'Related' tab --advanced search functionality

Ben Schaefer
Hi there fellow zotero users and developers,
I really love the 'Related' feature that allows me to link items in zotero to other items.

However, as my collection tends to grow fairly quickly, I would suggest to add the 'Advanced Search' functionality, which is already accessible from the main zotero window, to also be accessible in the 'Add Related' function. Right now, you can only sort your entries in there by 'title' and 'author.'

I think this would be very handy for navigating a large collection of items.

All the best from Leipzig, Germany,

Ben
  • MG6
    I cannot agree more--I use relationships all the time to collect multiple copies of individual titles. It's one of Zotero's best features, but it is a cumbersome and often confusing process right now. I fear it limits the feature's potential. Ben may not realize that you can already search, by any term from any field, but I can't always remember a unique term to put in the search field and narrow my results. Being able to sort the list by even a few more headings would really help.

    Being able to drag other items onto an entry's related tab would also be very cool.

    By the same token, it would be nice if the list of related items could give more info than the title. Very different items can often have identical titles.

    Thank you.
  • migugg
    I would like to draw attention again to this issue, wo which the developpers have not responded yet: please improve the related tab by adding more info, specifically author and year to the related items shown in the related tab.
    And, as has been already mentionned in other discussions, please add something that indicates whether an item has related items in either the middle panel or in the info panel.
    At the moment, related is almost useless because it does not display enough information and requires clicks only to find out whether it is empty or not.
  • ajlyon
    Maybe we could get author and year as a tooltip when hovering on items in the related list?

    I also agree on the previous point of adding quicksearch to the add related dialog. Not sure why it isn't there.
  • fbennett
    With some help from Avram, I recently built a translator that makes heavy use of relations to track the multiple reporters in which law cases and commentaries are published. It does currently have this problem, that the title information is identical for all of the items.

    The translator currently runs only in the multilingual branch, so I have some room to play around on the Zotero side. As one more idea into the mix, I'll be looking at the possibility of building a long-ish description string for each entry, and then truncating it as far as it matches the current entry. That should allow items to be discriminated, without cluttering up the UI.
  • RintzeRintze
    edited May 3, 2011
    A "long-ish description string" sounds a lot like a bibliographic reference to me ;)

    I guess Zotero could use citeproc-js to generate those :).
  • fbennett
    edited May 7, 2011
    Here's a screenshot of what I've implemented for trial purposes in the multilingual branch.

    Here's the algorithm, such as it is. There are two label slots for each related item (one left- and one right-aligned). The author name (1) always shows through in the first slot, if it is present and differs from the author of the current item. Three other info chunks are available: (2) the title (or short title), (3) a composite of volume, issue, and container title, and (4) the date. If (2) or (3) match any other item, it is dropped, and the next info chunk is used instead. If no info chunks are available (and useful for disambiguation), the first slot gets an empty label and the year goes in the last.

    I think this will serve well enough on my own desktop, but comments and suggestions for improvement are certainly welcome.
  • Gracile
    Is this possible to address that too? :
    And, as has been already mentionned in other discussions, please add something that indicates whether an item has related items in either the middle panel or in the info panel.
    What do you think of adding the number of related items directly in the tab "Related". Screenshot
  • fbennett
    Yes, that would be useful. Implementing it properly would require a trigger/notifier in the Zotero code, which I'm a little leery of trying to implement myself. But if the label scheme I've applied looks like it will hold up in a variety of contexts, there's a chance it will be picked up for Zotero main. At that point, someone who knows what they are doing (Dan, Simon, others) may pick up that suggestion as well. It certainly seems like a good idea.
  • Budizz
    I would also really like to be able to add some field (or replace the title by author) in the "related" tab. So I agree with migugg.
    I would like to draw attention again to this issue, wo which the developpers have not responded yet: please improve the related tab by adding more info, specifically author and year to the related items shown in the related tab
    Thanks for Zotero!
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