notecards

[AsafKeller]

What if notecards work along the lines proposed in the attached screenshot?

A nice implementation, indeed. However, unless I am missing something, these notes would not be accessible to external applications (except through copy/paste) which would defeat the original goal of this thread. I was envisioning a single RTF attachments, that can be edited both within BE and within any other application that can handle RTFs, such that edits within any of these applications are reflected in the attachment. As to where the note should appear: A floating window, with adjustable transparency, perhaps?

[Jon]

There need not be a single way of dealing with notes. Bookends could allow editing of an external note file as well as keep internal notes. In reviewing the suggestion made by aechallu (thanks for the pic -- that helps) I wonder if it would be possible to combine what we have now with the sort of graphic representation shown? Bookends already has a notes field for each reference. I'm thinking that you could use this for note streams, separating each note with a marker (such as a dash on it's own line). Then in the "notes" view Bookends would display the first XX characters of each note in the stream. What follows would be pretty much what was suggested with regard to double-clicking to edit the note stream, etc. So in the reference's Notes field you'd enter:

@2: this is my first note...
-
@7: another thought...
-
My overall assessment...

Hovering the cursor over the abbreviated "notecard" in the right pane of the list view window would display the entire note.

Perhaps we employ a convention that @ followed by a number would mean page or page range would be used if this notecard was used to create a citation.

I have some other thoughts as well, but I thought I'd post this first and get feedback.

Jon
Sonny Software

[ozean]

Sounds great – especially the page number support! It would be best if it could respect page ranges as well. I tend to copy longer citations, which extend from one page to the next…

Of course, it would be extra-neat if one could somehow enter a quotation-note from Bookends into the word processor. But since this would require some real changes and since this would be impractical for quotations that become a separate paragraph (as opposed to inline quotations) it might actually not be so neat…

[Jon]

You mean like "Copy Formatted" (except it would be the notecard?

Jon
Sonny Software

[ozean]

You mean like "Copy Formatted" (except it would be the notecard?

Yes, that would probably be a good way to do it

[Tony Higgins]

Yes, I like the idea of being able to import a note or quote (with page reference, etc) directly into a paper. Very useful!

[aechallu]

Jon: Excellent idea, I love it. Thanks for listening!

How would you make this function transparent to new users? Maybe a small toolbar in the Reference Window's Notes tab?

[rickl]

One example could be the ways in which attachments are accessible right now. Somehow the small inspector and the marginal position of the attachment pane don’t seem to do justice to the great importance that attachments attained in the course of the last years. (In my case, it is usually turned off because it competes with the Formatted view which I always want to see. In addition, my vertical screen estate is too cramped to allow for simultaneous viewing of my list of references and a PDF and I don’t want to drag the horizontal separator up and down each time I want to view an attachment…) Downloading PDFs, managing attached notes, websites, etc. has become at least (!) as central to my everyday Bookends tasks as producing bibliographic output.

Incrementally, the things that I do with Bookends have changed enormously, even though the UI does not seem to have changed that much

Great points. I also like the look of the mockup, though I of course have no idea whether it's feasible. In general, I really do think the notes have to "belong" to a reference in some sense, though I'm agnostic as to whether they should be attachmenty things or not. Since screens are generally wider than they are tall, notes on the side, visible simultaneously with bibliographic information, would be preferable, I think. On the whole, I don't think the present reference window setup displaying different types of information in discrete tabs that cannot be seen at the same time is necessarily optimal, though I couldn't say exactly how I would want it changed.

Like ozean, I feel it would be great if more people came in on this debate, to give Jon a better picture of what people are thinking. (Ditto for the keywords discussion at the link below.) It can't be helped, I guess, but most of us are unable to be on constant alert for discussions; it would be great if there were some way to alert people to what was going on.

http://www.sonnysoftware.com/phpBB3/vie ... f=2&t=2264

[Once again, I've taken so long to finish my post that I've been overtaken by new messages; sorry if some of this is out of date.]

[Jon]

I'm working on an implementation of note streams. For anyone who has contributed to this thread who would like to try the beta and provide feedback, please contact me (support@sonnysoftware.com). For others who are interested but haven't posted to this thread, please wait for the release of the next update and then provide your feedback.

Jon
Sonny Software