Some thoughts about tags in MyInfo

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wsp
Posts: 518
Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2008 8:54 am
Location: Washington, DC

Some thoughts about tags in MyInfo

Post by wsp »

I don't make really heavy use of tags in MyInfo, but in one particular topic -- a large file of bibliographical references -- I do depend on tags for subject headings and for indications of where I can find a particular book or article. And when I'm adding or editing material in that topic, I'm aware of considerable awkwardness in MyInfo's handling of tags.

The autocomplete feature in the tags editing box is excellent, but I am usually unable to select one of the suggested tags with my arrow keys. (When I move down to one of the tags, it often disappears.) I am of course able to select the tag by double-clicking with the mouse, but I would much prefer not having to take my hands off the keyboard.

If I have done a search of one or more keywords, the document in question usually seems to position itself at the bottom of the screen. That means that when I start to type a tag, my choices of tags scroll off the lower edge of the screen so that I cannot see them.

More broadly, I wish that MyInfo tags were more visible. I would love to see a scheme something like Evernote's with the selected tags shown at the top of each document -- and editable there. Or, as an option, the user could conceal those tags.

I'm certainly aware of the tags panel, and I use it occasionally, but it's ugly and unsatisfactory. For example, whenever I try to delete or change a tag there, the program usually freezes. (My bibliography topic is only 13.3 Mb; it contains several thousand documents, but all are short, and there are hardly any images.)

Petko, do you have observations?
Bill
Coolrat
Posts: 112
Joined: Wed Nov 30, 2011 9:52 am

Post by Coolrat »

I would love to see some improvements to the TAGs feature. More specifically, the following features might be of considerable use to many users, especially to researchers trying to categorized the content of documents and link documents.

1. The ability to link one sentence in one document to a place in another document.

2. A better tags, keyword system. If tags were separated by a comma, it would allow for more useful compound tags like "environmental protection" or "Canadian Economy" and allow separation among other keywords like "Canadian History" etc.

3. The ability to select sections/blocks of text or photos and be able to assign a code/tag to it. Ideally, this code/tag would appear in a margin, and use identify which segment is coded with that tag.
Then, the user could use an analysis feature to search through the database to see what was coded. The program would assemble all the sections/blocks coded with a particular code.

These would be three outstanding useful improvements that would expand MyInfo's abilities and enable it to offer some QDA qualitative data analysis functions. I think that would excite a lot of university students and especially grad students.
Coolrat
Posts: 112
Joined: Wed Nov 30, 2011 9:52 am

Post by Coolrat »

Coolrat wrote:I would love to see some improvements to the TAGs feature. More specifically, the following features might be of considerable use to many users, especially to researchers trying to categorized the content of documents and link documents.

1. The ability to link one sentence in one document to a place in another document.

2. A better tags, keyword system. If tags were separated by a comma, it would allow for more useful compound tags like "environmental protection" or "Canadian Economy" and allow separation among other keywords like "Canadian History" etc.

3. The ability to select sections/blocks of text or photos and be able to assign a code/tag to it. Ideally, this code/tag would appear in a margin, and use identify which segment is coded with that tag.
Then, the user could use an analysis feature to search through the database to see what was coded. The program would assemble all the sections/blocks coded with a particular code.

These would be three outstanding useful improvements that would expand MyInfo's abilities and enable it to offer some QDA qualitative data analysis functions. I think that would excite a lot of university students and especially grad students.
I still think that these suggestions would greatly enhance the usablity of MyInfo and expand its user base. If MyInfo had even rudimentary QDA fuctions, this would be enough for many researchers. Currently, there are not any low-cost full featured QDA programs available to researchers with limited budgets (I checkout out all open-source options and none of them are developed enough to seriously consider using. This may change if someone picks up development on WEFT or LibreQDA). The proprietary editor SENSE by SilvaElm software is developing a QDA plugin that looks very promising. There seems to be little reason why MyInfo could not include such a feature as well - this would strengthen its use as a data-sorting, cataloguing and analysis tool
pjmiller
Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Nov 17, 2013 10:16 am

Post by pjmiller »

I make heavy use of tags. I agree with the suggestions wsp and coolrat made in their posts.
Coolrat
Posts: 112
Joined: Wed Nov 30, 2011 9:52 am

Post by Coolrat »

Its been at least 2 years since I posted the above recommendations for improving MyInfo's feature set.
I still think that these would be crucial improvments that exist only in very few software applications, but yet would be immensely useful. I'm surprised that other note-taking applications have not already implemented them.
pjmiller
Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Nov 17, 2013 10:16 am

Post by pjmiller »

I make heavy use of tags. I treat them like categories and as such it would be useful if one could have subcategories, a hierarchy of categories/tags. MyBase and ConnectedText are the only programs which implement this. MyBase falls down badly in other areas. ConnectedText is OK but awkward to use.

It would be nice if MyInfo could implement something like this.
jamal
Posts: 197
Joined: Sat Jan 13, 2007 12:29 pm

Post by jamal »

I too have been using tags heavily, at least I am applying multiple tags to new article as I create them, hoping that I can quickly find them again by using tags. However, when it comes to retrieving articles with multiple tags quickly, MyInfo falls short. In the tags pane, currently you can select only one tag at a time to search on. Even a rudimentary method such as the ability to control-click and select multiple tags will help. In general, tagging functionality needs its own simplified filtering mechanism to (1) select and search on multiple tags and (2) narrow down retrieved documents further by selecting additional tags. Any thoughts? Is anything planned in this area?
Petko
MyInfo Support
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Post by Petko »

Yes, it will be possible to select multiple tags using the CTRL+mouse click, so you will be able to quickly narrow down documents containing a set of tags.
jamal
Posts: 197
Joined: Sat Jan 13, 2007 12:29 pm

Post by jamal »

Thank you Petko. That would be great.. I would like to suggest CTRL+click-ability not only for tags shown in the left hand side window (tags tab) but also on the tags shown in the tag editor (above the documents in the Text Editor window.)

Also related to this, but actually a general enhancement to help narrow down the search results: add a new "Retrieved Documents" item to the "Search In" drop-down menu attached to the Search Box, that is, in addition to the currently available "This Branch," "This Topic," "Open Topics" and "All Topics" choices. For example, when a tag search/filtering or a content search within a topic finds x number of documents, selecting the proposed "Retrieved Documents" choice for "Search In" will search only within those x documents. The idea is to limit the scope of the search to the current search results to narrow down the search results further.

Please think about it.
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