Hello,
could someone please explain me step by step how I can use metatags to mirror Sente's QuickTags?
I have read the User Guide but I have not fully understood their usage.
I have just migrated to BE from Sente and I would like to replicate my QuickTag hierarchy in BE.
Thank you to the developer for having included this wonderful functionality! Now I just need to understand how to use it
What I found inefficient is that in BE tags and keywords, that are two different things in Sente, got all squashed in the keyword field. Then, if I understand correctly, these keywords are used to form the tag cloud. There is no way to separate these two things? I think that logically it would make more sense, as keywords in scientific papers are conceived to be "fixed" (you find them written on the first page of a paper), while tags - at least how I used them in Sente - are subjectively assigned by the researcher to papers in order to organize the papers in a logical structure that he has in its mind.
I have also another question: what is the best way to easily replicate the QuickTag hierarchy list from Sente? Do I have to manually create one smart group for each metatag and tag I want to appear on the left column? This would mean that I have to first replicate my tag hierarchy with metatags and then do the same thing with smart groups. But this could lead to potential inconsistencies between the two structures, as I should constantly monitor that the two hierarchies are mirrored. Is there a better and less error-prone way to achieve this?
Thank you very much for your invaluable support and congratulation for having designed such a good product and for being so responsive to user questions!
Keep up the good work!
I disagree that there is a distinction between keywords and tags -- there certainly is none in my eyes. Users add/define keywords all the time, and that's how they are intended to be used in Bookends. Bookends already has extensive support for keywords (the "tag cloud", Term Lists, etc.) which you can take advantage of.
As for Sente QuickTags -- Sente doesn't export them so Bookends knows nothing about them. You have to create your own metatags in Bookends. In addition, Sente QuickTags and Bookends metatags differ is subtle ways (for example, in Bookends a metatag can have content without subtags, for QuickTags the subtags are the content.
I'm not sure what you mean by creating smart group per metatag -- you can if you want (that's one use for metatags). But if that's what you want you might consider the use of a smart folder that contains related smart groups. I think this would give you much of the same feel as Sente QuickTags (you'd have to experiment with this, of course).
Dear Jon,
thanks for your reply.
I am still not able to replicate Sente's behavior with QuickTags.
Ideally, I would love to do what it is so easy to do in Sente with the QuickTags palette: i.e. to create a hierarchy of tags where every paper belonging to a particular sub-tag is automatically included in their parent tag.
I have tried to do the same with smart groups nested in smart folders, but it is a really long process as I have to explicitly specify for every parent folder all the tags of the subfolders and then repeat for every level of the subfolder: isn't there any automatic way of doing this?
Also, unrelated to metatags/QuickTags but related to the transition from Sente to BE: would it be possible to implement a variable as the "Status" variable in Sente? It was very handy for me to set a paper to "To Be Read", "Discuss Further", etc... I know I could just write a normal keyword for this too, but a separate field would really be much appreciated.
I don't see the problem with creating metatags that mimic the behavior of quick tags. Create a metatag Colors that includes the tags red, green, and blue. In one reference enter the keyword red, in another green, and in a third blue. Searching for "colors…" should find all three references. Or if you're using the tag cloud, clicking on "colors…" will find all three. If you find this behavior to be different, please write to tech support. And frankly I don't understand the issue you're having with folders and subfolders -- I think you're misunderstanding how they work (or I'm misunderstanding what your problem is). If you can't figure this out, please write to tech support directly in a week when I'm back from vacation and send screen snaps of what you want and you're doing, I'll see if there's an easier way.
You can create your own "status" variable in three different ways (there are more, but I'll list the first 3 I think of):
1. Rename one of the Unused fields "Status" in preferences and add it as a column in the list view (Unused 1 is available if you don't use BibTeX). The default is unread (empty). You can enter you're own text (or letter, whatever) in that field to indicate something else (to be read, read, etc.).
2. Create a group for each category (to be read, read, etc.) and add/remove references as you like. Note that the keyboard shortcuts Command-1, Command-2, etc. can be used to quickly add a reference to up to 9 static groups.
3. Use color labels for to be read, read, etc. with unlabeled being the default.
As for metatags: I probably misunderstood how they are used in BE. I mean, they are not designed to be used as nested lists (like smart folders for instance), but mainly in the tag cloud, am I right? I had problems replicating QuickTags because in Sente they automatically are organized in nested lists on the left-hand menu (but there is no tag cloud in Sente). So to replicate that I would have to create both metatags and smart folders with the same structure, which is insane and not useful. For the moment I have just used smart folders to replicate the hierarchy of Sente's QuickTags. Would you tell me some examples of something achievable with metatags and not with smart folders? Is the only difference the appearance in the tag cloud? Or do metatags have other advantages?
As for folders and subfolders: I just had to select "OR" instead of "AND" under "Multiple Selections". Sorry to bother you about that one.
As for Status: thank you, I'll try those strategies you suggested.
A new question: with metatags, is it possible to select a tag to assign to a paper directly from the metatag hierarchy instead of explicitly typing it? I'm asking because it would be awesome to be reminded of the hierarchy when assigning tags (as in Sente's QuickTag Palette).
You should not recreate a metatag hierarchy in a smart group -- it will use the metatags you created in preference automatically if you use an ellipsis at the end of your search (please see the user guide). For example, to use the metatag we created in my last post (colors), create a new smart group and enter the search
colors…
(the ellipsis is critical). That new smart group will find all references that have the word red OR green OR blue. You can of course restrict the smart search to Keywords.
You can have other metatag searches in the same smart group, OR you could create another smart group with another metatag. When they're both in the same folder and you click the folder, both smart searches will be performed.
Metatags can also be used in ad hoc searches (e.g. in the live search box, or with the Find command (Command-F). The key is that you have to tell Bookends the search is for a metatag, NOT a real word, by terminating it with an ellipsis (…).
See? Create once, deploy everywhere.
As for it's entry, if the *tag* is in a field that has a Term List (e.g Keywords) you can insert it from there. For metatags, no. But I'm considering the possibility of having the metatag hierarchy in a separate window (NOT preferences), and if we do it would be possible to insert (I'd have to work out a UI for that, however).
What I mean by "to replicate that I would have to create both metatags and smart folders with the same structure" I mean that if I want to access my whole tag hierarchy in the left-hand menu then I need to replicate the hierarchy with smart folders. I understand that I can create a smart group with a metatag that will include all the papers with a tag included in the metatag, but doing just that I will not be able to see or navigate the tag hierarchy: I will only see the "top-level": am I wrong? That's why for the moment I have replicated the whole hierarchy with smart folders, without using metatags.
I see the usefulness of metatags as they are implemented now for ad-hoc, one-shot searches, but not for long-term paper organization and categorization: for that a "clickable" hierarchy is a strong requirement, at least for me.
I think a separate window for the metatag hierarchy would be really awesome, as it would be so much easier to categorize papers without typing or having to remember the hierarchy. I think Sente's QuickTag Palette is a very good example of this: you can just select the tags you want to add from your hierarchy and you're done. If you go that way and create a specific UI for this, I think it would be worth it to also make the hierarchy easily editable by dragging and dropping one level onto another, that would also be a very useful feature.
I think you're right -- if you want a hierarchical group-like organization then you're better off creating smart folders and smart groups (and combining them).
Hello.
Let me jump into this. I'm also migrating from Sente and also trying to replicate me organization into BE automatically. But extending from what you wrote above, BE for iOS is a crucial part of my workflow, that's where I read and annotate the papers. So smart groups are not an option for me (I found I could import a tagged group from Sente and then use the tag transformed into a keyword to set up a new smart group in BE, but it would not sync to iOS). The only way I can do it apparently is by importing the tagged group from Sente into a Static Group I create into Mac BE. These are going to sync with iOS BE correctly. But having to manually do it with every group is an annoyance when you have dozens of groups. Some sort of automation would be greatly appreciated. Or maybe I'm missing some functionality here.
Another problem I'm facing is A LOT of "Apple Events timed out" messages when importing from Sente using the Import from Sente command. This is driving me crazy...
Are you after a process where Bookends tells Sente to send it one group at a time and creates corresponding groups for each in Bookends? I doubt that one can do that with Sente via AppleEvents (meaning, I don't think Sente has that capability), but I'll take a look at their AppleEvent dictionary and see.
As for AppleEvents timing out...I'm afraid that's on Sente, not Bookends, and there's nothing much we can do about it. You can write to Sente support, but I think they've stopped answering emails (I'd be very happy to learn that this is incorrect).
Oh, I'm really creating the corresponding Static Groups myself and importing the corresponding tagged group from Sente and it works, but as I said, it has to be done one by one. Some sort of script that would automagically do it at once would be great, but I can live with the manual method as long as I can solve the time out issue...and yes, Sente support has totally let us in the dark, so no help from there.
It is (as you certainly already know) a great opportunity for you guys to earn a legion of users from them, and the smoothest the process can be, the more will jump in!
We've done a lot to accommodate ex-Sente users, and we'll do more if it's possible. I'm looking at the Sente AppleEvents dictionary right now, and I don't see a way to identify groups (collections) or to select references based on groups. I'm afraid that AFAICT the user must identify the references.
Another approach you might take is do something like add a keyword to each reference in a collection, something like the collection name (I don't know about Sente, but in Bookends this would be in a Global Change operation). Then import the entire library into Bookends. Create a corresponding group for each collection, do a search for that keyword, and drag and drop the hits to the new static group. It still takes user intervention, but there will be no timeouts...
