More powerful search

f.martinez.pastor
Search is too simple for the purposes of Zotero. Maybe with a small database it would suffice, but we need a more powerfull search, just like Pubmed, for instance: booleans, grouping, field tags, etc.
Advanced search is not quite useful. It only allows All or Any.
  • adamsmith
    You can do Boolean searches by using saved searches as an intermediate step.
    Apart from that, pubmed search looks very much like Zotero's.
  • f.martinez.pastor
    PubMed search is much more powerful than Zotero's; try doing something like this Zotero:
    (DNA OR chromatin) AND (damage OR breaks OR disruption) AND (Williams OR (Watson NOT Fabricio))

    And I am not talkin about complex things I can do in PubMed (well, not quite complex, actually):
    review[PT] AND (DNA[TI] OR breaks[AB]) AND 1998[DP]

    Not supporting boolean search, at the least, in the quick search is a great drawback for a really, really good application such as Zotero. In a bibliography management tool, search is critical. I use BibDesk too (with smaller databases, though), and I am able to carry out searches with either boolean or regular expression operators.

    And saved searches are useful, but not practical. Carrying out rather complex searches elsewhere is just one step and like 10 seconds typing. If I am working in a paper, I need to do one of them each 5 min at most. I am talking about >7500 items.
  • adamsmith
    ok, fair enough. I doubt that's going to happen any time soon. Easier boolean search would certainly be nice and I'd assume patches are welcome, but given the current dev timeline I don't see that happening from Zotero devs any time within the next year, probably longer.
    (advanced search does support regex searches for attachment content, FWIW)
  • f.martinez.pastor
    Thank you for the info. It would be nice to use AND and OR in the quick search.
    Unfortunately I am a big fan of quick search...
  • efilgo
    Can I add in my comments here that I would love a good Boolean search in the advanced search. I need an OR!
  • adamsmith
    Match = ANY is the exact same thing as OR, so that already exists.
  • efilgo
    Ok, let me rephrase that. I'd like an OR that I can combine with an AND. Right now I'd love to be able to search across a collection for any note that contains "Feminism" OR "gender" or "women" - right now I can only do that with 3 separate saved searches.
  • adamsmith
    you mistyped there - Feminism OR gender OR women is a single search. But as for the general point, AND/OR combinations you will indeed need multiple searches, but I don't see how there'd be more than two searches.

    I don't think there are systematic objections to implementing this, but it's not high on anyone's agenda.
  • colemanbroaddus
    Any progress on this in the last six years? or plugins that provide this? I don't think that using multiple saved-search as intermediate steps is feasible. Love Zotero, thanks for your work :)
  • adamsmith
    Nothing new no. Just to be sure, when you say "not feasible" you mean it's not an acceptable user experience, not that it doesn't technically work, right?
  • colemanbroaddus
    It clutters the sidebar with unnecessary saved searches and just feels pretty silly. But it does work, and the search is otherwise already powerful, fast and in general good.
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