Rename File / Update document metadata

dvs0826

I can't currently find a way to change the way the "Rename File from metadata" works. It always seems to use Author - Date - Title. Is there a way to customize this? If not, would it be possible? What I had in mind was an editable field in the preferences where I could enter something like $(Author) - $(Title) - $(Date) and it would format it accordingly.

Secondly, I think it would also be useful if there was an additional option that allowed me to write the parent metadata into the actual PDF file's metadata. Has this been discussed before? maybe it's already possible and I'm just not seeing it.

Thanks

dstillman

http://www.zotero.org/support/hidden_prefs

Look for attachmentRenameFormatString. It's rather limited at the moment, but you can suggest other fields.

Secondly, I think it would also be useful if there was an additional option that allowed me to write the parent metadata into the actual PDF file's metadata.

The XMP metadata? I don't recall this being suggested before. I don't know offhand how feasible it would be.

dvs0826

I'm not sure if it's XMP metadata or not TBH, I have only limited knowledge of PDF file format. When I open a document in Acrobat, for example, and click Document Properties, I see fields such as Title, Authors, Subject, and Keywords. These could correspond to Title, Authors, (null), and Tags in the Zotero metadata. null meaning that there's no mapping I can think of that makes sense for Subject, so just ignore that field in the PDF metadata.

This way I could have Zotero fetch PDF metadata automatically, and by storing it in the actual PDF file itself this way, other applications that operated off of PDF metadata could make use of it too.

noksagt

pdf has both the legacy info key/value format & XMP metadata.

Other reference managers, including JabRef, are able to set one or both of these formats & I thought I've seen this request for Zotero previously.

Think it would have to be done using an executable (as most pdf interactions rely on now).

pdftk is cross-platform & GPL & can set this metadata. It is heavier-weight than the xpdftools & the conversion to text is not as concise (although I believe this would allow another feature request, which was to index the comments in a pdf file).

Don't know anything lighter weight off the top of my head, but there's certainly code out there in both pdftk & other apps that could be leveraged.

Bionatsci

although I believe this would allow another feature request, which was to index the comments in a pdf file

That would make incorporating text conversion based on pdftk or something similar a definite feature request for me - I make heavy use of commenting using PDF X-Change viewer, and having these comments searchable would be great, currently I work around this by duplicating critical comments as Zotero notes.