#844 star rating system

[D in Boise]

I use bib desk for everything - keeping track of manuscript reviews, evaluating funding proposals, ranking applicants for admission to graduate school, or faculty positions, and of course, journal articles. One feature that is particularly useful, especially when it comes to ranking candidates, or proposals, is the "star rating" feature. But I have one small complaint with it.

In the Bibdesk main window one can easily (and often nadverdantly) click in the ratings column and change a rating, either by adding a star where there were none previously, or by simply changing from 3 to 5 stars, or something like that. If one catches this change, it is easy enough to go into the info window and revert the change. But ...

(1) one may have lost track of what the rating was supposed to be,
(2) one may not have noticed that an inadvertant click on the main Bibdesk window actually changed the star rating, and
(3) (and the reason for this email) is that if one had not previously ranked an entry, an inadvertant click on the rating column in the main Bibdesk window wiill put a star rating where there previously was none. One should then be able to "uncheck" the star in the info box for that entry, but this seems impossible. One cannot remvoe entirely a rating.

So I have two suggestions :

1. Do not allow the star ratings to be changed in the main Bibdesk window (it isn't that hard to open the info window and make change there)

2. Allow one to convert back to "no rating". i.e. have a way to revert back to zero stars (if for some reason a star was accidently clicked, or for some other reason).

[Christiaan Hofman]

I am not so sure that we should not allow editing the rating from the main window. You can of course open an info window, but it is considerably more work.

Also, you can revert back to zero rating. If not by Undo, you can change the rating by dragging over the stars (to the left).

[D in Boise]

Thanks for the tip on undoing the star rating - I somehow had missed that.

But I woudl still argue that one should not be able to change the star rating in the main window. First, this is only thing that can be changed in the window. And for the reasons I outlined above, it is all to easy to inadvertantly change the rating. If one happens to catch that they made clicked on the rating, and also remembers what the previous rating had been, one can always revert the change the info window. But this approach makes it "easy" to make a mistake, and "hard" to fix it. I would rather make it "hard" to change the rating, but "impossible" to make a mistake. By "hard" it isn't at all hard to open the info window - we have to do it for everything else anyway ....

Maybe a compromise is to use a right click to change th rating in the main window?

[D in Boise]

I just did it again - changed the star rating by double clicking on the entry to open the info window. The mouse happened to be in the rating column, and voila! Two stars!

[Christiaan Hofman]

I've decided to disable the editing, I agree it's too easy to do accidentally.

[D in Boise]

Okay - thank you!