Suggestion: Library Menu

[Dellu]

There are a couple of library internal commands scattered here and there among the universal commands. They are a bit confusing for beginning users. It might be a good idea to collec them under one Library menu. My suggestion is to replace the Hits menu with Library menu and embed the Hits inside the Library.

The Attachement folder, the watch folder, the maintainance commands all are Library internal (specific to a library).



Personally, I would love it if the Bibtext section of the Preference could be library specific (it is now universal).

[Jon]

A Library-specific menu might not be a bad thing. Note that, of course, we highly recommend one library only. But we allow an unlimited number. What do others think?

As for BibTeX, in my experience you either use it or you don't, it is not library-specific. And since the preferences options deal with many things that definitely are not library-specific (like how to use Copy Citation, generating Key values in lower case, bibliography generation, etc.) it would make no sense to put them in a Library menu.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Dellu]

There is one problem why I shy away keeping all my references in one library: searching tools.

If I keep my articles and books in the same library, the search tools always give priorities to the books. Some monster, gigantic books almost always come at the top of the search. I have to split the books for the search engines give a balanced result. To simplify the task for the splitting script (Hazel), I need to keep my books in a separate attachment folder than the articles. I need to keep them in separate libraries. But, if the Bibtex is not going to be library specific, I personally have no particular interest with the rest of the suggestion . You can do it if you think it is good idea: or leave it.

[Jon]

You mean searching in Bookends itself? There should be no preference for one Type over another. But if you don't want books found you can easily exclude them in a Find or smart group: find where Type is/is not book.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Dellu]

NO, I am talking about searching tools like Devonthink and Spotlight. The number of words in a book tend to matter for the search. A few gagantic pdf books always come on top.

[Jon]

You do know that Bookends can find attachments outside of the default folder, right? Alternatively, when attaching to Bookends (e.g. by drag and drop) that you can choose between attachment subfolders? So there does not have to be any relationship between multiple attachment folders and multiple Bookends libraries.

Jon
Sonny Software

[NilsMS]

NO, I am talking about searching tools like Devonthink and Spotlight. The number of words in a book tend to matter for the search. A few gagantic pdf books always come on top.

You do know that you can also exclude specific pdfs in Devonthink? I do that regularly for books because otherwise they always come up first, as you have described.

[Dellu]

Jon: yes, I know what you are talking about. But, the Watch folder is an imporntat part of my workflow (I run my pdf files via a couple of Hazel rules to cleanup some stuff before I import them to BE--the watch folder is very useful for that).

Nils: thanks for the suggestion. Yes, I am aware of that. The problem is, I have many of these moster books. I also don't want to exclude them because I have to search them. That is why I split them.

[Jon]

The watch folder is indeed nice, but not that much more convenient than drag and drop.

Off the top of my head there's another possibility you can use with the watch folder. Have it import to a specific group (e.g. named "imported from watch folder") and at your leisure do a Refs -> Global Change -> Consolidate Attachments, moving all attachments in that folder (or attachments of the selected references) to a subfolder you have. You can segregate types of attachments and/or size of attachments that way.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Dellu]

The watch folder is indeed nice, but not that much more convenient than drag and drop.

Off the top of my head there's another possibility you can use with the watch folder. Have it import to a specific group (e.g. named "imported from watch folder") and at your leisure do a Refs -> Global Change -> Consolidate Attachments, moving all attachments in that folder (or attachments of the selected references) to a subfolder you have. You can segregate types of attachments and/or size of attachments that way.

Jon
Sonny Software

Yes, that one is much better approach. I never thought about it. I will try it. Thanks