Biblioscape User Community

> I must say that Biblioscape even beats most German information managers (which were, until now and in my opinion, the top in academic software).

Thank you! Could you let us know the names of those German information managers that you like? Thanks.

>> Here in Germany, at least in the humanities (my field, don't ask me about Medicine, Engineering, etc.) , we use information managers. The software is designed to support all steps from a research, from collecting data to the writing process (we migrate to Word only at the very last phase of writing, no concept working there) and planning. That's why a simple reference manager is quite primitive here... nobody uses such a thing. The top of the market is "Citavi", good competitors are Bibliographix and Visual Composer. We can discuss more about it later, if you're interested. The new B7 has pratically all their functions as far as I can see and it's much, much, much more flexible, we can do almost everything (It was great to bring the "Links" function to the center of the new Biblioscape, this is fantastic and it was completely hidden before). Only the Internet search of Biblioscape is less functional.

>1. From the Categories module, ability of opening notes and references with double-click. It would also be great if we could also visualize at the same time the content (or at least the 3 first lines, just like Outlook).

Double click to open will be added in the next alpha release. We can not show the first 3 lines.

>> Would it be possible then to have the list of references/notes/tasks above and a window below, so that we can see the content of the selected record without having to open it in another window (I don't know if this is technically possible, but would be very, very useful while working on large amount of data, just to see, edit is not essential).

>2. List of Keywords should be the same for References and all the other modules, this gives consistency when entering data.

This can be done by using the categories tree. The same tree is shown across different modules. You can do both tagging and linking.

>> For me keywords and categories are not the same thing, they have different functions. Categories do not replace keywords. I just wanted (since B5) to have the same keywords list from the References module availabe in the Notes module (that would be ideal). Or at least a look up list in the notes module. Biblioscape has not a consistent way to insert keywords in the Notes module.

>4. I suggest implementing different background colors for the Notes module. This is very useful when using paper cards, and I believe it helps to visualize large amount of data in the computer screen.

Please elaborate. Do you want background color for the notes tree, table, or individual note?

>> I had thought about background color for the note tree and table, the whole line. I'm not sure if it's comfortable to write on a colored screen, nor if it would be necessary. Think of a card box, with more than 500 paper cards: you open it and among a majority of white cards, you can easily pick up the green, pink, yellow cards which are critical type of records. Perhaps that's what you intend with the colored categories (another good way to vizualise and sort records, am I right?), the problem is that it hasn't worked with me yet. Please disconsider this suggestion if this is redundant.

>8. Do you plan to feature dynamic folders which include search in all modules?

No. Searches against all module have to be done in its own window. This is already implemented.

>> The look up function in the menu is already wonderful, we can search all modules at the same time. One question about it: would it be possible to save its most used queries?

Another question: could you then extend all different ways of searching which are available in the reference module to the notes modules? (You put then under "OLD", does that mean that they don't "fit" well in the new concept?) I'm not saying that a dynamic search should include different modules in the same query (you already said it doesn't work), but could I have this feature available in the notes module for a dynamic search only against notes, for instance? Dynamic searches are wonderful.

>10. It would be useful to change the names of the flags (I can see that a red flag is red, the name of the color doesn't need to be written)

This can be done with colored category.

>> How?

>In the last two versions, I tried to change the field length with the engine you sent me, but it didn't work, will it work now? Say yes please!!!

The upper limit is still 250 char in this release unless you change a field to type "memo". This may change in future release.

>> 250 char are already fine, but even that didn't work in B6 with the edit engine you sent. For instance, some fields had 100 char limit and I could't raise that.

>Could autocomplete be extended to other fields, and other fields from other modules (not only in references)? Say yes too!!!

Auto-complete is only useful for repeated values. For other fields, you can use the pick-up list. We will see if we can expand auto-complete to fields like Publisher. For other modules, please let us know which field do you want to add auto-complete. Thanks.

>> Availability had AutoComplete in B5 but since B6 is a pick up list. This was a huge problem for me. I had to transfer all information to another field with the Autocomplete capability. Another problem is that sometimes the autocomplete function saves only part of the information (like in the field Series Title). I don't know if this involves a complicated operation, but I use in my database all Custom fields, and it would save ma a lot of trouble if I had the Autocomplete function available to them. In the notes module, autocomplete for keywords (old claim!! see above). In short, could each user decide which fields have autocomplete?

>Still in references: often is the field too short for the information I have to write. Could Biblioscape alert me and say that I have exceeded the field lenght?

It won't show the characters you typed.

>> Ok, but only after I save the record and close it. Then I open the record later and there is the surprise: part of the information of a field is deleted! Sometimes I can't check the missing information any more. Could I receive an error message during the writing or after closing the record?

That's it. Waiting for the Composition module... but no hurry, just anxious to see that!

Regards,

Milene