What do you mean by "link"?

If you're talking about related items, the Zutilo plugin can do that. I think that's a fairly popular feature, so we could consider supporting it directly.

[Merged back into this thread — D.S.]

>highlight any number of items in library (e.g. A, B, C, and D)
>'Link' button (in toolbar and/or context menu)
=each item is related to every other highlighted item:

A relates to B, C, D,
B to A, C, D.
C to A, B, D.
D to A, B, C.

By default, or at least by optional setting.

thoughts?

Yeah but its best that I did. This is a different functionality.

Zotero's relating feature is not 'bidirectional' to the extent that I describe. It can relate A to B, C, and D such that B, C, and D also link back to A, but it lacks the ability to interrelate each item highlighted to each other item highlighted.

Even if Zutilo does this, I'm requesting (just like in the other post) that this feature be built into Zotero given it's clear utility -- not to mention Zutilo's disclaimer:

"Zutilo is largely maintained by one person (@wshanks) who does not have much time for Zutilo any more. @wshanks still uses Zotero but not as heavily and so has less need for the power user features of Zutilo. Additional help adapting to new releases of Zotero and fixing other bugs is very welcome. Without additional contributors, Zutilo may not be able to keep compatibility with future releases of Zotero. As of Zotero version 7.0, some features of Zutilo, mainly keyboard shortcuts, no longer function. There was also a long gap between the release of Zotero 7 and a release of Zutilo that could be installed with it." https://github.com/wshanks/Zutilo#readme:~:text=Zutilo is largely,installed with it.

Honestly it really was, but the problem is that you're misunderstanding.

My first post is about making Zotero's current (*partial* mesh) relating feature more user-friendly.

My second post is about the introduction of an entirely different functionality (which, as I said, could be toggled on or off): that is, *full* mesh relating, applicable only to cases in which more than two items are selected for relating.

(Here is a helpful illustration of the distinction as applied to a network:
https://www.techtarget.com/iotagenda/definition/mesh-network-topology-mesh-network -- "In a full mesh network topology, each node is connected directly to all the other nodes. In a partial mesh topology, only some nodes connect directly to one another.")

But for some reason you assumed a full-mesh relating functionality was "implie[d]" by the first post, even though it speaks of only two items.

And now its that much less easy for other users interested in this feature/backend to find out if Zotero is working on it, because a conversation about it is buried under a UX conversation about a UI change to Zotero as is. anyway I guess I can just edit the title or something.

There is no difference between selecting two items and clicking "Relate Items" and selecting more than two items and clicking "Relate Items". Any number of items would all be related to one another in either case. It is the exact same feature, and would be implemented by the exact same code, no matter the number of items.