allow child items to exist in collections by themselves for sorting and outlines

[erazlogo]

description of problem:
​http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/705/working-with-notes/#Item_24
possible related formatting solution for short parent item reference:
​http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/867/notetaking-capabilities-and-request-for-recommendations/#Item_13
(p.s. scribe has this feature)

[dstillman]

Elena, can you clarify this ticket?

[erazlogo]

Dan--I didn't get your question over email originally--just noticed it when browsing.

A user should be able to organize/sort notes into an outline in preparation for writing--this is a key phase of research/writing in all traditional research manuals, in the humanities at least. Say you're planning to use three notes in your paragraph, using notes A, B, and C, in that order. If your notes A and C are child items of X and note B is a child of Y, you can't sort them in the proper order right now. In reports, this could theoretically be possible if sort=note worked correctly with combineChildItems turned off.

But users also want to be able to drag child notes by themselves into manual collections for organizing--I'm not sure if this can be done without writing a special outlining plugin:

​http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/705/working-with-notes/#Item_24
​http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/1188/cannot-organizecopy-nonstandalone-notes-into-collections/#Item_10

[erazlogo]

Another request for this feature:
​http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/1809/sort-notes-like-note-cards/

[dstillman]

(In [2071]) Addresses #672, allow child items to exist in collections by themselves for sorting and outlines

• Makes sort=note work as expected when combineChildItems is disabled
• Fix for standalone notes and attachments not displaying when combineChildItems is disabled

[erazlogo]

another request for this feature:
​http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/2146/dragging-multiple-items-into-a-collection/#Item_6

[erazlogo]

Closing tickets #1005 and #1006 will address this ticket as well.

[erazlogo]

Petition to get this done: ​http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/4319/petition-higher-priority-for-ticket-672-on-sortable-child-notes/#Item_4

Sean or Dan--I know you have other things to worry about but could one of you write on the forums explaining why #1005 and #1006 at least can't be done soon--a lot of people are asking for these notes features and usually I'm the only one to respond to such messages and I can't speak to priorities and time constraints as well as you guys.