Incremental label filtering

When marking a label it would be helpful if instead of showing all available labels, only the labels that would narrow down the search is shown.

For example. Let’s say I have the following three papers with a combination of labels:

  • Paper 1 - labels: A, B
  • Paper 2 - labels: A
  • Paper 3 - labels: B, C

The label list on the left now looks like this:

  • A (2)
  • B (2)
  • C (1)

Now assume I select label ‘A’ from the list. This filters the list of papers to papers 1 and 2.
What I want now is for the label list on the left to change to

  • B (1)

instead of showing the original full label list. With a higher number of labels this would make it easier to find the combination of labels I need.

An alternative to not showing the “impossible” labels at all is to instead

  • Clearly mark them as not relevant by e.g. graying them out, and
  • rearranging/resorting the label list to put the interesting labels first.

This would make the example look like

  • B(1)
  • A
  • C

@Hannes_Ovren thanks for this suggestion. I am unclear what you are trying to do here. It seems that the third paper (with labels B and C) is the paper you don’t need and selecting A and C together using Ctrl-Shift would bring up nothing. Can you clarify what you mean by “impossible label” and which paper you would aim to find in this use case? If you could offer any more details on your typical workflow, this would also help me understand what you’d like to have in the UI.

The goal is to better see which labels are actually useful to combine.
In this case I am looking for papers with the ‘A’ label, but I might not have know which other labels that go with it. With the current system I only know the total number of papers that have a certain label, so finding useful combinations is a trial and error process. E.g. I’d have to try both A+B and A+C even though there is no paper that has the A+C combination.
With my proposal I would select A, and then immediately realize that I have papers with the A+B combination, but none with the A+C combination.

This is obviously more interesting when the number of labels and papers is larger.

To take an actual example from my own labels. I have one label for the general topic ‘SLAM’. This label is usually coupled with one or more labels for the sensor that was used. E.g a paper could be labeled SLAM+camera+IMU. If I select SLAM from the left sidebar it would be very nice if it immediately showed only those labels that combine with the SLAM label, and not also other unrelated labels that never combine with the SLAM label.

@Hannes_Ovren thank you for describing your workflow with labels. Now I understand your use case: you would like to select a label, and be immediately able to see what other labels it combines with in the UI, perhaps by highlighting the relevant labels, or graying out irrelevant labels. This could be useful if one has a large number of papers with the same label, and would help with the filtering experience (which labels one should select in a ctrl-shift operation). I’ve passed your feedback onto the team for their consideration.

Yes you understood me well. Actually in v27 in the beta the Filter options on the right hand side work pretty much as I want the labels to work:

  1. Clicking toggles a filter on/off
  2. The number next to the filter option shows the number of references that would be shown if I also select that filter option
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