Dear Paul,
I am extremely impressed with the new version, really looking foward to putting it into use. I haven't been able to make the categories module work yet, but it seems like an extremely useful tool. I also love how tightly you have bound together the notes field and the reference field, this is exactly what I was hoping for. One issue, however, is that while all the information in the notes field is easily seen when a reference is opened, the reverse is not true when a note is opened. It would be extremely useful to have the ability to shoot a temporary citation of the reference associated with a note from the notes field without having to open the reference field. It also appears that the page number that you are able to associate with the note when it is entered from the reference field does not appear in the note when you access it as a note. The reason this is important is that most people write from their notes, not from their references, so they will be accessing the note from the notes field, not from the reference field. It would be great if all the tools needed to give a citation for the note were available in to the note field, without having to find the reference. I hope this is clear.
One final concern I have is that in BS 6 I have many notes on references in the notes field in the reference, a field that has become obsolete in the BS7. Do you have any suggestions on how to migrate that data into actual notes in BS7?
Again, congradulations on a great product.
Matt
> It would be extremely
> It would be extremely useful to have the ability to shoot a temporary citation of the reference associated with a note from the notes field without having to open the reference field.
How do you want this done? I guess a right click menu is the way to go. Do you also want to shoot note and append the linked references as temp citations in the end?
>It also appears that the page number that you are able to associate with the note when it is entered from the reference field does not appear in the note when you access it as a note.
When insert page number, Biblioscape needs to know the reference ID. If there is only one linked reference, it is obvious. What do you think we should do if there more several linked references? I guess we should then prompt the user to pick.
>a field that has become obsolete in the BS7.
If it no obsolete. If your note has no reusable value and it is only about that one specific reference, there is nothing wrong with your old approach. I don't see a way to do the migration.
Thanks,
Paul
I'll try my best...
> It would be extremely
Submitted by Paul Chen on Thu, 2007-01-11 16:32.
>> It would be extremely useful to have the ability to shoot a temporary citation of the reference associated with a note from the notes field without having to open the reference field.
>How do you want this done? I guess a right click menu is the way to go. Do you also want to shoot note and append the linked references as temp citations in the end?
Yes, a right click menu would be ideal. It would be great to be able to shoot the note with temporary citation appended directly into Word.
>>It also appears that the page number that you are able to associate with the note when it is entered from the reference field does not appear in the note when you access it as a note.
>When insert page number, Biblioscape needs to know the reference ID. If there is only one linked reference, it is obvious. What do you think we should do if there more several linked references? I guess we should then prompt the user to pick.
In the reference field BS7 asks if there are specific page numbers that should be inserted into the temporary citation. This seems adequate for the note field as well. It seems to me, that if there are multiple references linked to the note they should all be included in the temporary citation, but you might want to solicit feedback from other users on this point. Usually if you have multiple sources for an idea you will want to cite them all, but I might not be thinking of all possible situations.
Ok, this what my ideal would be--knowing nothing of the programing involved. There would be a pull down menu in the notes module just as there is now in the reference module in BS6. The choices would be <shoot note>, <Shoot note + title>. <shoot note> would send the content of the note to Word followed by the temporary citation for all the linked references. <Shoot note + title> would do the same thing except the title of the note would proceed the content of the note. Assuming a single linked reference, a dialogue would ask if page numbers should be incerted into the temporary citation. In the case of multiple linked reference I think the dialogue should simply ask if you want to shoot all linked references, page numbers would then be added manually if necessary. That would be very cool.
>>a field that has become obsolete in the BS7.
>If it no obsolete. If your note has no reusable value and it is only about that one specific reference, there is nothing wrong with your old approach. I don't see a way to do the migration.
I meant obsolete because I think the relationship between notes and references has become much stronger and there are many benefits from storing all inforation in the same type of field. (If there is no reusable value in a note I wouldn't be storing the note in the first place :) ) I'll figure this one out
Let me know if anything I've written is not clear. Looking forward to seeing how the program progresses.
best wishes,
Matt
Very good suggestions. We
Very good suggestions. We will think about it and try to implement. As you said, the note centered writing environment needs improvements. I think all your suggestions can be implemented. Thanks.
fantastic, a couple of other issues to look at
.... When a reference is open, it seems odd to me that the command to shoot a temporary citation is only found in the notes tab. That function seems better suited to the main toolbar.
The program tells me that "categories" is not available in the standard or lite versions of the program and seems to be denying me access to this part of the program. I hope this is not going to be the case.
The same issue with the redundancy of tabs and the close button that another user brought up in the main navagation window is true of both the notes and reference windows--that is, when an individual note or reference is opened.
Further down the line a couple of programs you might want to look at for "borrowing ideas": www.zotero.org/, a free reference managment program that seems to have a much better ability to capture references off the web than biblioscape. You might also want to look at programs like <asksam>, specifically, the ability to download pdfs and other types of research materials directly into biblioscape, make them searchable, etc. This would add another level of functionality to this already very capable program.
Finally, I really admire the process you've pursued in developing this software. Thanks.
best,
matt
>it seems odd to me that the
>it seems odd to me that the command to shoot a temporary citation is only found in the notes tab.
It is under "Edit | Shoot". We will add it to the toolbar later. The temp citatioin button on notes tab is for adding a temp citation to the opened note. We will do this differently in the next release.
>The program tells me that "categories" is not available in the standard or lite versions of the program and seems to be denying me access to this part of the program.
There is a bug is trial status checking in the current alpha release. In the next one, this will be fixed. In the final release, the full categories module will only be availabe in Pro edition. But the tagging part of categories module will be available to everyone.
>The same issue with the redundancy of tabs and the close button that another user brought up in the main navagation window is true of both the notes and reference windows--that is, when an individual note or reference is opened.
Can you let me know the URL of the other post? Thanks.
Thank you for pointing out the other two programs. Once versioin 7 is formally out. We will work on those issues.
Thanks,
Paul