Synchronizing Mac to PC

peterm
I'm trying to synchronize Zotero between a Mac laptop and a PC desktop. What I've tried so far is to copy over all the files in the Zotero directory under Application Support /Firefox on the Mac to the proper subdirectory on the PC. I am able to see and work with almost everything, but web page snapshots cannot be open. I get an error message saying the file isn't available. But, I can see and even directly open the file using Windows Explorer. I'm guessing that the file reference is stored as an absolute reference so when I move the files between systems the software runs into problems. Would seem like an easy thing for the developers to fix.

Can I synchronize by exporting the data, copying the file to the other computer, then erasing my Zotero library on that computer, and finally importing the file? Even if so, it seems that it would be simpler if I could simply copy the directories.

Another interesting issue: when I export data from Zotero on a Mac, the file is saved with DOS line endings and cannot be directly imported into EndNotes, I have to resave it w/ Mac line endings in a text editor first.
  • dstillman
    You're right—we stored attachments with relative paths in r1 but switched to persistent descriptors (i.e. absolute paths on Win/Linux; weird encoded strings on OS X) in r2 to fix problems attaching from network drives. We'll change it back to relative paths for snapshots and imported files in the next release to facilitate copying of the Zotero directory.

    Re: line endings, what export format and version of EndNote are you using? I can import RIS files with DOS line endings in 7.0/Mac, though I have to rename the file with a .txt extension first. I didn't write the export code, but the RIS spec does appear to call for CR/LF: http://www.refman.com/support/risformat_fields_02.asp
  • karindalziel
    I'm glad I read this, I was going nuts trying to figure out why I used to be able to sync attached files between my work and home PC and now I can't.

    Another fix would be to allow the user to set their own path in the settings - this way I'd only have to set that once.
  • peterm
    Hi folks: Glad to see my comments were of some help.

    Dan, I'm using Endnote 6.0.2. I believe I was trying to import RIS. Once I convert the line endings in BBEdit to Mac endings, I have no trouble importing. Maybe I just have a hopelessly out of date Endnote.

    Cheers, Peter
  • peterm
    BTW, I did finally find a syncing setup that works between my PC and Mac. I simply export in Zotero's RDF format to a directory that gets copied whenever I rsync files between my PC and Mac and then import it into the Mac's Zotero. Seems to work nicely, though I wonder how long this will take once I have a few thousand entries.

    I have to be careful with this setup, however. The once I tried to import My Library in RDF to a directory on the PC that already has a My Library RDF file, I get a progress dialog in Firefox that I can only get rid of restarting my computer, and when I restarted the system the first time, it bombed (heavy CPU use, but everything was frozen, had to do a hard reboot). Not sure how much of that is Zotero's fault.
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