crossref workflow improvements

[ilippert]

For quite a number of my book entries I hold files for the complete book (parent entry). Now, many of these books are edited volumes.

I note 2 small improvements:

• allow to use the context menu/right click onto the parent entry for generating a new entry that crossreferences the selected parent entry (considering design discussion at UI: maintable: right-click menu: reorder items #6099)
• and whilst the crossreferencing already well uses many of the fields from the parent entry, several relevant fields are not used (yet):
  • The file/link fields should be crossreferenced, too, as to link to the parent's files/links.
  • The user should be able to flag user defined fields as shown in the crossreferenced entries (I can think of, say, the Printed field for a collection entry, or a field that specify the physical location at which a book can be found)
• Add option to make content of certain fields inheritable from parent to child entry
• Improve UI of entry table to account for crossref parent and child entries (see screenshot in this comment)

Together with #5484, #6404, #7057, these improvements would very much ease the use of/work with crossreferenced entries.

[ilippert]

see also #5765 which detailed the frustrations of worksteps in the current UI - to which @koppor added the UI label.

[ilippert]

I would very very much love to see this feature worked on :)

[koppor]

This somehow refs koppor#85, where I described a way to avoid crossref (which is contradicting the proposal here)

[ilippert]

This somehow refs koppor#85, where I described a way to avoid crossref (which is contradicting the proposal here)

Thank you for noting this friction!

If of any use, I would be happy to organise some form of structured conversation on use cases or use philosophies of crossref. Should we consider a discourse/forum conversation about this?

[ilippert]

Refs #7731

[ilippert]

Regarding

* allow to use the context menu/right click onto the parent entry for generating a new entry that crossreferences the selected parent entry 

this request could also work with #4183 - i.e. a flyout popup that searches something fitting for a selected (or entered) string.

i.e. a user might mark/select an entry in the table, and then clicking on the new entry/flyout would offer to generate a new entry that crossreferences the marked entry.

[ilippert]

Just for context: the ideas here were originally voted for at https://discourse.jabref.org/t/seamless-crossreferencing/100

[ThiloteE]

Duplicating/cross-referencing the linked file field to another entry might lead to unintended consequences when writing metadata to pdf. See #8278 (comment)

When two entries are linked to the same file and both are selected for tools>write metadata to pdf files or F6, it pops for BOTH entries. Metadata is written though. The entry that was written second overwrites the data from the first entry.

[ilippert]

I updated the original suggestion of this issue, because I start to see a more generic issue: the more books, edited volumes, I have in my database, the more I want specific fields of parent entries shown in the entry table for the child entry. I am not sure we can define a positive list for which fields are to be inherited; so I wonder whether it would be possible for the user to flag certain fields as "inheritable". For instance, in the preferences dialogue, I might be able to flag specific fields as inheritable by child entries.

[ThiloteE]

Would the following solve #6294 (comment)?

Example for Treetableview (equivalent to JabRef maintable) showing "parent" and "child":

I think these are the most relevant code lines (might require more and of course have to be adapted to reflect JabRefs usecase) that would implement such a thing:

 // Add columns to TreeTable.
        treeTableView.getColumns().addAll(empNoCol, fullNameCol,positionCol, genderCol, singleCol);

        // Data
        Employee empBoss = new Employee("E00", "[email protected]", //
                "Boss", "Boss", "Manager", "M", false);

        Employee empSmith = new Employee("E01", "[email protected]", //
                "Susan", "Smith", "Salesman", "F", true);

        Employee empMcNeil = new Employee("E02", "[email protected]", //
                "Anne", "McNeil", "Cleck", "M", false);

        // Root Item
        TreeItem<Employee> itemRoot = new TreeItem<Employee>(empBoss);
        TreeItem<Employee> itemSmith = new TreeItem<Employee>(empSmith);
        TreeItem<Employee> itemMcNeil = new TreeItem<Employee>(empMcNeil);

        itemRoot.getChildren().addAll(itemSmith, itemMcNeil);
        treeTableView.setRoot(itemRoot);
        //
        StackPane root = new StackPane();
        root.setPadding(new Insets(5));
        root.getChildren().add(treeTableView);

source: https://codestory.de/11149/javafx-treetableview

[ilippert]

Would the following solve #6294 (comment)?

Example for Treetableview (equivalent to JabRef maintable) showing "parent" and "child"

Thank you. I like the idea of being able to see within the main table such a hierarchical structure.

Comment #6294 (comment) however referred to the preferences. For instance I might want to define field myeditnotes as inheritable.