Discouraging delete

Hello all,

we're using Zotero in group libraries where a fair number of people are co-editing in principle. We've had issues where people have accidentally deleted items without realising (when e.g., they had just wanted to remove them from the collection).

Is there a way in which the delete dialogue could be made more distinct from the 'remove from collection' dialogue? Or even where delete could be disabled from non-admins?

Would it be possible to do with with an extension / monkey patching?

  • edited October 26, 2020
    No easily. The popup window you see comes from calling prompt-service.confirm, and the text to prompt with is built in the middle of zoteroPane.deleteSelectedItems. From what I can tell you'd have to rebuild that function almost 100% (and keep that up to date should the Zotero function change) to pick out and replace the delete specifically.
  • Ah, that's a shame. Maybe a feature request for a future version of Zotero then - basically, to make the delete more customisable (and interceptable).
  • Maybe the permanently delete dialogs (shit+delete) should have "no" as the default button.
  • @leonardof - yeah, that's a really good idea!
  • Thanks! I deleted a folder or two (with their contents!) before thinking of it. I guess I read it once in GNOME' Human Interface Guidelines, back in the GNOME 2.x days.
  • Hi @danstillman

    Would the proposal by @leonardof be a welcome change?

    If not, would it be possible to building something into Zotero that exposes the functionality say via advanced settings? I.e., an advanced setting that has "permanent-delete-dialog-defaults-to-no=true|false" ?

    What do you think?
  • You'll be able to restore collections from the trash in an upcoming version.
  • That's really great!

    It still relies on having realised what I did. Sometimes I go through collections removing items from that collection, but have accidentally deleted them. (This is because I might be removing attachments with shift-delete at the same time.)

    I would love an advanced setting that somehow distinguished delete from 'remove from collection'.
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