Edit pane & tabs

[benjaminpelissie]

Hi all,

I think the new tab feature from macos is very interesting and made me use BE in a slightly different way. I set it up so that when I double click it opens a standalone window per ref, which turns into a new tab now that this feature is available. It is great because now I can have several refs opened as tabs, in which I can read the pdf, edit stuff and so on.

However there is some annoyances/limitations that I would like to be addressed. For example, the tab's names are weird, including the ref # and library name. I would love to see an abbreviated citation, like "Smith et al. 2011 Plos One" instead, because it would allow to navigate through my refs so much efficiently. Also, I would like to be able to set the default edit tab showing up when I double click. So far the default is "Main", but I would personally like it to be "attachments" instead. It would also be nice to be able to set "show thumbnails" as default and make the thumbnails actually clickable (they are not so far, so can't help navigating the pdf. Finally, I would like to see the whole set of options available in the "attachments" view of the main window also available in the "attachment" tab of the Edit pane; so far only a subset are available.

What do you guys think?

Ben

[Jon]

I'll make the window titles more informative in the next major upgrade.

You can use Command-4 to quickly switch to the Attachment tab (1-3 for the others).

Thumbnails were broken by Sierra and remain so in High Sierra. If Apple doesn't address these bugs it will be removed.

The PDF options in the attachment tab are appropriate for this view. The options that deal with notecards are not shown because the note stream (and thus notecards) are not displayed. It would be confusing to users if such an option were invoked and there was no feedback that it was done.

Jon
Sonny Software

[benjaminpelissie]

Awesome thanks Jon! About the options in the attachment tab, I get your point but still think that if we want to work entirely from there being able to put highlights as notecards or quoted notes (for example) would be great. Otherwise, we have to come back to the attachment panel to do so, which is cumbersome and misleading. I get that having no visual feedback is not ideal, but at the same time I am wondering if it is really needed...
Ben

[Jon]

I think it is. You select (or use the keyboard equivalent) "make notecard from selection" and nothing happens. Was it added or not? Should I press those keys again (it will add a second notecard if the first time worked)? The only way to know is to switch to the note stream view and check. Or what if you made a quote from the selection? Naturally you'd want to add your comments to the quote but you can't, because you can't see the notecard. You'll have t switch to the note stream view. Maybe you feel these scenarios bother you, but I think it would be confusing to lots of people and bad UI design. That's why we only offer the options in the edit view that make sense.

BTW, there's no reason you can't have the edit pane view showing on the left and the PDF view showing below. It's done all the time. If you the notecard options Bookends will automatically show the note stream. If you don't need it you can immediately switch back to the edit pane with the mouse or keyboard command.

Jon
Sonny Software

[benjaminpelissie]

Yes I guess I have special needs, like everybody else. I am probably too biased by them. I get your point though.
Thanks for taking the time to answer!
Ben