Multiple tags should probably produce intersection, not union of tags

  • Resolved Mark

    (@codeispoetry)


    4 years ago

    Still amazed by the user experience and back-end documentation.

    Question: I was expecting something like the behaviour generated by the inclusive option also for tags. I run into the following snag:

    Multiple tags currently seem to result in the union of tag sets rather than their intersection. Say I want to display items tagged as publist_scicomm AND language_en using a shortcode like this:

    [zotpress tags="publist_scicomm, language_en"]

    Issue 1: this produces a list with many duplicate items (every item that has both tags is displayed twice). Seems a bug.

    Issue 2: The list also contains all items that have only one of the specified tags (e.g., in my case, items tagged as publist_scicomm AND language_nl). That is unexpected given Zotero tag logic (where selecting multiple tags gives you the set intersection rather than its union).

    I actually find it hard to think of a case where we’d want the union rather than the intersection of tag sets (because then why not use collections?).

    Proposal: I think the set intersection would be the most sensible default when multiple tags are specified. If more options are needed something like explicit OR and AND operators might help.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • efrap

    (@efrap)

    3 years, 11 months ago

    Same problem here – the inclusive option available for authors should apply here to. I hope I can hack my way into this.

    With inclusive=”no”, some results show on first load, but they won’t reload – some sort of cache problem there. When cache is refreshed, results show again, but, again, not on reload.

    Further testing as shown that a high limit, 100 in this case, often causes ‘no result’. Things are working better with a lower limit (50) and inclusive=”no”.

    Still, I am having other issues – what I now need is to specify if any of the tags should be inclusive or not.

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by efrap.
    • This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by efrap.
    Thread Starter Mark

    (@codeispoetry)

    3 years, 7 months ago

    bumping this tread along with four other relatively simple feature requests from the past few months in the hope @kseaborn can pitch in on feasibility or likelihood of implementation. Together, these represent the most important ‘papercuts’ (little things that make software just that bit harder to use) I’ve run into after almost six months of intensive use (as reflected in my other contributions to the forums here).

    Plugin Author Katie

    (@kseaborn)

    3 years, 2 months ago

    Actually, I think that the inclusive attribute does also work for tags … I may have forgotten to add it to the Help docs. Apologies! It seems to work on my end. Can you try?

    Thread Starter Mark

    (@codeispoetry)

    3 years, 2 months ago

    Whoah it does! I may not have tested it before just because it wasn’t in the docs, or I may have misunderstood how “inclusive” works (I get it now, but it still feels slightly counterintuitive to say “inclusive=’no'” for when I want to include items with all of these tags). Thank you, this does solve this particular need, which is excellent!

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Mark.
    • This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Mark.
    Plugin Author Katie

    (@kseaborn)

    3 years, 2 months ago

    Great! Yeah, I wasn’t sure how to put it, but to me inclusive = every item that has that tag, whereas exclusive = you must have both to get into the door.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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