Not signed in (Sign In)

Vanilla 1.1.9 is a product of Lussumo. More Information: Documentation, Community Support.

Ulysses 2.0: Move, Duplicate & Replicate a Document with the Contextual Menu

Bottom of Page

1 to 6 of 6

  1.  
    •  
      CommentAuthortalazem
    • CommentTimeSep 11th 2009 edited
     
    I had been trying to move a document from one collection to another, using the contextual menu (right-click). I kept choosing "Add to Collection" thinking (mistakenly) that it would *move* the document to the other collection (yes, I know the name doesn't suggest this; humour me). I would end up with the same document in two collections. Upon then trying to delete the document from the first collection (since I only want it in the second collection), imagine my horror when the document was gone from both...thankfully, the Trash saves the day.

    I soon learnt that the way to "move" a document is by duplicating it in the menu bar or by the contextual menu of the document's tab, moving the duplicate to the desired collection, and deleting the original one.

    May I suggest that Ulysses take a note from the excellent DEVONthink's way of handling this? In DT, when you right click on a document, you have the choices of "move to", "duplicate to", and "replicate to". "Move" removes the document from the current group and places it in the chosen one. "Duplicate" makes an independent copy; "independent" meaning that if you make modifications to the newly duplicated document, the changes are not reflected in the other. The last choice, "replicate", makes a clone, such that any changes in one are reflected in the other. (I believe this is what "Add to Collection" currently does.)

    Perhaps the good gents at Soulmen could consider this? Not being able to duplicate from within the Document Browser -- but being able to do so from the tabs and the menu bar -- strikes me as a bit inconsistent. While that isn't a knock against the programme, it indicates that people like me might find it easier if the three choices -- move, duplicate & replicate (or "clone") -- were clear and distinct from within the contextual menu.

    Many thanks for the consideration.
    •  
      CommentAuthorfehnman
    • CommentTimeSep 11th 2009
     

    Oh noes. :)

    You're right that you can't "move" a document from one collection to another, but that's just because you may want to have a document in three or even more collections -- how would you go about moving it from one to another without touching its appearance in the remaining collections?

    Also, you don't need to duplicate a document unless you want what you call an "independent" copy. There# sno such thing as "replicate" in Ulysses, because you can always have one document in multiple collectiopns -- and having multiple replicas of one document side-by-side doesn't make much sense, does it?

    However, here's how you do it: Drag'n'drop a document onto the desired collection. This will ALWAYS leave the document in all other collections (and filters, for that matter). Then just drag'n'drop the dpocument out of the browser. This will remove the document from the collection.

    So, to reiterate: dragging, dropping, moving out -- virtual operations, organizational.
    Duplicating, deleting -- real operations, on the files.

    Helps? :)

    •  
      CommentAuthortalazem
    • CommentTimeSep 11th 2009 edited
     
    Thanks for your response. I understand the benefit in being able to have a document in *three* or even more collections. But I don't see that as a problem, using the way DEVONthink does it, for example. Their "replicates" (which is what you're describing here, one unique document existing in more than one collection, with any changes in one "instance" being reflected in the other instances) can be moved about without affecting the others, just like what we have here in Ulysses. Of course, the point of making "replicants" is not to have them side by side, but to be able to drag-and-drop them, once they are made, into another collection.

    I can't speak, of course, for *all* styles of writing, but for the writing that I'm (enjoying) doing in Ulysses -- namely, a thesis -- I have no use for "replicates", per se. More often, I have had need for duplicates, so that I can whittle each of the two duplicates down independently from what was once one long messy single document with 20 associated notes to two shorter documents where I've removed some notes while keeping others in each resulting document.

    To reiterate, then: I am not requesting that you change the ability to have one instance in numerous collections; that is very useful, I'm sure. I'm asking that the contextual menu make it *clearer* and give other alternatives. And, to my mind, the three logical operations of this type are move, replicate (i.e. identical clones of a single instance), and duplicate. Again, I can't speak for others, but "moving" a document from one collection to another is my most common operation in the browser.

    That being said, I'm quite happy to learn new (obscure) tricks. However, the trick of drag-and-drop out of a collection, out of the browser, is *not* working for me. No matter where I drag-and-release the document to, it always springs back into its original place. Again, I can not remove it from the document browser -- without deleting it, which deletes it from all its other collections (which I don't want to do). Surely I'm doing something wrong?

    Help? :)
    •  
      CommentAuthorfehnman
    • CommentTimeSep 11th 2009
     

    Replicates: Ulysses uses collections and filters as virtual places. The files are not actually moved to these places. If you delete one collection, the documents in that collection are still there. If you have a collection named "chapter 1" and another named "send to printer" and a third named "delete asap", you can completely ignore each collection as far as document management goes. All documents always reside on the top-level (so to speak), and all you do with collections is creating shortcuts to single groups of documents (again, so to speak).

    This is a different approach then DT takes, and it may not work well for some, especially if they expect Ulysses' behavior to be different, or rather: similar to that of a specific (other) application; DT in your case.

    I understand that the way we handle collections may not be of much use for folks just using collections as "single folders representing a hierarchical structure". However, once you go and create arbitrary collections, e.g. "later", "Eileen" and so on, you don't have to deal with explicitly creating "replicants" or even think about the differences between "replicants" and "duplicates" or "clones" or "mirrors" or whatever one might call them.

    That's not to say that some people would love to have it work another way. :)

    What I could think of, though, is to add a drag'n'drop modifier for documents. Like... Alt-Drag or such, which would then move a document from one collection to another. This would throw up new questions, of course: Do we move this out of ALL collections or just out of one? How do we handle drags from filters? And, most importantly: Can we really introduce a "move" modifier which resembles the system-wide "copy"-modifier?

    But we might very well consider this...

    Duplicates: A contextual menu for duplicates was dropped from 2.0 due to time and some conceptual problems, but we're re-considerig it for 2.1. E.g., if you "duplicate" a document in one collection, you will expect it to show up in that collection, but not in all the others it may be in. You would also like to rename it, I guess, and you might want to move it to a different collection right away. We're not so sure how to deal with these expectations, seeing how the browser works differently altogether.

    Regarding your drag'n'drop out of a collection problem: There should be a contextual menu item called "remove from collection". Does that show up? If not: Check if you're in "cumulated" mode (ctrl-click on the documents header). This mode will show each document only once, even if a document is in multiple collections AND you have multiple collections/filters selected. Problem in 2.0: If you have only one collection selected, it can't treat the view as "not cumulated". This is not a bug per se, but rather an oversight on our part, which we might try and fix in 2.1.

    •  
      CommentAuthortalazem
    • CommentTimeSep 11th 2009 edited
     
    Ah, the cumulative view strikes once again. Let me ask one last time, because I notice on the old forum people also had this drop-and-drop problem when caught unaware of the function of cumulative view: cumulative view's purpose is to display all of the "top level" documents (as you referred to them), outside of their existence in collections etc, as a simple list of documents created?

    As for the conundrum of duplicates: I don't know if this would be feasible, but if the browser simply replicated what happens when one chooses "duplicate" for the menu bar or by control-clicking on the document's tab and choosing "duplicate", I would find that consistent and expected behaviour.

    Many thanks for all the help and time spent in explaining, as well as considering ways of "moving" documents. You've always done an excellent job on crafting an intelligent and useful way of doing things, and I'm sure you'll overcome those question you posed.
    •  
      CommentAuthorfehnman
    • CommentTimeSep 11th 2009
     

    About cumulated/cumulative (?) view: You can select multiple collections in the browser. So you may select 10 collections and 20 filters all at once. Ulysses will display all of the documents in the documents browser, and you can chose if it shows these documents within the "boundaries" of the collections/filters, or as a flat list. We call this flat list "cumulated", but maybe "pooled" is better, dunno.

    However, what it does is it will show every document only once, even if this document is part of multiple collections or show up in multiple filters. As a matter of fact, cumulated view is very useful if you're using filters a lot, and maybe not so much if you're only working with collections.

    Duplicates: Yeah, it should replicate the menubar behavior, though this very behavior is not without problems. ;)

    Thanks for your time, btw.

1 to 6 of 6

  1.