re-order collection and subcollection folders by drag/drop
I find it bothersome that all the collections and subcollections are just sorted alphabetically. I'd also like to be able to choose to have them unsorted, and then drag them into order. An example of this type of behaviour is Firefox's bookmarks.
I'm not sure what language Zotero is programmed in, but I've seen this kind of re-ordering in many different GUIs, so I don't think it is an unusual feature to expect?
It would really aid my workflow, and I hope it would help a lot of users if it was ever implemented.
Cheers.
I'm not sure what language Zotero is programmed in, but I've seen this kind of re-ordering in many different GUIs, so I don't think it is an unusual feature to expect?
It would really aid my workflow, and I hope it would help a lot of users if it was ever implemented.
Cheers.
I personally consider this nice to have feature, but not very important.
That view depends on how many sub-collections you use and your workflow, which depends again on what you're using Zotero for at the time.
Without drag and drop ordering, the only solution is to number sub-collections, which is quite Neanderthal! It's also a complete pain if your workflow includes continually regrouping sub-collections as the project advances.
If it is hard. Then to enable 'batch rename' collection and sub collection will also helps a lot. I mean some thing like that: with a click of a button your collection struct will shows up in a doc like outliner. Then you can rename them,shift them to lower or uper level and so on. Then wenn you save that outline, they will all turn to a sturcture of collection and sub-collection with the same effect of you do the rename by hand.
Numbering all entries is not only hard work. It looks ugly and it is a pita to add new entries "in the middle". Reminds me in the "Goto Renumber" problem from my "Basic" times (TRS-80).
When the sorting helps with syncing, _Zotero_ could add the numbers internally.
I could cry.
Wish i had time to contribute instead of moaning. It is a miracle to me how people can work this way. Maybe _everybody_ is "numbering"?
Imagine i take the work and number all the dozens of entries in a collection. I even take the pain and do several passes, so everything is equidistant. Everything looks ordered (not sorted).
Now i want to link some of the entries into other collections - bummer.
Most are not using numbering, but are happy that the collections are sorted automatically thus reducing manual work needed for organizing your library.
The developers are aware of this feature request and may implement it one day.
Have you tried using sub-collections? This is the way I keep related collections together.
Actually i have much more than 3 collections - most with many entries. Its all about structuring knowledge, not sorting. Sorting destroys every structure.
But then - 'nough said. The developers are aware of this feature request and may implement it one day.
numbering takes a lot of time and exactly because I need to reorganize things constantly it is useless.
I already use numbers, underscores, etc. to prefix my collections with, but it gets pretty tedious. Also I use a lot of emoji (colored circles, stack of books, star, etc.) to visually differentiate my collections and subcollections, and they sort in a meaningless order, so it's kind of a mess.
It would seriously big a big help for my organization if I could simply drag collections and subcollections in my desired order.
I'm a programmer and do appreciate that syncing ordering changes is not trivial. But also, because there's no data loss ever involved, I would hope that a fairly simple data model would be fine -- it's not the end of the world if a "merge conflict" results in an ordering that was different from both originals.
I realise that there must be a serious obstacle with developing this functionality, but it is an urgent problem.
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/47791/symbolic-links-between-subcollections#latest
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/78890/advanced-collection-structure-management-duplicate-structure#latest
https://github.com/zotero/zotero/issues/107.
Currently I have to use some weird numbering scheme to order them and it's not pleasing to see and takes space. With this feature we'll be able to, for example, put the important collections at the top, or sort the collections in a logical order.
This feature may not look fancy but I think it's kind of a fundamental feature and immensely useful.
J'attends avec impatience cette fonctionnalité.
I am using native sorting via numbers, dots and dashes to work around this issue. It might look cumbersome at first but I find organizing within a framework rather than arbitrary sequencing is highly functional in retrieving the desired subcollection or paper.
I keep an inbox collection and sub-collections for tagging, planning, keeping track of my readings and processing of literature generally. I find it highly useful to select and find articles I want to read.
I keep an archive collection with dedicated sub-collections for every subject that I am interested in. Every item is placed in the archive before they get out of the inbox.
I create a collection for each project and sub-collections for each stage of the project. These items also get archived in their respective sub-collections before they leave the inbox of the project.
I also highly recommend using tags extensively.
Numbered tags can be utilized for categorizing in terms of process: toread, reading, read, processing, processed, tobereviewed, tobearchived, archived, projectname, projectnameused (last two are interchangeable for the stage of the current project)
Although nested tags are not available natively, Ethereal Style plugin offers an option. I prefer level 1 tags, since organizing tag hierarchies via tags pane is cumbersome in my experience.