tags behave different in Zotero 5

stroom
Tags used to be recognized in Zotero for Firefox including the case: an entry "Fish" would be forced to lowercase if the tag "fish" was already present. I liked that a lot, it was a great way to keep things organized and prevent double entries.

It changed in Zotero 5: "Fish" stays uppercase, although "fish" is already in the tag list. If I select "fish" from the tags pane in the lower left corner, the specific article with that new tag "Fish" obviously does not pop up in the selection.

Is this an accidental change?

ps. It takes a lot of time before the new tag is added in the over all tag list ("Fish" next to "fish").
  • pjweiss
    I prefer keeping tags as entered. I sometimes use different case for different purposes.
  • Gurdas_Sandhu
    Using capitalization for differentiation, in general, does not seem like a good idea. Because it is somewhat ambiguous and might not stay different in other systems.

    What about "Fish" and "fish" if they are auto-imported tags, still treated as different?
  • stroom
    I'm quite sure they will be treated as different, and also that in Zotero 4/FF that was not the case: having both "fish" and "Fish" was not allowed in the tag list. Whichever of the two was first in the tag database prevailed.
    That worked excellent!
  • bwiernik
    edited September 15, 2017
    I would definitely predict that this is a bug, considering that it takes time for the duplicate tag to appear in the list and that autocomplete doesn’t distinguish them. Several parts of the tag code did change in Zotero 5.
  • stroom
    I still consider this a bug, since my tag-list is exploding with false duplicates in Zotero 5.

    Is there any action planned to solve this issue? Make it a user setting in preferences to not allow false duplicate tags?

    Or is there a workaround available?
  • nariday
    I second the idea that this should be a bug. I used to type lower cases while my existing tag entries have already been all capitalized. Now I have so many duplicated tags like 'Validation' and 'validation'. Has someone been able to find a workaround to it? I'd appreciate it if you could share it. Thanks!
  • bwiernik
    @dstillman
  • Elpeka
    Same goes for me here!

    Additionally there appears an annoying thing in the web version of Zotero that may have to do with the case described above: While editing an entry and adding another tag, already existing tags are being suggested to me (which is great and makes totally sense). But when I want to chose one of these suggestions and click on it, my half written tag stays there and another empty line for tags is added.

    I work around it by carefully spelling the tag the same name, including the case and not clicking on the tags suggested. But it is annoying and doesn't safe time as it should…
  • milacsantana
    Agree that it's a bug that should be fixed. I, too, have multiple duplicate or triple tags. Is there a way to temporarily fix this by manually merging them?
  • henningninneh
    edited September 26, 2018
    From a usability standpoint, it's a bug. Very annoying, since slowly my tags are duplicating and I have to check both the upper-case and the lower-case version to retrieve all entries for a tag.

    Once this is fixed, I hope the upper- and lower-case tags can be merged.
  • stroom
    ..a daily frustration to remove the duplicates.. does anyone has a workable workaround?
  • littlesis92
    edited November 29, 2018
    I'm also quite frustrated by this issue and would be delighted to learn any workaround, though of course I'd like even more to see this fixed.
  • aliakhavan89
    edited February 13, 2019
    Hi everyone, I don’t know whether it’s a bug or a feature but it really hurts. Tags being case sensitive just make redundancy and it is time consuming to solve. Is there any solution to make tags case insensitive?
  • kstedman
    Just adding my voice that I very much wish that "Fish" would merge with "fish." Would be a huge time-saver.
  • lilysfritz
    @zotero any updates on whether or not this might be addressed in an update? Endorse the above comments that a user preference for allowing/disallowing false duplicates based on capitalisation would be helpful.
  • suurimonster
    A +1 here. Using the metadata automatically from journals gives me some very unhelpful case sensitive issues e.g.:

    Atomic Force Microscopy
    atomic force microscopy
    Atomic force microscopy

    Making tag searches less than optimised.
  • DRRCLibrary
    +1 Here as well, especially for large or group libraries.
  • qodrinzo
    +1 (upvoted) for God's sake!
  • fwilhelm
    +1 that would make the tag feature much more helpful and readable, especially in light of the fact that automatic tagging often applies the same tags with different capitalization (see example of @suurimonster).
    For users who wish to continue using case-sensitive tags there could be an option to enable/disable in the Preferences.
  • ilc168
    +1, I'd appreciate the feature too.
  • t.hrynick
    +1 here. Finding current default case-sensitivity of tags very frustrating, slowing my work down. Please make it a user preference.
  • ZenonMarko
    Adding my vote to this...

    Also there should be an easier way to merge tags with differing cases; right now, as I understand the method, one must manually rename the undesired tag so that its capitalization matches that of the desired tag. It would be easier if one could just drag one tag into the other, and instantly merge.

    Also, perhaps a batch tag merge command? One could choose the preferred capitalization method, and all merges will follow that preference.

    And one more idea along that line: Make this a preference, so that any imported or manually added tags are automatically adjusted to match one's capitalization preferences. This would automatically do away with duplicates.
  • eero.olli
    +1 to all suggestions by @ZenonMarko.

  • kimsin98
    +1 to at least adding an option to unify tags in different cases
  • apatil1
    +1 for this feature in 2021. Either enforce lowercase-only in tags like previously, or add a simple checkbox option to the settings that would lower() all newly imported/added tags.
  • rochak_khandelwal
    Any idea if this issue has been fixed? @Zotero
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