> What are you using?

Mostly Notion.

> The main point of the citation dialog is to search for citations. The fact that it lets you add a locator is one minor feature of the dialog.

I agree with this, but I saw the ability to quickly search for citations as the main reason for my suggestion. So you say this doesn't make sense because it is almost as easy to do a quick search with C-F, then select the item and press C-S-A? So the only remaining reason, namely to add pages numbers and prefix/suffixes, has not enough weight to motivate this change. I don't know, you might be right.

> We could consider showing something like this by default for Copy Citation

If it were just for the page numbers, I would prefer a shortcut similar to C-S-A that included the current page number when you have a book open.

> I don't know if it does what you need, but you're aware of Notero?

Yes, it's a fine tool, and since items and notes are imported into Notion you can take advantage of Notion quick search/link abilities. But I don't want to duplicate my notes between 2 tools, I'm fine with loosely referencing them from an external note taking app (and including page numbers may sometimes be important here). After all, the tight coupling takes place between the book and its annotations and perhaps between groups of such annotations integrated into notes, but above that is not as local and fine-grained.

> Sure, but then a better, more flexible solution would be quicker item search from anywhere within Zotero — e.g., a shortcut key to pull up a panel (not unlike the quick-format dialog, but without citation features) that let you search for an item and then select it in the library view.

If you mean that it would switch to the library tab at the end, for me it would be enough if it were a shortcut that opened the library view in "C-F mode" from anywhere within Zotero, without the panel thing. But it is something to ponder about because it's becoming more general than my initial request which you've almost convinced me that it doesn't bring much to the table.

> the use case of "I want to generate a multi-item citation in an external tool without proper Zotero integration" is not really one that we'd optimize for.

Seems like the right call to me.

> Ah, that's different and planned.

Great, thanks!

Yep, I didn't know that the library position couldn't be changed. There still is a corner case when you have another Zotero window focused, but mostly yes.