Live Search — OR option?

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iandol
Posts: 465
Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2008 2:31 pm

Live Search — OR option?

Post by iandol »

Currently, as I understand it, the Live Search field performs AND / NOT searches. But it appears it doesn't support OR searches? This would be useful, and perhaps I have just missed how to do it, but if not could it be considered as a feature request for the future, barring any technical reasons?

Ideally I'd like to be able to use syntax like this (grouping signifies an AND): (AuthorA 1990) OR (AuthorB 2010) — I know we can use an SQL search but the live filtering of the references list is useful as it doesn't modify the hits list etc.
Jon
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Re: Live Search — OR option?

Post by Jon »

No need for SQL, the regular find window allows boolean searches (Command-F).

As for the Hits list, as you know it's transitory and not to be relied on for any extended use. Move the hits to a temporary static group and accumulate them there.

Jon
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iandol
Posts: 465
Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2008 2:31 pm

Re: Live Search — OR option?

Post by iandol »

Thanks Jon. The workflow I am trying to set up involves creating search terms outside of Bookends, for example when I have to convert finalised and formatted references from a LibreOffice or Word document but I need to find them in Bookends — I want to be able to quickly view potential matches.

For example, say I have this text fragment in a word processor sent to my clipboard (Jonas et al., 2012; Freed and Jones, 2020; Barlow, 1965, 1969) — and I want to quickly see what matches in my database and get the temporary refs back to Word without a lot of fuss. I can trivially process this text in a script to yield a text search like (Jonas 2012) OR (Freed Jones 2020) OR (Barlow 1965) OR (Barlow 1969) — which could be sent to Live search and the refs would be instantly filtered and viewable in the UI. I can command-select the ones that match and simply hit CMD+Y to get them back to LibreOffice/Word. No messing with temporary groups, dragging things around, lots of UI work or hits lists.

The Find dialog cannot easily work as the UI requires a lot of manual mouse interaction -- the benefits of the Live search box and SQL dialog is that a single text fragment can encapsulate the whole search and this can be automated using GUI scripting easily as they are both very keyboard-centric. The find dialog can potentially be automated (you need to enable your keyboard focus options in system prefs), but requires lots of jigging (i.e. to get to the first entry's type to change to author is sending tab-tab-tab-tab-tab-return-down-down-return via system events) and so on for each item and GUI scripting can be prone to error.

Irrespectively of my own personal requirements, I think a boolean OR option is generally useful, including in the Live search. Live search is faster and more flexible to deal with than the Find dialog due to the way it can intuitively filter within groups etc.
Jon
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Re: Live Search — OR option?

Post by Jon »

You're asking for far more than an OR option, you're asking for a full blown search string parser that respects parentheses and hierarchical search grouping. Live Search ignores parentheses (and in fact all punctuation, unless you group the search terms in quote marks). It's a quick, lightweight, and rapid way to filter the contents of your database. We provide access to the full capabilities of the SQL search engine with direct access to SQL search. Never say never, but It's unlikely that this will change.

Jon
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iandol
Posts: 465
Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2008 2:31 pm

Re: Live Search — OR option?

Post by iandol »

OK, thanks for your consideration! :)
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