Hi,

I am having trouble understanding how to add additional content to an existing article. For example, I am trying to copy an article that is broken up into 5 web pages. Is there an easy way to do this?

Currently, I have to manually edit the article and paste in the content. Maybe there could be an "Add content to current article" option.

Thanks for any input.

Hi John,
Copy and paste is the way to do this now.

I'm in two minds about "Add content to current article".

First the more choices you have on the Browser context menu, the more likely you'll need to stop and think about which one to use.

Second Internet Explorer has a fairly severe limit on the number of context menu items it will display. If you install a few programs that add entries to the IE menu, you can easily finish up with menu items missing altogether. Some programs add a ridiculous number of menu items. This isn't an issue with Firefox.

I do like the idea though and you aren't the first to suggest it. Something to ponder on some more.

Another way to tackle this would be to implement "Append to article from Clipboard" and an associated Clipboard Hotkey (See: Creating New Articles from the Clipboard in the Help). This would remove the need for another Browser context menu item, but it would be an extra action in the Browser. ie. Select content + Copy to Clipboard, then use the SUL Clipboard Hotkey.

Or maybe the current Clipboard Hotkey code could be made smart enough to know the Source URL is the same as the Target (SUL) Article and in that case Append, instead of create a new Article. The problem here is the user may not always get the outcome they want.

Ideas on the run here. Comments?

__________________
Neville Franks,
Author of ED for Windows and Surfulater

Hmm, what about adding a new RMB context menu option when you click on an article's text along the lines of "Append clipboard contents here"? This saves the user from RMB->Edit then adjusting to a recentered article, finding/scrolling cursor to the end and finally pasting.

Another thought I had in addition to above would be adding the ability to shift-left click on the articles in the tree and then able to "Merge" content, from both a context menu and top menu. Being able to shift left click on multiple tree items then opens up other actions than can be performed on multiple articles, such as copy/cutting multipe articles to another folder.

This is a very good suggestion which addresses various issues I've had re. implementing this functionality. And the good news is that it is in V1.94, B0.0 due out very soon.
Multiple selection capabilities are on the todo list.

I'm not sure what you mean by "able to "Merge" content, from both a context menu and top menu ..." though?

__________________
Neville Franks,
Author of ED for Windows and Surfulater

It's very encouraging to hear about your continuning development on Surfulater!
In continuing with the discussion of making it easier to save a multi-page web article into one surfulater article, I was proposing the idea of having a merge or group function that would allow the user to group several surfulater articles into one.

For example, I saved a 5 page web article as 5 surfulater articles because as is, that is probably the simplest way to get such content into surfulater. Since I would prefer for these 5 surfulater articles to be condensed into 1 article, my idea is to allow the user to append/merge/group/collapse them together. This function could be accessed through several methods, including shift-left clicking articles in the Knowledge Tree bar (multiple selection), then RMB->group articles; as well as maybe selecting Article->Group Articles from the top row of menu options (File, Article, Format, View, Help).

I hope this illustrates what I was trying to say a bit better.

Hi John,
Ok now I understand. In this Merge process I assume you would only want "Text" field content copied (merged).

You can accomplish what you want with the new "Append Clipboard to Field" feature. Either when you first capture content from your Web Browser, or by using "Select All" + "Copy" in Surfulater, then Appending this to the desired article. This is certainly more steps than multiple select+merge, but it is available here and now (where now = today'ish).

__________________
Neville Franks,
Author of ED for Windows and Surfulater