The means for sorting the list of references is awkward for me in a few ways. Perhaps some relatively simple changes could be made that would help a lot (and I think these would help many Biblioscape users):
1. THE "VIEW | SORT" MENU -- Currently this brings up a selection box with three fields, each of which can be loaded with a field name (from a list of available fields). It would be wonderful if instead that menu contained a few predetermined sorting patterns, and at the bottom a "Custom Sort" choice brings up the selection box. I suggest these sorting patterns for that menu:
Authors (All), Year, Title
Author (First Author), Year, Title
Title, Year, Authors (All)
Year, Authors (All), Title
Year, Author (First Author), Title
Year, Title, Authors (All)
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Custom Sort Menu
2. You see above that I have suggested two kinds of author searches. Clicking on the Author field of the reference list could still search by all authors (i.e. where the names of all authors of a paper contribute to the sort order). However, when sorting by author and then year, if the search is based on the whole author field, the resulting listing can be quite confusing if the first author has been prolific, because then the co-authors take secondary precedence in the sort, instead of the year. So, a search based only on the name of the first author can be very useful.
If this suggestion would be easy enough to implement, having it in a new update to Version 8 would be wonderful.
Larry, when generating a
Larry, when generating a bibliography from temp citation at the end of a formatted document, there is an option to sort by first author. When you print a bibliography, the sorting depends on the style you chose. If the style sort by first author, the generated bibliography will sort accordingly.
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H Paul,
We are thinking about different things.
I'm talking about the listing I see on the screen, not the bibliography that gets generated.
The sorting on the screen
The sorting on the screen cannot be sorted by first author only unless we change the database by adding a new field for just the first author.
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Couldn't the program do this by just searching the existing author field of each record in the folder (or search result) to its first comma, and then use those results in sorting the lines to be displayed?
Yes, it can be done. But
Yes, it can be done. But this will slow down the performance when there are many records in the list. Since users can print the list in based on the sorting order of the used style, we will keep the on screen sorting as is. Thanks, Paul
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> ... But this will slow down the performance when there are many records in the list. ...
But wouldn't that be the case only at times when that sorting method (by first author) is selected? It seems to me that if that is the tool that is needed for the job (at a particular point in time), that this need overcomes the downside of the slower display of the list. Also, if the list isn't too long, then there is no time penalty anyway.