A new group type

danzac · Post by **danzac** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 1:02 pm

This is an idea and a bit of a workaround for that user who wanted star ratings. I personally think star ratings is a little odd for bib software, but I can understand the desire to make a static group quickly. Often a group you want to make is not all keyworded the same, and the making of a static group followed by a number of drag and drops to add to the group ends up taking a chunk of time.

So here's an idea I thought I'd bounce to you Jon. What about something called a quickgroup. Every database would only have one quickgroup. The idea is that a reference could be added to the quickgroup by a shortcut key and/or drag n' drop. This makes the ability to make a static group of dissimilar items quickly- no need for creating a static group or adding keywords to make search connections. After adding however many refs to the quickgroup, the personal can either 1) highlight them all and create a static group for further use later, 2) leave the quickgroup as is and work with the info from there, 3) clear the quickgroup by a contextual menu choice. This makes creating a static group of dissparate items a lot easier and quicker (the shortcut key is very necessary). It may satisfy some user who want star ratings as well.

Danny

Post by **Jon** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 1:21 pm

Hi,

Hm it's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure it would be that useful in that form. For example, michaelward wanted to sort references into several groups, not just accumulate them into one group. For that, you'd need several "quickgroups".

But I do like the concept. How about the ability to assign a keyboard shortcut to static groups of your choosing? Something like Option-Command-Number, perhaps (where you pick the number, of course). You could assign up to (0-9).

Thanks for the idea, Danny. Anyone else want to chime in about this?

Jon
Sonny Software

danzac · Post by **danzac** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 1:33 pm

hmm, yes okay, that may be a good workaround. What then would you do if someone has more than ten static groups? Could you choose which one has a shortcut key and which one doesn't? (there would need to be some sort of identifier in the group column). This may be more work than necessary- would there be a need to quickly add to multiple static groups? Perhaps someone else could add their insight to that question. I guess since what I am suggesting is essentially a static group with a shortcut key, it wouldn't be that much difference to simply have the ability to add shortcut keys to a number of static groups. And if someone wants to call one of their static groups "quickgroup" and have that be the only one which has an assigned shorcut key, then that basically encompasses my idea.

Post by **Jon** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 1:45 pm

Right. You'd be able to assign a number to the group when it was created (or add/remove it later). Every static group wouldn't need this -- I think 10 would be plenty. The shortcut could appear next to the group's name in the list. If you wanted it to add/edit a shortcut, it would simply require double-clicking on the group name (just as you would do to rename the group now).

Jon
Sonny Software

danzac · Post by **danzac** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 2:18 pm

I like it

I think it is a tenable workaround to the desire to create fast collections of disparate references- without having to use stars