Automatic menu with selection

Peter100
It would be helpful - when two or more references are selected - to have the context menu appear automatically rather it require a right-click.
  • fbennett
    I may not be understanding the suggestion correctly, but wouldn't that be intrusive when attempting to use Ctl-click to selectively cherry-pick a scattered set of references?
  • Peter100
    perhaps, but it wouldn't have to appear immediately. i suppose cherry-picking would be to move the selection to a group , or? If it recognized that a drag was in progress it wouldn't appear. I have in mind cases of merging or deleting... of course it would require testing.
  • adamsmith
    Is there any existing software you have in mind that does that?
    I've never seen that behavior (which in itself would seem like an argument against doing it).
  • Peter100
    edited September 9, 2012
    I've never seen that behavior (which in itself would seem like an argument against doing it).
    Well that doesn't sound like a very innovative disposition. ;)

    Yes, in fact, Sente has an automatic pop-up window in their citation look-up feature that appears once you highlight a search text phrase (e.g. title). Of course what i propose is a bit different but still related to automating part of the workflow. It's just a pain to 2-finger tap/ scroll/ click when performing repeated actions on 2 or more items, e.g. merging multiple duplicates after import. I suppose it could have other uses as well. Sounds patentable to me, but then that wouldn't be open source. ;)
  • adamsmith
    innovating unique GUI behavior is a bad idea for small software projects like Zotero. For the most part, the goal is to have the software behave in ways expected by the user.

    Specifically for your proposal, though, I really dislike the idea. I select multiple items all the time and use the context menu less than half of the time (mostly that is drag and drop - not just for groups, but also for tags and for quick copy - but there is also non drag&drop case, e.g. when I'm looking at citations in the test pane).
    A delay won't work: If the context menu takes 5secs to come up automatically it's useless. If it takes less than that, it's annoying every time you don't need it.

    Ideally, btw., this should all be possible via keyboard, which it is on linux and I believe on Windows, but afaik you can't get context menus via keyboard on a Mac.
  • Peter100
    Fair enough. In the meantime I have to merge ca 1000 refs due to a messy import and the inability to determine which pdfs needs ocr-ing. Not fun. Perhaps more energy can be put into duplicate detection instead.
  • adamsmith
    why do you want to merge them after import instead of just deleting them?
  • adamsmith
    also - if you just imported a database twice - couldn't you just sort by date added and delete the first import? The duplicate detection&merge really isn't meant to do what you're using it for.
  • Peter100
    There are discrepancies / variations in accuracy in the references, some in the old and some in the new. Its a mess. A horror story too long to go into but it involves two old Endnote libraries and pdfs in need of ocr...ing.
  • Simon
    I don't particularly like changing the behavior of the context menu, but we could make better use of the right pane when multiple items are selected, since currently it isn't doing much. I suspect this will come with batch editing.

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