I am in the main Sources tab looking at a citation. Before sliding into the citation, the source list had been filtered by a string to limit the number of sources displayed to those for a book entitled The Nichols Book. As it turns out, that filter is the cause of the problem I’m about to describe.
If I click on any of the found items that are sources or citations for Stories in Stone, I’m back in The Nichols Book instead of being in Stories in Stone where I wanted to be. And notice that I’m in the main Sources tab, not in the specific item on which I clicked.
I can solve the problem by first removing the filter from the main Sources tab, then switching to the main Search tab and then clicking on the item in Stories in Stone that I want to see. Of course, when I started the process of switching tabs, the source filter was not visible because I had slid from the source list to a particular citation for that source.
I understand exactly what’s going on and why it’s going on, but it sure is frustrating. It’s hard to see how to fix it, and it’s hard to see if it’s even fixable. The problem is the very deep design principle in RM8/9/10 where the main tabs are co-equal. For example, you don’t go from the main People tab to the main Sources tab as a subordinate window that you can then dismiss to get back to the main People tab. Instead, the main tabs are all co-equal, like docked windows that are always open and you just switch between them.
In my case, I start in the main Sources tab, I switch to the main Search tab, and from there I need to switch briefly to the main Sources tab again almost like it was a sub-ordinate window. But since that’s not the way it works, it doesn’t work for what I’m trying to accomplish. I really do need for the main Sources tab to be a sub-ordinate function to the main Search tab so I can see and edit or copy the results of the search for Stories in Stone and then “return to” the main Search tab.
Very much agree.
I submitted a ticket on this quite awhile ago, but my understanding and memory is that it’s functioning as designed.
Also, if you leave a found citation open, I and clcik on another citation found link that is from a different source, the link won’t bring you to the correct found item. (Haven’t checked this in a long time,…)
I suspect so. And as I mentioned in my original message, I further suspect that the reason is that it’s very hard to open from Search Everywhere into a source or citation in the main Sources tab when the main Sources tab is already “open” doing something else. This aspect of how RM8/9/10 works is so deeply baked into the design that it’s difficult to see how this situation could ever be fixed.
Going from Find Everywhere into anything that’s found in an Edit Person window doesn’t have quite the same problem because there can be multiple Edit Person windows open at the same time. And an Edit Person window isn’t itself a main menu item and doesn’t occupy a main menu tab on the left side of the screen.And an Edit Person window can be moved to a second monitor or side by side with the main screen if your monitor is large enough.
I’m doubtful that this ever will be fixed, but I use a lot of software that uses a bit of a different design so that this problem doesn’t have to exist. Actually, everybody does because everybody uses a browser. And pretty much every browser these days supports both tabbed browsing and multiple browser windows open at the same time. Many users might not realize that the browser tabs operate essentially as separate browser windows that are docked as tabs, and that the docked windows can be undocked into separate windows. And vice versa, you can drag and drop separate browser windows to dock them back into tabs in a single browser window.
Something like the browser tabs and docking and undocking was what I was picturing in all those years I was complaining about RM’s modal subwindows before RM8 came out. And because there is no docking and undocking with the current design, you can’t even do things like have the main People tab open on one monitor and the main Sources tab open on a second monitor at the same time (or open side by side on the same monitor). Sigh! It’s surely too deeply baked into the design ever to fix. There would have to be an actual menu system that is not conflated with the tabs.
