Attachment Content search not working in Advanced Search with other conditions

JimHokanson

I can't figure out how to search for content in my documents ("attachment content" in advanced search) along with other conditions, in particular, the creator field. Here's a link to an example with images: https://github.com/JimHokanson/zotero_notes/issues/1

dstillman

Attachment Content matches attachment items. Creator matches parent items. So the intersection of both is an empty set.

You should get matches if you check "Include parent and child items of matching items".

We'll try to offer more flexibility here in the future (e.g., a "Child Attachment Content" search condition would do what you expect, similar to the existing "Child Note"), but there are use cases where being able to match individual child items is useful.

JimHokanson

Ah, I should have tried that, thanks. The interface is a bit confusing because it sounds like "including ... of matching items" is a display option for the results, not part of the search itself. The "show only top-level items" sounds like a display option rather than a search option, so you have both search options and display options mixed together. The latter may not be that bad although for the former my armchair quarterback suggestion is to change "Include parent and child items of matching items" to be "match against the combination of parent and child items" (or something like that)

dstillman

Not saying the wording is totally clear, but they're all search options, not display options. "Show only top-level items" limits the search to top-level items. "Include parent and child items of matching items" matches items directly and then includes the parent and child items and matches on those as well (or something approximating that).

You can see the difference by looking at what's black vs. gray in the results. The actual matches are in black.