Zotero does not warn about missing PDF tools when attempting to retrieve metadata in download dialog

mronkko
I have a fresh installation of Zotero (3.0 beta 1) without pdftotext and pdfinfo. When I download a PDF and choose "Save to Zotero" and check "Retrieve Metadata for PDF" from the "Opening {filename}" dialog, retrieving metadata starts, but does not ever complete because the PDF tools are missing. Instead of attempting to retrieve metadata, Zotero probably should say that the PDF tools are missing and show the window for installing them, like it does when I choose "Retrieve metadata" manually.

I have also two feature requests relating to this. Would it be possible to include another checkbox to automatically open the downloaded PDF with a default PDF reader? The suggestion is to use the translators on the referring page to retrieve the metadata and only use the PDF metadata retrieval if this first step fails.
  • dstillman
    edited August 26, 2011
    It used to. If it doesn't, that's a bug in 3.0b1.

    Start a new thread for a feature request.
  • mronkko
    Then it is probably a bug in the beta.

    I will start a new thread for a feature request.
  • dstillman
    edited August 26, 2011
    Oh, sorry, I missed that you were referring to the new download dialog option. We'll see what we can do about that. It will probably need to cancel the download and show the prompt, the same way that the context menu option cancels the original operation when it shows the prompt.
  • mronkko
    The download dialog option is really cool. However, it might be difficult to discover for power users of Firefox because at least I have disabled the dialog and just save everything to downloads. If it was possible to configure this behavior from the Zotero settings instead of Firefox options, this would be easier to discover.
  • mark
    Yup, never saw that option. I think many automatically save PDFs to some folder.
  • mronkko
    It took a while to discover, but the behavior of FF can be reset by going to Preferences -> Applications and then changing "Portable Document Format" to "Always ask"

    It would be nice if this preference could be changed from the Zotero settings dialog.
  • mronkko
    Also it would be nice if I could check "Do this automatically for files like this from now on" when choosing to import a PDF to Zotero.
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