Categories of documents
First, congratulations by this program!
I'm sorry if this feature has already been requested, but I didn't found it so far.
My request is related with a problem that I have which is how to differentiate articles, or whatever documents, that I own, that i still have to read, or even that I found the reference and that I still have to search, etc.
Thanks!
I'm sorry if this feature has already been requested, but I didn't found it so far.
My request is related with a problem that I have which is how to differentiate articles, or whatever documents, that I own, that i still have to read, or even that I found the reference and that I still have to search, etc.
Thanks!
On a related note: Dan, what are your thoughts on the partial overlap between subcollections and tags? Presently, an item can be in any number (including zero) subcollections and can have any number of (including zero) tags. As far as I know, the only functional difference between subcollections and tags is that, on the one hand, subcollections can be organised heirarchically whereas tags cannot; and on the other hand, the contents of multiple tags can be viewed at once whereas only one subcollection can be open at once.
Some modern software, most notably gmail, does away with folders altogether, using only labels for grouping items.
If tags (as implemented in Zotero) were supplemented with an heirarchical structure (so that e.g. tag "numerical quadrature technique" implies tag "numerical analysis"), I think tags would dominate subcollections in usefulness, and subcollections could be done away with altogether, for a much simpler interface. Of course it might be too late for this sort of change, though Zotero is still in Beta. What do you think?
My initial idea (maybe i wasn't too explicit) was, for example, whenever you open a folder and you see the list of documents, instead of seeing each one of them with white background, i could set it up to see, let's say, papers which i own in white background, papers which i have the reference but i dont have in light orange, urgent papers to read in red, etc.
It is just that with the tags I have to treat them, make them, search for them and if they were "offered" visually it seems way more simplier.
I have slight dislexia and at least to me sometimes it seems more easier to deal with colour categories rather than pure text.
I would like to see more people to comment, if possible.
I think the advantage of a dedicated feature (by coloured highlighting or an icon in the document list) as opposed to using tags is that you would e.g. be browsing a collection and quickly notice items which still needs work. If you could set levels of priority (say 1-4), an intenser background colour for higher priority would be a very visual aid for workflow. I think the solution with tags is less intuitive and makes no distinction between properties of a document related to content ("glucose" tag) versus related to workflow ("medium priority" tag).
If implemented not by coloured highlighting but as an optional extra column in the item list window, perhaps the extra programming required could be relatively minimal?
I would assume a few such markers ("read!", "find!", priority levels) can be of interest to many users. For more user-specific markers the regular tags system could be used as Dan suggested.
Color-coding seems a nice way to represent such information. One thing I would also want to be able to define, is whether I own a hard copy of a book/article, an ebook/attachment, or if it's only a reference. And also the reference's work-flow status (such as those discussed above).
What different methods are people currently using to do this in Zotero? And is a more specific feature likely to make it into Zotero?
I'm not sure why you think tags aren't a good way to achieve these goals in general.
You are aware, that you can assign a tag to multiple items by dragging the items onto the tag in the left(!) panel?