To be honest, I also see no other easy option to get access to the main table or the library tab here.

Not sure about easy but the following would work I guess:

• Pass the stateManager from FieldsEditorTab down to LinkedEntriesEditorViewModel
• Then in LinkedEntriesEditorViewModel use the setSelectedEntries method of the stateManager to set what entries should be selected
• For this to work,
  

  jabref/src/main/java/org/jabref/gui/JabRefFrame.java

  Lines 635 to 636 in 6414f53

  	// Poor-mans binding to global state
  	stateManager.setSelectedEntries(libraryTab.getSelectedEntries());

  and

  jabref/src/main/java/org/jabref/gui/LibraryTab.java

  Lines 480 to 481 in 6414f53

  	// Add the listener that binds selection to state manager (TODO: should be replaced by proper JavaFX binding as soon as table is implemented in JavaFX)
  	mainTable.addSelectionListener(listEvent -> stateManager.setSelectedEntries(mainTable.getSelectedEntries()));

  need to be replaced by a proper bidirectional binding (so that updates of the state manager update the maintable). This is probably a bit more involved but should be doable using the bindContentBidirectional methods in the bindings helper.

I look so much forward to test this

@tobiasdiez I tried to look around as well in this because of these indexOutOfBound exceptions always occurring with regards to selectedItems and the ChangeListener.
In theory your approach about bidirectional binding sounds fine, but in practice this is not possible because the selectedItems is a readOnlyList.

And we never really use it. We just clear the selection in the state manager on tab switching

(I hate the f*cking TableView)

Yes you cannot bind it directly, but our helper methods allow custom binding methods and you could use the clearAndSelect method there to transfer changes from the statemanager to the selection model https://docs.oracle.com/javafx/2/api/javafx/scene/control/SelectionModel.html#clearAndSelect(int).

It can be done, the problem is that the complexity is number_of_entries * number_of_selection (because when we select multiple entries we have to use their indices) unless we add some extra data structure behind it all.
If the user sorts the table (and there aren't a large number of entries with no value in the column that it is sorted on) we can get log(number_of_entries) * number_of_selection which seems to be the easiest version that might be performant (and is what I was thinking about implementing when I have time)

@Siedlerchr where are those IndexOutOfBounds happening?

(I hate the f*cking TableView)

I am starting to understand why 😛

@k3KAW8Pnf7mkmdSMPHz27 I don't really understand your complexity calculation. For what is this the complexity? For keeping the lists in sync?

@tobiasdiez yes. For setting multiple bibentries as selected.

To mark bibentries as selected you need to first find their indices in the (maintable) list

Thanks for the clarification. Makes sense. There is also a select method that takes an item (not its index) as the argument, but I'm not sure how this is implemented in the end. But I also wouldn't invest too much energy into finding the most performant implementation as this method is not called that often and only in response to a user action (so it doesn't really matter if it takes a couple of ms longer). That being said, if you have a nice solution, go for it!

@k3KAW8Pnf7mkmdSMPHz27 I was referring to #8394 the exception occurred as well when I switched groups etc, not only when deleting entries.

DevCall decision:

• if entry is not available in the main table
  • clear search
  • if still not shown: go grouping hierarchy one level up
  • repeat until shown

@Siedlerchr where are those IndexOutOfBounds happening? (#8456 (comment))

See #8719 for a typical example of an index out of bounds issue that may possibly negatively impact this very pull request.

We fixed the jump to entry in the PR #10578.

The logic for the UI will be implemented in #11009.

Thus, closing this.