Sonny Software

laxei wrote:Exactly. Ismail, what was wrong in your description at 3.55pm?

I was wrong when writing
"all papers tagged with elasticnet are automatically tagged with penalized regression and methods
all papers tagged with lasso are automatically tagged with penalized regression and methods"

Sente seem to have a way to remember the hierarchy of the tags but if I tag elasticnet, the tag penalized regression and methods do not appear as tags (in the bottom right part of Sente)

laxei wrote:As to virtual tags, wouldn't it depend on whether the 'Hide virtual tag members...' is checked if they show up also individually? But of course one would want to be able to select all keywords individually.

Must be too much multitasking this morning -- yes, of course the members will still show if this setting is off. I can look into allowing virtual tags for authors/editors/keywords (I'll have to see if there are unintended consequences).

Jon
Sonny Software

I've gone over many possibilities for introducing a feature like this. I'm thinking of introducing a new type of smart group, which for the moment I'll refer to as hierarchical keywords. These groups, which would also act as folders, could contain keywords as well as other hierarchical groups. They'd be created in the groups pane and be editable just like existing groups. Clicking on entries in these groups would work just like clicking on a folder now (so keywords in subfolders of a group you select would also be found). This would be a simple extension of the existing paradigms in Bookends, easy for the user to create and maintain, and integrate seamlessly with existing group functions. Note that you can do most of this now with smart groups, but this would be easier for users to understand and maintain (and would do a few extra nice things, like update reference keywords if you edited a keyword in one of these groups).

Jon
Sonny Software

That sounds great
Many thanks

Even simpler -- what if smart groups were folders? This would simplify things even more. A smart group would have a name that launched a search for it and anything in it's subgroups. The difference between it and a folder would be that the smart group name is actually a search, whereas the folders name is just for organizational purposes. I'm thinking through all of this.

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon wrote:A smart group would have a name that launched a search for it and anything in it's subgroups.

Would the search be performed in the keyword field or were you thinking of something broader (maybe to be chosen by the user) ?

The searches be anything you can do with a smart search now (search all fields, just keywords, include spotlight or file tags, etc.). The difference would be that you could embed smart searches within smart searches, to any level, so could tailor searches just like you can with QuickTags in Sente. As I said, you can do this in Bookends now using folders (when you click on a folder in the group pane, Bookends performs searches using all the groups it contains and shows the results), but in this new scheme I'm thinking about the "folder" would itself be a smart search.

Jon
Sonny Software

So if the top-level "folder" were a smart search for all refs with keywords, you could nest other smart searches inside that and end up with a single "folder" containing all refs with keywords hierarchically arranged?
Do I understand what you have in mind, Jon?


I used Sente briefly and its tag browser was one of the few things I liked.

Basically, yes. A trivial example:

Top search -> All refs with keyword Language
--Subsearch -> Refs with keyword -> English
--Subsearch -> Refs with keyword -> German
--Subsearch -> Refs with keyword -> French

Click on top search and get all refs that have the keyword language. Click on a subsearch to get refs with a specific language.

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon wrote:Note that you can do most of this now with smart groups, but this would be easier for users to understand and maintain (and would do a few extra nice things, like update reference keywords if you edited a keyword in one of these groups).

I'm wondering whether your idea here would make it easier/quicker to add keywords to refs.
Would it be possible to drag a ref into such a folder and have that folder's assigned keyword(s) added to the ref?
Or something along those lines.
(I know one could do this with batch editing, of course. Just thinking about a quicker way.)

No. If smart groups are folders, they can hold anything (searches of authors, all fields etc., static groups, and even folders). Think of todays folder, and now image that smart groups will behave identically (including have a disclosure triangle to the left). The difference between a smart group and a folder is that clicking on the smart group will trigger the search, even if it has no dependent items. If it does have dependent items, it will AND or OR that search with them and the resulting matches will be shown.

We can explore other ways of adding keywords (e.g. now you can open the Keyword Term List window and drag and drop or right-click to add the keywords).

Jon
Sonny Software

I look forward to seeing the next version of Bookends !

Being able to nest smart groups makes it a little easier to organise complex searches and as such would be a welcome addition. But maybe of limited use only. For anything but the most common operations it might, in my opinion, be too complicated to maintain and use for search purposes only.

At least for me it would rather be useful to have a way to partly automatise the assigning of keywords: assigning kw1 would automatically assign also kw2 and kw3, maybe even without any necessary hierarchy. But there is probably no simple way to achieve this? I wonder what kind of tagging needs other people have.

Not just nesting smart searches. You can nest anything. For example, you could combine a smart group looking for references on a certain subject with one selecting references added in the last 60 days. Or any combination of things you can imagine. And if you open the smart folder you can select a subset of the searches and Bookends will perform just those.

As for keywording, I'm open to suggestions. I don't see trying to replicate Sente quicktags as a particularly good idea, it doesn't fit the Bookends paradigm so well and it, too, has problems. Note that the coming smart folder feature can give you a handle on keyword dependencies. For example, you can make smart groups that search for a particular keyword (apple, pear, or orange), and use them to search for references that one, two, or all three. Anyway, it's something you might want to look at -- I'll probably offer a short beta test period via this forum before releasing it (it will have at least one other significant new annotation feature), so please let me know if you want to try that when it's available and announced here.

Jon
Sonny Software

My take on it: I could see the benefit of hierarchical tags as a way of selecting specific cloud tags. It would be a complementary feature that would enhance cloud tagging, further organizing the sequence of literature, thereby facilitating the writing process.