I have watched evolution of Endnote since version 2 in Mac. I requested many features (and bug reports) in the past. I aslo participated beta testing. I like X2 (well, except for the highly disputed automatic online search entry, which I pointed out as “bad feature” in the beta testing)
Now, here’s what I want…
My Custom Groups also evolved into >300, and it is hard to scroll. It sorts alphabetically, so for now, I am using every character (colon, dash, slash) to nesting groups. If I can see the Custom Groups with tree sctructure, like idea processor which collapse the tree structure with + and - icons, I can clean up the messy 300 Groups.
Bum, bogus, yecch! Custom Groups should not, in themselves, be a structured thing. To make Custom Groups a many-to-many index of the relational database is one thing but making them a structured entity, in an of themselves, is going just a tad too far.
But endnote is NOT a relational database, is it? It is certainly complicated enough without going there! Also, the revisions necessary would certainly put paid to any backwards compatibility. I don’t know about the rest of you, but in this finacial climate, it might be awhile before we are able to upgrade again! 7 years down the line, we might be still using EndnoteX2!
To me, Endnote is a relational database or not, it has many-to-many index or not, doesn’t really matter. I use Custom Groups to categorize ~6000 entries developed over the last 18 years. I need ~300 groups right now, and may be 400 groups 5 years from now because I estimate my entries will be ~8000. These groups are somewhat conceptually separated, but some of them are related and nested. That’s why I prefer to have tree structure to manage groups, just like an idea processor.
Clicking a group and hghlighting references in the “All Reference” window is a good idea. I also posted somewhere about an idea, which was to click groups with shift or control, and display entries that belong to multiple groups with “or” and “and” algorithm, respectively. With this function, if I click all the groups with “shift” key, I highlight which entries do not belong to any groups.
I don’t understand why groups should not be tree structured, and should be made many-to-many index like Oracle database.
Oh goodness - custom groups MUST be a structured entity. No 2 ways about it. Take a look at Zotero’s “collections”. That’s exactly what endnote needs. I’m considering switching to zotero just for that feature, though i’m hesitant. Given endnote’s S-L-O-W development though, I suspect I’ll be moving, instead of waiting forever for Thomson to develop this feature. This feature has been discussed previously: http://forums.thomsonscientific.com/ts/board/message?board.id=en-suggest&message.id=211&query.id=34250#M211
So - anyone from Thomson reading this? Any timeframe for this important feature?
Although…based on my past experience, focus of beta testing is to critically evaluate backward compatibility, stability with word processing, OS, and check seamless online search etc, but the focus is not add more features during beta. If you anticipate too much about being a beta tester, hoping to get more features (you want) in the next version, you’ll be disappointed. But in my case, I requested features like tree structure, ctrl/shift click to do AND/OR, and robust search on Group function, I want to see how next version deals with these. I’ll probably join beta testing again as long as I have time.