"Find a group"--not that useful as implemented. Thoughts?

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alanterra
Posts: 77
Joined: Wed Dec 20, 2017 4:55 pm

"Find a group"--not that useful as implemented. Thoughts?

Post by alanterra »

Hi

I thought I'd start a discussion here before asking Jon for a feature request.

I do not find the "Find a Group" (Search box that pops up when you click on "Group" at the top of the list of groups) behavior very useful.

The manual says: "If a match is found Bookends will select that group and scroll to it. If you type in only a partial name, Bookends will search for a group that begins with those letters and select the first one it finds."

This is not useful for me, because if (a) you can't remember the exact name of the group, or (b) you have group names that start with the same string, you can't quickly find the group you want.

For instance, I have two groups of references that I got from two papers: "Refs from Smith" and "Refs from Jones." If I type "Smith", nothing is found because no groups start with the string "Smith". If I type "Refs from" I can find the first group, but not the second group, because there is no gesture that means "Find the next matching group."

I would find it much more helpful if typing a string in the search box showed groups with that string (anywhere) in the group name. In this case, typing "Smith" would reduce the list of groups to one (unless the string "Smith" occurred in a different group), while typing "Refs from" would show both groups named above.

The "reduced" list could be implemented in one of two ways. Typing the string could just reduce the list of groups shown to those that match (and an empty list would indicate no match). Or, typing the string could highlight the matching groups (and open the folders that contain those groups).

But, as it stands, it is much faster for me to scan my (long) list of groups than to use the search function.

Thoughts?
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