Bug/Feature? Changing a "Book Section" type to a "Book" type

max1836
I was fiddling around with the PC version of Zotero (5.0.58) and noticed what seems like a bug.

1. Changed an item that was a "Book Section" type to a "Book" type
2. The "Title" field of the "Book Section" is copied into the "Title" field for the "Book".

It seems to me that the "Book Title" field of the "Book Section" should be copied into the "Title" field for the "Book".

  • djross3
    edited November 26, 2018
    I've wondered the exact same thing.

    Book > Book Section (common operation, if you add by ISBN then manually edit):
    The "Title" becomes the "Book Title" (which is usually correct and helpful)

    But if you switch it back:
    Book Section > Book (less common operation although I do this after duplicating to add the volume to cite, if I've already added a chapter):
    The "Title" remains in place, and "Book Title" is lost.

    For consistency, I'd expect it to switch back.
  • bwiernik
    As a note, if you want to create book items from book sections (or vice versa), I recommend using the Zutilo plugin, which adds shortcuts to do this quickly.
  • adamsmith
    Yeah, I think roundtrip consistency is probably the right thing to do here, though I do wonder how common this is. Book metadata is very easy to grab of the internet, chapters aren't, so I'm assuming people basically just go in one direction here
  • djross3
    @adamsmith that sounds exactly right to me. It's inconsistent, but it comes up rarely enough I don't mind/object, just seems quirky.
  • dstillman
    edited November 26, 2018
    Just to clarify, this is the default behavior as long as the book section doesn't already have a title. When the book section has a title, it's treated like moving between any other item types, where the title is kept and it warns that it will discard non-matching fields (in this case Book Title).

    So while I suspect this almost never comes up, the change here, if we wanted to make one, would be to discard Title instead, and warn accordingly.
  • djross3
    @dstillman correct. And I can't claim this needs to be a priority to fix, but it seems very unlikely to me that users would want to keep the book section title as book title more often than keeping the book title as book title.

    The only situation where the current version would make sense would be if someone had accidentally entered a book as a book section, or a translator had failed in that way. So in that case, presumably there would be no book title entered in the book section item, correct? So you could default to keeping the book section title as book title, if and only if there is no book title.
  • max1836
    As I remember when changing from type "Book Section" to "Book" you get warned that the "Book Title" field will be lost. It really isn't clear that means that the title of the "Book" type will be set to the title of the "Book Section" type.

    This is of course one of the quirks that you remember once bit. I hadn't used Zotero in a long time and just forgot.

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