Allow Works to Display Arguments in Sub-Works
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#77 Allow Works to Display Arguments in Sub-Works
I add every chapter of a book as a sub-work of the book work. The book work itself typically has very little attached to it. It has no arguments or whatever, since these belong to the chapters. If I click on the book work, in the bottom left where it lists the arguments it contains, the list is empty. I want to see all the book's arguments down there (i.e. every argument that belongs to every sub-work). I don't know what the best way to do this would be: maybe an option in the settings for "works display arguments of sub-works," or maybe a checkbox for each work with sub-works allowing me to choose, or whatever. (The former is cleaner, the latter allows for granular decisions.)
Maybe how it should work is that if the book has the same author (as an author, not editor), the book is added as a source for the argument by default. Then you can just go in the argument record and remove it if that's not correct. Or there could be a popup in the New Argument dialog to ask if you want to add the book or not. A similar confirmation popup could be shown if you add a book as a parent work to a work with 1 or more arguments and the parent work has the same author (as an author, not editor).
Are you saying you create works for the chapters of every book? Confirmation popups might get tedious in that case. There could be a setting to just add the parent work by default without asking.
Or there could be a button on the Works tab analogous to the "Use this entry's book data to update child, sibling, parent entries" button in the Bib. Manager, to automatically propagate arguments to the parent work record.
Having the book as a source for the argument is not my favorite solution because then every argument in a book has two sources, which seems redundant. If an argument is in a chapter then I know it's also in the book. But I guess it's not a terrible solution.
I do create works for the chapters of every book. The button you suggest to propagate arguments is one I'd have to click at the end of filling out every chapter's arguments, which is maybe not a great workflow since I have to remember to do it as a distinct step rather than when initially setting up the work.