Suggestion: Handle collections like tags

carl.adamsson
I don't know if this has been brought up before (couldn't find it).

I think it is a problem that it is difficult to move items between collections and to see to which collections a certain item belongs (ok, I know you can press cntrl).

Anyway, I think Zotero collections are conceptually very similar to tags. Why not add a tab for collections next to the one called tags. In the new tab you would see all the collections holding the item. You should also be able to add and remove collections there and thereby effectively move the item between collections.

Just a suggestion. I might overlook some problem here but to me it sounds very neat...
  • adamsmith
    I'm pretty sure I had an exchange with Dan about a week ago where he agreed that some version of this would be desirable - that was in response to someone making a similar request in a longer thread. I'm out for most of today, maybe you or someone else can track down that thread and link to it.
  • carl.adamsson
    I guess it was this thread:
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/22870/display-collections-to-which-an-item-belongs/#Item_0

    Same idea.
  • dstillman
    I think it is a problem that it is difficult to move items between collections
    This part will also be addressed with a modifier key while dragging.
  • adamsmith
    I was referring to Dan's post at the bottom of this thread:
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/25093/cant-drag-and-drop-items-into-collection/
  • antikorpo
    +1

    The only difference i see for collections is that they can be nested:

    However, if we could add tags to collections themselves (currently selecting a folder tells me "no item selected") I think it could be possible to call zotero collections "nested tags".

    (Reversely i could imagine nesting tags, but i guess it would get too complicated, because the visual clue would be missing.)
  • adamsmith
    note that you can tag all items in a collection by selecting them and dragging them to a tag on the left. If you have subcollections, that requires the recursive collections hidden pref to be toggled from its default false to true:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/preferences/hidden_preferences

    I believe there aren't any objections against nested tags either - there even was a suggested patch a while ago:
    https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!searchin/zotero-dev/concepts/zotero-dev/v2xDMnnsC4E/aYBKEUOw8eYJ
    I don't think the implementation was clean enough for devs' taste, but something along those lines would be cool - just won't happen super quickly.
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