dragging a file attached to an email

dda-gre

Hi there,

Am I dreaming, or has it once been possible to copy a file (tyipcally a pdf) into zotero just by draging from an open email where it is seen as an attachement into the zotero panel ?

I'm pretty sure I remember using that feature when I first installed zotero 2.0 beta version 2 years ago, and demonstrating it to colleagues to show them how much zotero was easier to use than endnote.

It seemed to stop working at some point, but as my windows computer was getting really cluttered at that time, I blamed it on Bill's boys.

now I'm reinstalling everything on a brand new mac, and it looks like it wasn't bill's boys fault after all...

and I just dreamed of this feature, how much would other peolpe be interested in its existence ?

dda

ajlyon

This would be possible, but it would depend on the mail client. I doubt this ever worked with something Gmail, but it probably should work with Outlook, Thunderbird and other desktop mail software. It mainly depends on the other piece of software,not on Zotero-- it'll work if the other piece of software announces to the operating system that the thing being dragged is a PDF with a particular location that Zotero can access.

dda-gre

hum...

I currently use thunderbird. and always hav for the last few years.
version 3.1.11 on my new OSX, and 2.0 on my old Windows XP
I don't think I had an even older version of thunderbird when I first installed zotero.

so either thunderbird changed along the way, or I have been dreaming.

now that I think about it, is there any possibility that this could be addressed through a thunderbird extension ?

dda

ajlyon

First, check two things. Can you drag-and-drop PDFs from Thunderbird to the desktop? Can you drag-and-drop PDFs from the desktop into Zotero? If you can do both of these things, then it should be possible to drag-and-drop into Zotero from Thunderbird.

dstillman

If you can do both of these things, then it should be possible to drag-and-drop into Zotero from Thunderbird.

You can, but that's not an accurate conclusion, I'm afraid. When you drag to the desktop, Thunderbird itself likely handles the saving. In Zotero we have access only to the data that Thunderbird passes, and from a quick check it looks like all we get is a text/x-moz-url, and an empty one at that. Even if it weren't empty, we probably wouldn't be able to get files from it without some sort of inter-process communication to get the files out of the mbox and into a temporary directory. A Thunderbird extension might be able to make this possible (via some sort of hack that saved all dragged files to a temporary directory at the start of the drag, made references to those files available in the drag data, and removed the files after the drag was done), but Zotero can't do it on its own.

Dragging isn't Thunderbird's strength in general. I'd be surprised if you could drag to anything other than the filesystem, and even things like dragging multiple attachments doesn't work as you expect—only one item gets dragged.

ajlyon

Ouch. I suppose I imagined inter-application dragging was as loosely coupled as dragging in HTML5 (itself not the easiest thing in the world).

But perhaps this would work with Outlook? Or some other program that handled its drags differently?

dda-gre

Well, it really looks like I just dreamed it, then...

thanks

dda

chestnut7

I can only echo my interest in dragging PDF attachments from Outlook to Zotero. I have tried both with the Firefox plugin and the standalone version and it does not work. It would be very useful as it represents about 60% of the use i make of Zotero. It is inconvenient to have to save a temporary file.
Thanks,