Zotero and Conkeror

mardukbp

Conkeror is an awesome Mozilla-based keyboard-driven web browser. Unfortunately Google has not been able to help me to figure out how to use Zotero with Conkeror. I have already installed the extension but according to the Conkeror documentation, some glue code is needed in order for some extensions to work. I hope the Mozilla and JS wizards here can help me.

adamsmith

I'm not aware of any attempts to make it work.
After a brief look my guess would be that you're most likely to make this work with the bookmarklet and Zotero Standalone.

mardukbp

That's exactly what I ended up doing. Thank you.

yourwelcome

Hello,
I'm curious if the bookmarklet (plus minor tweaking) can theorectically work with any javascript-enabled webbrowser? In the above discussion, mardukbp reports that it works for the firefox-derivative Conkeror, but what about webkit-type browsers with no connection to Safari, FF, Chrome, and kin, e.g., luakit?

adamsmith

I'm curious if the bookmarklet (plus minor tweaking) can theorectically work with any javascript-enabled webbrowser?

yes. Will likely not even need tweaking. The bookmarklet should really work in any javascript enabled browser, period.

yourwelcome

I also got the bookmarklet working on Conkeror. Is there another javascript that can take the urls of pdfs (instead of a publisher's website with metadata) and pass the pdf to zotero, i.e., reproduce the "save to Zotero" option when you save a pdf using FF and pdf.js?

adamsmith

no. Dragging the URL to Zotero should work for most browsers, but otherwise you need to save to you HD and then drag to Zotero (or use store copy of file).

stud

I would like to use the bookmarklet with Conkeror and standalone, not logging in, on debian wheezy. (And, if this works on Ubuntu 12.04.)
I have standalone running. The bookmarklet starts well with the translator, I can choose the items to save, but then it only offers the possibility to log in. (http://localhost:23119/ gives "No endpoint found". If I'm logged in, the reference is saved online, but that's not what I want.) Any suggestion?

adamsmith

I can't currently, get the Bookmarklet to talk to Standalone at all, regardless of browser and OS.
@aurimas - was there talk of disabling that? do you know if that's just broken? or does it work for you?

aurimas

It's been disabled because Chrome (and presumably other browsers) block http connections from https pages and the bookmarklet iframe is always served over https from zotero.org. The only case where this is not disabled is IE, since we reasoned that this is the most common case for using the bookmarklet on the desktop.

stud

Would it be too much to ask for a similar exception for Conkeror? Or to make it a user choice some way?

stud

Is there any way to cheat the bookmarklet into believing that my browser is IE? I tried to change the user agent, but that doesn't work. So, how is the browser determined?

aurimas

Not without potentially breaking a lot of other stuff. https://github.com/zotero/zotero-connectors/blob/master/src/common/zotero.js#L32

I don't think there's going to be much interest in making this work in select browsers implicitly, but I can maybe see a way to configure this using cookies for advanced users.

In the next major Zotero release, Zotero will be switching to API-based syncing, which is currently introducing a push protocol. That means that changes to your library on zotero.org will be detected and synced to your local Zotero library almost instantaneously. That should address your concern above.

stud

It would be great if one could configure this using cookies!

Will the push protocol make possible one way synchronization? (Only having items added from zotero.org to my local zotero but nothing the other way around?)

aurimas

Will the push protocol make possible one way synchronization? (Only having items added from zotero.org to my local zotero but nothing the other way around?)

Probably no. Though I don't have definitive answers to anything related to new sync architecture. Are you concerned about file attachments (e.g. syncing file attachments via WebDAV) or something else? There are certainly cases where it would be great to use Zotero Standalone with Bookmarklet, but we don't have a solution at this point that would work for everyone.

stud

So, I will hope for the cookies solution. What is the best way to keep updated on when/whether this is implemented?

aurimas

We'll post back here (though note that you will only receive one email update from zotero.org unless you come and view the message on the website). I'm not sure if a cookie preference will actually happen, but we'll come up with something.

yourwelcome

Just a little bump to this thread. I'm also a conkeror+standalone user, so I'm hoping for a fix. I await your cookies solution.
Also, the bookmarklet is the only reliable way to get papers into zotero while browsing on an android. So, I think its a bigger priority than just conkeror users. Apps like Zandy, Zed, etc., are not useful for uploading journal-citations into zotero from a tablet.

dstillman

I'm not sure what cookies preference Aurimas had in mind. As I understand it, the issue here is just that modern browsers block HTTPS->HTTP requests, so saving directly to Standalone from the bookmarklet just isn't going to work. It was disabled in non-IE browsers because it was broken, so there was no point in having it check on each save. The only reason it wasn't disabled in IE was that older IE versions didn't have the same security restriction.

Also, the bookmarklet is the only reliable way to get papers into zotero while browsing on an android.

To be clear, this has nothing to do with saving from non-desktop browsers.

adamsmith

To re-iterate Dan's last point: the Bookmarklet should work on _any_ browser (afaik including Conkeror). It will just save to the server, not to Zotero Standalone.

dstillman

Thinking about this some more, there might actually be a hacky workaround that we could implement here to restore direct bookmarklet-to-Zotero-client saving, but for technical reasons it couldn't happen until Zotero switches to a new architecture, which is probably a year or so off.

yourwelcome

I get it now. The bookmarklet can only pass pdfs through the Zotero Server, not my 3rd party WebDav. I read so much on an Android tablet that I will just buy some zotero server space. I got a free ride long enough it seems.
Still hoping for a hack for the sake of conkeror :)