Upgrade StorageVery unhappy with stand alone note taking side of Zotero
I use zotero extensively with my classes and commend GM for undertaking such a service to all researchers, BUT the stand alone note taking program simply does not make sense the way it works in the current beta version. In the current beta notes are disappearing from folders (they remain in the library) and images added to notes are filed in a temp directory on C drive where I don't want them to be. When a report is generated to Firefox, images do not appear, and thus the full report itself with images cannot be saved to a designated local directory in Zotero. This makes no sense. You should be able to indicate where your notes are to be filed along with in line png, jpg, etc. versions of the images. In addition, if you choose to do so, you should be able to generate a report in Firefox that includes images, and save it in Zotero along with the accompanying images.
Help!
Ed Papenfuse
Help!
Ed Papenfuse
1. Behavior of standalone notes and collections - that's a regression in 2.0b7.5 and will be fixed in the next version - you can find a patch on the forum
2. Notes and images - I don't think Zotero's note-taking features was designed with pictures in mind - if you just copy and paste, the location used is the clipboard - which is obviously useless. You can, however, use the html function of the note to just link to a note anywhere on the computer
<p><img src=" -LINK TO YOUR FILE HERE " /></p>
I don't think having Zotero auto-file links to images put into notes should be a top priority - the note-taking tools used are just taken from TinyMCE and I don't think there are resources to work on that. It's probably possible to put in an "insert image" link in the note-taking GUI, though, so that you can browse to the image rather than typing in the link.
3. Images and Reports - that's the part where I think Zotero might/should do something.The images don't show up in the report, even though they are in the xhtml.
I don't read css well enough to say what causes this, but if you take out the css directions, the image does show.
Is there any reason for that or is this an accident? Could that be changed?
Thank you for your comments and suggestions. Most helpful.
I politely, but strongly disagree with regard to your second point. I use the notes side of Zotero to draft memos and reports that necessarily contain images borrowed from elsewhere. For example, in tracking down some fugitive archives on ebay, I pick up the proffered images, place them in my analytical note, and want that note as I composed it with images filed away in a location where I can not only find it again with images intact, but also report from it (your third point with which I heartily agree).
I have developed a work around for drafting and including images directly in zotero, rather than using the notes (I use office writer and simply edit a blank html in my zotero directory which allows me to drop copied images in place), but it is awkward and would prefer to do this in zotero notes. It would not seem to me that the programming would be all that difficult, but I am not a programmer.
Ed
Ed, with all due respect, your use of zotero sounds to me highly unusual and not really as-intended. Actually it's great that zotero can be used in all sorts of unanticipated ways, but in the end it can't be all things to all people.
Zotero's core function is citation management. The note-taking feature needs to support entering comments on the cited sources. For many of us, at some point notes on sources become passages in more structured writings. Precisely how Zotero is used in such a process is going to vary for different users, BUT ... short of Zotero providing a full-blown word-processor, there will always be some transition between the world of zotero/notes and the more structured/fully formatted document. Call it the moment of copy and paste.
Better integration between note-taking and finished docs would be nice, and perhaps the first step would some reporting enhancements. The obvious and already much commented-upon use case here is the annotated bibliography.
As for images, as an architectural historian I use them constantly. I think they're better managed outside of zotero, same as text with elaborate formatting. Again different users will have various preferences.
(Incidentally, when I try to insert an image into a note it doesn't work.)
We can politely disagree about the intent of Zotero.
From my perspective, the user creates the intent of Zotero within the programming limits provided by its authors. That is the core of its brilliance.
Its future lies in how effectively it assists us as a research and writing tool in managing and tracking information available in electronic form. The notes within ''folders" or "files" are only a small part of its total effectiveness in that regard, but I predict that in time if it remains stable and reliable, it will be used much the way I use it, as a platform to gather information retaining accurately where that information came from, and as a place to compose and keep track of any topic or subject in which I have an interest. It works well with the analysis of on-line versions of 17th and 18th century architectural works (I just completed a review of several of the works listed by Helen Park for a project we have underway). It would have worked better if the note taking side were corrected along the lines I have suggested so that images could be incorporated into notes and filed in a place I designated along with the rest of what I do in zotero. Instead I had to use my work-around which was not as efficient.
Ed
To clarify adamsmith's comment above, the SRC attribute of the IMG tag should use the file:// protocol to point to an image on the local file system, or http:// to access a file available from a web server. So a tag like the following works:
<img src="file:///home/myname/images/foo.jpg"></img>
Needless to say pointing to local files is very unportable.
edit: ooops Frank not Fred! Sorry about that fbennett... X-/
But not sure what could be done about that - the notes are part of the database, not separate files, right? Which means that it'd be impossible to literally store the images with the notes and save relative links.
Good point by Frank Bennett by the way - instead of hand-pasting the link into the html you can just draw the file to the note window and it correctly inserts the link - at least on linux you can. Drag and drop from a webpage creates, appropriately, a http link.