PDF plugin for mac intel

julou

Hello,

Not really sure if I should post this here or in feature request…
It sounds like Zotero has been developped by people taking to macintosh and unix compatibility… And there comes my point:

How do you deal with pdf files on a macintel??? Are you running Firefox through Rosetta to keep compatibility with PDF plugin?
Are you opening it in another software?

By the way, do you know if FF team is planning to provide better support for pdf file with FF3? or if any open source dev team is working on such a plugin?

Thank you for your help and comments,

Thomas

jimdelaney

This really is an important issue for those of us on the Mac. The inability to view PDFs within Firefox in essence shoots Zotero's designed workflow to pieces. I use a Mac at home and Linux at my office, and much prefer using Zotero on the latter. That said, this is not really something that the developers can fix on their own, and speaks to the drawbacks (which likely do not outweigh the benefits) of building on somebody else's platform.

I do hope that somebody designs an OSX PDF plugin for FF3 when it comes out (but am not holding my breath). Also hoping for some performance enhancements in the FF3 Sqlite database, as comprehensive exams really seem to have gobbed Zotero down a bit.

ben m

This situation is hard to believe. You can get Firefox plugins for about fifty different video, audio, script, game, etc., formats, but not for the single most common document format in the world. This is over two years since the Intel macs were introduced, a year and a half since the last PowerPC macs were sold, and---what, eight years since OSX was introduced?

I was running Schubert|It's plugin under Rosetta, but even this seems to have died with the latest Firefox patch.

Does anyone know, even, where to submit feature requests/complaints to the Firefox developers?

Given that so many academics use Macs, and the natural PDF/browser/Zotero relationship is completely broken on this platform ... is there any possibility to make Zotero into a *Safari* add-on?

dstillman

Does anyone know, even, where to submit feature requests/complaints to the Firefox developers?

Unfortunately it's Adobe's problem, not Mozilla's. But yes, it is pretty remarkable.

is there any possibility to make Zotero into a *Safari* add-on?

There is not.

bdarcus

Unfortunately it's Adobe's problem, not Mozilla's.

Yes, though it'd be nice to have Mozilla offer native PDF rendering; can't imagine it'd be that hard given their use of the Quartz-like Cairo as the rendering library.

dstillman

it'd be nice to have Mozilla offer native PDF rendering

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91559
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=344620

Latter seems more likely to happen.

CB

jmdelane:

The inability to view PDFs within Firefox in essence shoots Zotero's designed workflow to pieces

As a bit of an aside, why do you say this? I've always insisted on FF using an external reader to open pdfs, as using a pdf reader plugin just clutters the screen up with another layer of toolbars etc. Am I missing some benefit of using a plugin?

jimdelaney

I really like to be able to read a PDF within the browser and take notes in the Zotero pane below, which I assume the way that it is designed to work. Incidentally, these problems have inspired me to dig out an old Toshiba laptop out of my closet, throw Ubuntu on it, and use it as my primary office computer. One drawback: no annotations of PDFs available. Almost makes me want to switch to Windows...

CB

jmdelane: right, I see. That's not the way I work, so it didn't occur to me. Another problem with the plugin for me is that I find it *much* slower to search for text in PDFs than the standalone acroread.

I'm a full-time Ubuntu user and also find the lack of ability to annotate pdfs a pest (Foxit Reader always dumps core). It is on the evince wishlist, but I wouldn't hold my breath. What do you use to do this on Windows?

dstillman

I really like to be able to read a PDF within the browser and take notes in the Zotero pane below, which I assume the way that it is designed to work

If this is mostly just an issue of window visibility, for OS X I'd recommend WindowShade X, which (among other things) lets you make any window stay on top using a keyboard shortcut. So, for example, you can open a PDF in Preview or Acrobat Reader and keep it on top of the Firefox window (or, conversely, open a Zotero note in a separate window and keep that on top). There's a Leopard-compatible beta version on the blog.

noksagt

I really like to be able to read a PDF within the browser and take notes in the Zotero pane below....throw Ubuntu on it

Right-click on the titlebar of your PDF viewer & select "always on top."

One drawback: no annotations of PDFs available.

apt-get flpsed (or pdffedit or jarnal or multivalent or xournal or any of the numerous other pdf tools available).

CB

noksagt: this is a bit off-topic for Zotero, but as we're already there: a year or so ago I tried every pdf annotator I could find for linux, and found none of them much use for my purposes. They all had drawbacks such as: only making annotations as a related graphic, having to convert to ps first, only storing annotations on a remote server, horribly clumsy and slow UI, etc. Foxit on Windows is close to being the kind of thing I would want: fast and a simple unfussy UI. Have you come across anything similar for linux?

noksagt

If your PDF has commenting enabled, you can use acroread (I often use this when corresponding with publishers & coauthors).

flpsed does require a conversion to and from PS, but this is now built in & I don't find it to be too slow. I use it out of habit

I think that pdfedit is good & requires no conversion, but may offer too much if you only want to annotate (as you may accidentally make changes to the underlining PDF).

Foxit is available natively for Linux & the windows version works under wine. I haven't really used these later two, though.

You can play with various versions of these (e.g. you may want to run flpsed or pdfedit that is newer than what your distro offers, I'd run the latest acroread; you may want to try older versions of Foxit if you are getting core dumps)

CB

Thanks noksagt -- I'll have another look around with your suggestions in mind.

jimdelaney

Dan - Thanks for pointing me to Windowshade. It will be useful, I think. I'm also looking forward to Zotero eventually being able to undock from firefox, which will ease note-taking while working with other applications.

ProfJoni

On the Zotero / PDF plug-in issue, there really is a big drawback. The library at GMU (home of Zotero!) is "stocking" more and more books via eLibrary (a wonderful resource) but without native PDF reading within Firefox, I can only read te eBooks through Safari, but only use Zotero through Firefox. So there's much cutting and pasting and switching through windows. I understand that this is probably not solvable via Zotero, but we're missing an important ad growing resource here, so hopefully someone will come up with a workaround.

Does this work well in Windows? I haven't yet installed it on my MacBook, but I may give in to the dark side and do so if it really does work better.

peter gallagher

Finally... There's a solution. I'm using it now.

Here: http://code.google.com/p/firefox-mac-pdf/

julou

Fianlly, somebody coded it! Great! :-)

Thanks for the link,

Thomas

tahitoe

Mr. Gallagher,

you are a saint. Thanks dude! Is there anything else that we mac-user need to add-on to get the full Zotero experience?

tahitoe

Oh no,

I can open my PDF in my firefox now. However, I cannot make annotations to it the way we annotate HTML in Zotero. Can somebody tell me why? Thanks

dstillman

I can open my PDF in my firefox now. However, I cannot make annotations to it the way we annotate HTML in Zotero. Can somebody tell me why

See http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/987/can-i-annotate-my-pdf-snapshots/ and many other threads.