are basically inserting a new citation on an empty document, clicking it, editing it, and boom, it's back to square one, said bubble is gone. I can definitely edit each reference while the bar is open, but as soon as I commit to those changes, the bar is next to useless.
Also, the same behaviour happens in LibreOffice 6.3.5.2… It seems the common denominator here is Zotero…
While I loathe Mendeley's quirks, Zotero does seem to be less forgiving of user error… Ideally, clicking outside of the bar should make it disappear outright, just like in Mendeley.
You can also take a video, upload it somewhere (e.g., Dropbox), and provide a link here. The Add/Edit Citation bar obviously does what it says normally, and you can read through how it's meant to work in the documentation.
And let's drop the "useless" talk. There's a good chance this is a misunderstanding on your part.
Here it is!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12rvYaLTlM3KNukb_eTE9PhLTeTiUbFxM/view?usp=sharing
(Just to clarify, what you're calling the "new" bar has been the default citing interface since 2011, so whatever this is is some sort of recent bug or conflict that most people aren't seeing.)
Detecting typing would likely be a bit more invasive than we want the plugin to be within Word, but we may be able to better handle the case of "{Citation}" being deleted or edited. @adomasven would have a better idea on that front.
Can you reproduce the "00:00:00" thing?
@adomasven will probably have other questions, but I'd guess there's some sort of detritus in your Word installation that's causing problems here. You might try 1) with a clean Normal.dotm and 2) with any other plugins removed.
As for the zero thing, I can frequently catch a glimpse of them (some frames) every now and then. I'll try screencapping it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18CM-VRHB-a9-zQ1atYe9P18ozDULmrI9/view?usp=sharing
Getting an error, obviously, shouldn't happen regardless, so we'll see if we can figure out why that happened for you. In any case, I'll let Adomas take it from here. Thanks for the clear debugging info, and sorry for these initial troubles!
As for the other error message, it might warrant a post on its own as it's likely a bit jarring for less experienced users, I can assure you. As for me, I'd rather spend my free time contributing to this project with string localization than being an admin of a group of users of an app – Mendeley – whose future I don't believe in. Your swift response is already very refreshing in comparison, thanks!
Thank you for your detailed comment. I completely understand those issues arising form cross-platform compatibility, and I accept them as an inevitable shortcoming. No worries there, I will adapt.
As for the timestamp thing, I quickly realized it was merely cosmetic, and maybe it was only noticeable because I was low on memory (even with 40 GB of it… I probably had some memory-sucking sinkhole running at that point) and my Mac was lagging terribly to the point that Word/Zotero got stuck like that for a few frames, but otherwise it's fine.
As for the other bug, or any other serious bugs, sure, count me in. I'm all for F/OSS tools, and like to help to the best of my abilities.