Parent and Child Search Option
I have noticed that in the Advanced Search box the Include parent and child of matching items check box is somewhat irrelevant: Whether or not it is checked, it seems, all of the child and parent items related to the item that actually does contain the searched for term come up in the list. The titles of the related items are grey while the titles of the items with the searched for items in them are black. This is a problem in that it makes it impossible to create a batch tag for your search matches without also tagging every related item. Any advice on how to get around this would be helpful.
That's also how the quicksearch worked in early betas of Zotero before we made child items always show up under their parents (since hiding non-matching parents is a bit confusing).
Is there some reason why having a similar set of controls as to the search output could not be implemented in the Zotero advanced search box? Perhaps that way one could eliminate even as-of-yet unseen birds with one stone.
Now that the ticket is added, when can we expect this sort of feature to be available?
Not sure--probably after synchronization and hierarchical item types are implemented.
Well, we've had three updates since this discussion ended: am I right in thinking that the tickets meant to resolve the parent child viewing issue have not yet been incorporated? If not, apart from their place in line behind synchronization, is there any indication of any time frame for their inclusion?
To sort notes in reports by "date added," add "?sort=dateAdded" in the end of the report url ("extensions.zotero.report.combineChildItems" should be set to "false").
That said, it would be great to get the above tickets done.
http://www.zotero.org/documentation/reports#using_reports_to_organize_your_notes
This should address the original request on this thread (and others), and it addresses part (but not all) of the rationale behind the "hide non-matching items" ticket. The new behavior does prevent a true Select All, but that can easily be done manually with a few more clicks or, for saved searches, by using "Include parent and child items of matching items". If people find the lack of a true Select All problematic, we can consider other options, but this new behavior is probably what people want the majority of the time and should generally make search results more useful.
Barring further refinements, this change will be included in 1.0.8 and the next 1.5 release.