What's in your main window?

I've only used Sente long enough for the trial period to expire and then most of today after buying a license. But so far, I've been been doing most of my work in either the right hand editor or in an entirely separate tab. I don't use the lower editor much at all.

I'd like to see the way references are displayed in the list cleaned up a bit. Right now, it tends to blur together because the text is so closely packed and the columns so long horizontally. I find scanning a list of references to find what I want somewhat difficult as a result.

I don't want this to sound like I'm complaining, though. Sente is amazing and I can't wait to make even more use of it. Now if only you could get it supporting legal citations...

I've been using Sente for about 4 months now, and it's been an outstanding upgrade over Bookends and Endnote. It's been a great tool for general references & citation, but also just to keep track of readings and notes in my Ph.D. courses.

At any rate, my standard configuration is to have both reference editors open, with the right editor typically set to "Bibliography Fields" and the bottom editor set to "Links" (usually with the associated PDF visible).

Occasionally, I'll have the right-side editor set to "Notes" view if I'm reading the PDF inside of Sente, but I usually just end up using OmniOutliner, since the Notes tend to be a bit unwieldy to work with (and I really wish there was a smooth import/export utility for adding/sending out notes from individual references.

Biggest changes I'd like to see:

- Have the main window launch directly below the Menu Bar on startup. No matter what I do, it always starts about 44 pixels down from the Menu Bar, and I have to drag it up.

- Option to view PDF fullscreen, with Notes pad on the side

- Option to view PDFs using Skim, and see Skim edits in the PDF window (there's an open API for this)

- Fix the Bibliography Fields editor to correctly show Volume, Issue, and Pages fields when the publication type is set to "Magazine Article" using the APA5 format (I reported this a while ago, and was told the fix would come in version 5.7... it didn't).

All in all, I wouldn't trade Sente for any other bibliography tool. But even the best can be improved. Good luck, guys.

Hello Michael,

to make it short:
- I usually have the right hand ref. editor open. I use the lower ref. editor quite rarely
- 99.9% of the time the right hand ref. editor is open on the Summary view. When i use the lower panel, it is usually in the Links view.

Ideas... Probably it's easier to write how I use it... and let you figure it out how to improve it
I have 3 'modes' of use for the main windows: 'focused', 'search', and 'parsing'.
- 'focused' This is the one I use when I know what I want to get (a specific paper, a specific topic), and I know it's in the library. For this mode I need the main panel the way it is now: Source list to move through Coillections, Reference Table with the Find visible, the Summary view on the right side. If I want to see a pdf, I will open in in a Tab
- 'search'. Once in the Temporary library, I don't need the Source list anymore till I want to move any 'good' reference to a collection in the main library. The other panes as above.
- 'parsing' This is the mode I use when I read my favourite journals (see http://www.thirdstreetsoftware.com/forums/showthreaded.php?Cat=0&Number=3629&page=0 for a description of what I do). In this mode I need to go quickly through a long list of references. I don't need the source list (unless I want to save some 'good' ref), and I use the summary views only when a reference catches my attention. I usually go through the references by selecting them together (shift-ArrowDown). In these respects I would love to be able to see the summary view of the last selected reference (the way it was in Sente4!).

The Toolbar is kind of a waste of space. I'd love to be able to hide it and to be able to access all the commands from the Menubar (or keyboard shortcuts)

Other feature request: I would like to have more info in the toolbar (eg 13 ref out of 231 selected - or Updating Search xyz), the way it was in Sente4

Thanks,
Silvo

Big 'Me Too' to all the changes suggested by Allocentric.
Maybe a floating NotePad (not just a reference editor, but something linked to the open PDF) would also help.

Silvo

Well, I almost doubt one could make the main window even better. But as you asked for some infos: I use both editors all the time, right-hand: normally reference editor, lower editor: usually link view.

Things that could be improved:
- Sente doesn't play nice with docs/pdfs/htmls/webarchives already downloaded with devonthink (even version 2). As Sente isn't apple-scriptable, while Devonthink is, a solution for this needs to come from thirdstreetsoftware.
- command-v into a reference-editor-field should be as plain text by default. Every mac software seems to have a different keyboard command for this: opt-cmd-v (sente), shft-cmd-v (dt), shft-opt-cmd-v (Mail, Pages)
- Maybe there is something main window related: I think searches are pretty cluttered, too deeply hidden in menues, divided in z39.50 and web searches. To change the z39.50 source for an existing search is uncomfortable.
- Copying strings like "Joe Author" into the author field
- Sente could be snappier.
- Sente could be a bit more supportive when entering bibliographic data and try to reuse things that already are in the database.
- It doesn't feel as stable as it could be.
- An ad-/flash-killer for the built-in browser would be nice.

As to previous comments:
- the list view is perfectly crowded ;-)
- right, more infos on toolbar

I second the suggestion of a full-screen pdf view with notes to the right. Or at least the ability to hide the sources pane so that the pdf in the editor window is wider, particularly on a laptop.

Unrelated to view issues, I would love to see Sente be able to pull as much citation info off of sites as Zotero does. But, by far, Sente has actually made locating, downloading, organizing, reading, taking notes, and citing sources fun and intuitive.

99% of the time, I have the Source list on the left, the Reference Table in the top center, the Links View in the bottom center (often with a PDF displayed), and the Summary view of the Reference editor on the right. I retrieve almost all of my references from PubMed, and I rarely manually enter a reference (sometimes a book chapter).

I read/markup all of my PDFs in the full version of Acrobat, mostly because highlighting of multi-column docs is clunky in Preview or Skim. If Sente could provide a full-screen pdf view with highlighting that elegantly handled multicolumn docs and a notes view on the right, that would be wonderful, and I would probably use Acrobat sparingly. Would the notes be attached to the highlights? Would they travel with the PDF if I emailed it to another colleague?

I used to hunger for more customizable toolbar buttons (e.g. for initiating a PubMed or Quick Add search). Now, I've made custom keyboard shortcuts for these in System Preferences, so *I* don't need them anymore, but for new people (or people who are not prone to customizing interfaces), these things are still buried too deeply in the menus.

I'm still in demo mode but I find myself using (and enjoying) all three panes of the main window, but also opening and closing them as needed to view only what I want to see depending on what I'm doing.

In the right-hand editor I mostly use bibliography fields and citations. In the lower editor I primarily use summary and links, expanding the pane as needed using the double-headed arrow "maximize" button.

I don't understand requests for a full-screen PDF viewer. Just double click the pdf icon in the reference list and it opens the PDF file in Preview (or Acrobat, if that's your default application for PDFs).

I have had the scroll bars sometimes inexplicably disappear when accessing Google sites via the lower editor pane. Obviously that should be fixed. Otherwise, I would recommend not removing the three-pane window concept. It's very intuitive, powerful and elegant as it is.

I typically toggle between Citation(Expanded) or Notes in the right window. I typically use the Links view in the lower editor to view linked pdfs, or close the lower editor when perusing long lists of refs.

Very glad to hear that the main window layout is on target for an upgrade, and the simple advice would be to just make the whole layout more simple, more consistent, more intuitive, more Maclike, more Zen. Currently IMHO the various buttons and dropdowns sprinkled throughout the interface makes it cluttered and confusing, especially to new users (e.g. in my setup, there are 4 little gears and the icons are not consistent). A good interface can be really, hard to do, but it seems like much of the display options encompassed in the scattered buttons and lists could maybe be extracted into an inspector, ala the iWork suite, and the general view simplified to be a bit more like Things. Would be really nice to replace some of the icons too (i.e. the blurry folders, squashed trashcan, etc).

So, despite these interface issues, I'm loving Sente more and more and widely recommending it to colleagues, for the excellent functionality, especially as I discover more of the features (Notes! Targets! Google Scholar!).

I have just gone from demo to purchase, after importing 8000 items from EndNote. I use that right hand side editor a lot. I would be lost without it. That is one of the big plusses for me, compared with EndNote. I have been able to rearrange items and delete items so that I see just what I want, how I want it. I would not change anything there.

The main display of items is fine. I have reordered the columns and added and deleted some. I like the spacing and the display, after I changed the fonts.

The bottom display is nice. I do not use it so much, but I like it.

My main problem is that I do all my writing with LaTeX, and though I have been able to create the needed bibliography format just fine, and have created also an in-text format, I cannot find any way to paste this into my text editor. ctrl-y works just like ctrl-c.

I normally use the right-hand reference editor and thought about the improvements, but everything was already said in comments before. Thanks.

I would love to see Sente be able to pull as much citation info off of sites as Zotero does.

But, by far, Sente has actually made locating, downloading, organizing, reading, taking notes, and citing sources fun and intuitive.