Biblioscape User Community

Hi Paul,

Would it be possible to add a "Categories" tab at the bottom of the Preview Pane when references are displayed in the the List Pane? This tab would cause the Preview Pane to display all categories with which the highlighted record is tagged.

Here is an example of the benefit of that: I have just done a search for "underestimate," which returned a list of references which have that word in the abstract or memo field. I also have an "underestimate" category, which returns a totally different and much shorter list of records that I have tagged manually. I want to be sure all references in the search list are tagged with the underestimate category.

The easy way for a user to do this would be to use the down-arrow key to highlight references in the list one by one, with the names of the categories with which the current record is tagged displayed in the Preview Pane.

One additional thing -- necessary to make this really easy to use -- would be to change what the OTHER Categories tab (the one on the right margin of the Search Pane) displays when the new Categories tab in the Preview Pane is active. At present, when the reference List is visible, the Search pane can show a category tree, to which a reference can be dragged and dropped; however, it does not provide confirmation of success. A more useful arrangement when categories are displayed in the Preview Pane would be the "Categories tree with check-boxes" version of the Categories tree can be displayed when an individual record is open. (In fact, perhaps it would be useful to have two right-margin categories tabs; the one kind of tree for selecting all records tagged with a category (also allowing tagging by drag and drop), and the other kind of tree with check-boxes that shows whether or not a record is tagged with the various categories, and allowing selection by clicking. (The tabs could be labeled something like "Category Pick" for listing records in a category, and "Category Status" for displaying and changing how a record is tagged, via the check boxes.)

My guess is that these requested changes would be fairly easy to make, and could be done in a patch to version 8. And I think they would be of substantial benefit to many users.