Option to display only top-level items in search results

sybille
Hi,

I'm missing the old default for searching, in which the results displayed in the middle Zotero pane included only top-level items.

I'm aware that it is possible to use the Advanced search feature instead, and to set it to display top-level items only. That's what I've been doing ever since the default changed to show all levels of results.

But this was before I started testing the OOo extension. When I'm inserting a citation in OOo, I find I'm only interested in top-level items. When all the levels of results are displayed in the plug-in window, the search function becomes more or less useless for me, and this makes adding citations more difficult.

Probably this is a consequence of my own particular library of citations and also the fact that I tend to add attachments to each entry. I can definitely see that it could be nice to have all the results displayed - I'm sure it's the best default for many users. The current default makes the full-text search feature more "discoverable."

So, I'm not requesting that things go back to the way they were before. Instead, I'm hoping that an option could be added, maybe in "about:config," to enable the user to choose that only top-level items be displayed in the Search results.

Would this be possible? Thanks, and thanks again for Zotero.
  • dstillman
    Well, you can always click an item in the items view and hit the minus ("-") key to collapse all nodes...
  • sybille
    That helps - I didn't know about using minus. It seems cumbersome to have to do it each time I add a citation, but perhaps that's me being picky. :)

    It does not completely solve the issue for me, though. I still find that I get "too much information" when using the OOo extension.

    Mostly what I want is to see just the names of the publications that a particular person has authored, without also seeing all of the books about that person, other books which the author might have translated, other books where I added a note concerning the author in question, etc... There's a big difference in size between these two sets of information, especially concerning the major authors that figure in my research.

    I'm thinking that, as a workaround or different approach, I can add a saved search to my collections that has just the "creator" results that interest me and then access that from the OOo extension. Maybe that will not only work here but also be useful for me in other ways, I'll have to experiment. Of course, I wouldn't do that for everyone in my library, but maybe that wouldn't be necessary anyway.

    Thanks for your response.
  • erazlogo
    edited August 23, 2007
    sybille--

    you can also try this: create a saved search on item type "is not" note AND item type "is not" attachment. then use this search for citation.

    this will still find all works about the creator if his/her name is in the title/abstract, but would restrict search results considerably.
  • sybille
    Thanks a million, erazlogo, that's an interesting approach that may be just the thing for me. :)
  • Matthew HudgensHaney
    edited May 17, 2010
    Although this is helpful (and there are a few plugins that auto-collapse the collections), these both seem like unnecessary work-arounds. Auto-collapse as a customizable default seems to be a frequently requested feature. Would it be difficult to program? [meant as a real question, not an accusation; I know very little about programming.]
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