Can't save PDF to zotero while standalone open

yigit

Thanks for making zotero, first of all! I'm using firefox 43.0.4 on OSX 10.6.8.

I prefer to use zotero standalone, but I really like being able to save articles i encounter while web browsing.

When zotero standalone is closed, with firefox I can click on a pdf and the save dialog allows me to "save to zotero" and there's a checkbox to "retreive PDF metadata."

But when I have standalone open, this option is not present in the firefox save pdf dialog. But this is usually when I most want to save the pdf.

In my addons I have the following zotero addons enabled: Zotero, and Zotero Word for Mac Integration.

adamsmith

that's correct. The embedded Zotero otpion in the save dialog doesn't work with Standalone. I don't believe that's possible.
You can use the save to Zotero icon to save the PDF to Standalone, though, and manually run retrieve metadata there.

dstillman

And perhaps also worth noting that saving PDFs directly, whether or not you use the "Save to Zotero" button, isn't the recommended approach to using Zotero. Sometimes you have no choice, but whenever possible, you should instead save an article page using the "Save to Zotero" button, which will save proper metadata and automatically attach the PDF as long as you have access to it.

yigit

unfortunately there are many situations where you cannot do that because someone is emailing you a PDF or something... so going to search for the article etc, adding the citation, then downloading the pdf, then dragging the pdf into standalone, it's just so many extra steps.

Why can't I just be allowed to add PDF to zotero and download the metadata while standalone is open? What I end up doing each time is quitting standalone, adding the pdf/metada, and then opening standalone again, which is sort of ridiculous.

adamsmith

see my note abote -- you can, just not via the download dialog which can't work with Standalone (since it has to run in Firefox itself), i.e. that's a technical limitation imposed by running standalone.

yigit

Ok, I see that your suggestion would be helpful in some cases adamsmith, thanks.

But how do I save a pdf directly to zotero (edit: without the usual workarounds I have to use) when all I have is a link to the pdf, without special page metadata. for example the zotero button only offers to save the page as a webpage, not the pdf. Then too if i control click on the link to the pdf, there's a zotero menu and a submenu with an option to "Save link as zotero item" but it doesn't work ever, as far as I can see, with standalone either open or shut.

Also what about pdfs emailed to me in gmail? Doesn't seem to be any way to get that to work either.

adamsmith

When a PDF is open in Firefox and you use the save as webpage button, it will save the PDF as such (since there is no webpage to save).

Beyond that, I'm not sure what else to tell you: if you're attached to the PDF handling features as they exist only in the Firefox add-on (i.e. downloading directly via right-click on a link and via the download dialog), you'll have to use the Firefox add-on without Standalone.

yigit

Oh, I see. I never use the pdf viewer thing in firefox, so i'm only confronted with the little save dialog box...

how come right click on link to pdf > 'zotero' > 'save link as zotero item' doesn't work?

Can i make a feature request? also it's a bit opaque that these features don't work as expected.

adamsmith

how come right click on link to pdf > 'zotero' > 'save link as zotero item' doesn't work?

works for me with Standalone closed, both for PDFs and other sites.

Can i make a feature request? also it's a bit opaque that these features don't work as expected.

sorry, not clear what you mean -- they do work as expected best I can tell. They just don't exist (and likely won't) for Standalone.

yigit

Ok, I guess i got it to add pdfs by the contextual menu item when standalone is closed. but then we're back to having to close standalone just to make use of this feature.

I appreciate your time making this clear for me. But for me as a user, I want to use zotero standalone, and I also want to be able to grab PDF things off web pages, links, etc, which is really useful for a citation manager.

From my end as a user it is not expected or logical that having standalone open disables the feature of adding the link as a zotero item, and the ability to open pdfs in zotero and retrieve the metadata.

I don't really understand why this is technically impossible, and I don't understand why standalone exists if it's going to be crippled like that.

Am I not even supposed to be using standalone? What is the intended purpose of it, if I already have the plugins for firefox installed?

adamsmith

the principal purpose of Standalone is to make Zotero usable with other browsers than Firefox, so yes, it's unusual to have standalone open when doing research in Firefox and I don't see any reason why you would (I do have Standalone in case I want to write distraction-free).

Since, as Dan has said, directly importing PDFs is not the principle ways Zotero is designed to be used, few people consider the limitations of connectors "crippling," (you still have any PDF in with 3-4 clicks) but yes, there are a couple of features that don't work with standalone that do work with the Firefox version (which is why that exists).

yigit

ok, crippled is hyperbole. Some pre-citation manager types are always emailing pdfs though. The other features like the zotero button do work with standalone and this had me confused.

I jumped on standalone since having separate programs is nice for switching back and forth and the like, and just not having everything in a web browser.

I'll try doing as you say though, and using standalone only for the distraction free times when I'm not trawling the web for articles.
Thanks!

adamsmith

you may find tab mode or app tab convenient (general tab of the preferences.) Both make Zotero in Firefox look/feel more like a separate application.

dstillman

OK, so there are a bunch of ways to do what you want, and a couple things we can probably do to improve this:

1) You can drag any link from a browser to Standalone. In the case of a PDF, Standalone will save the PDF as a top-level attachment, and you can then run Retrieve Metadata on it.

2) If you were using a browser-based PDF viewer in the browser (the default setting, generally), you could drag the page proxy icon (a.k.a. "favicon") at the left of the address bar to Standalone.

3) When using a browser-based PDF viewer, the "Save to Zotero" button in Firefox doesn't actually work properly for me — it saves a Web Page item and an incorrect HTML attachment (the pdf.js frame, I think). (adamsmith, is that actually working for you?) In Chrome, the save button doesn't appear when viewing a PDF. We might be able to fix both of those things, but this won't help you anyway because you're not using the browser's PDF viewer.

4) The connectors can't modify the save dialog — that's just a feature that won't exist if you're using Standalone. (Technically the current Firefox connector could be made to do it, but the Chrome and Safari connectors certainly can't, and it will likely soon cease to be possible in Firefox as well as Mozilla reduces UI customization options.)

5) In connector mode in Firefox, I don't get "Save Link as Zotero Item" when right-clicking on a link, only "Create Web Page Item from Current Page", which is about the parent page. I get "Save Link as Zotero Item" if Standalone is closed, and that works correctly for me for most PDF links. We might be able to add "Save Link as Zotero Item" functionality to the connectors, though I'm not sure.

6) On newer versions of OS X, you can actually click and hold and then drag the file proxy icon in the title bar of Preview or Acrobat Reader directly to Standalone as well. Not sure that was possible on 10.6, though.

7) You can also of course always just save a PDF to disk and drag it into Standalone, but that shouldn't be necessary.

So, basically, there are a whole bunch of ways you can quickly add PDFs directly into Standalone, even without using functionality of the connector itself.

emdalton

None of these suggestions will work on Firefox on Linux for me, except either 1) saving the PDF, then importing to standalone, or 2) quitting standalone and then saving from Firefox. This seems like very odd UX limitation to me. I am using Zotero standalone for linux v. 4.0.29.10, FF for Linux v. 52.0.1, Zotero FF addon v. 4.0.29.16, Xubuntu 16.04. It's a bit annoying. I prefer to use the standalone Zotero for stability purposes. I have a lot of tabs open in FF and it has memory leaks, so I'd rather not be trying to run a large app in it. I also need to keep my references offline anyway, as I'm not always in range of internet access. I don't understand why the FF plugin can save a pdf to Zotero if standalone is closed, but doesn't work if standalone is running.

I love Zotero and I'll keep using it, but saving PDFs that I find online is one of the main things I use it for, and often I get a direct URL to the PDF, e.g. via Twitter. I tend to check Twitter on an iPad Mini, which doesn't seem to be able to use the bookmarklet, so I end up saving to Evernote, then pulling up the entry later and adding it to Zotero. I'm working on my dissertation proposal and a number of journal and conference submissions right now, and it would help me a lot of my Zotero workflow could be a bit more efficient.

dstillman

@emdalton: Not quite sure what you mean. Dragging any link or the page proxy icon (if you're viewing the PDF in the browser) into Standalone should work from any browser. Zotero has always automatically added PDF URLs dragged to it.

The thing that the full Firefox version (i.e., the version with Standalone closed) could do was actually modify the Firefox open/save dialog. We never implemented that in connector mode in Firefox (i.e., what you get when Standalone is open), and it's now no longer possible in the new Firefox extension architecture, which, like the Chrome and Safari architectures, doesn't support that kind of browser customization. So that's just not a feature we can offer anymore for technical reasons.

For PDFs you're viewing in the browser, the Zotero Connector for Chrome has also supported saving PDFs to Standalone with the save button since March 2016. The new Zotero Connector for Firefox, currently in beta, supports that as well.

Beyond that, at some point we'll likely add the ability to save a PDF link to Standalone from the connectors, but again, you can already just drag the link. And I suppose we could add an option to add a stored attachment from a URL directly in Standalone, but that seems fairly unimportant to me, since most places in the OS where you have access to a URL (e.g., in a Twitter client) you should be able to just drag it to Standalone already.

dstillman

Hmm, actually it looks like link dragging doesn't work properly on Linux for some reason. We'll look into that. In any case, if you're using Firefox with Standalone, you can use the save button in the connector beta.

dstillman

The latest 5.0 beta for Linux (176) fixes dragging in of URLs.

bruce-retrotope

I have a related issue. In WIndows 10, with both Firefox (Zotero plugin installed) and Zotero Standalone open, dragging a link (to a PDF) from Firefox to the Zotero Standalone window causes the PDF to be downloaded into the Zotero database. However, right-click/Zotero/Save Link As Zotero Item does nothing. When Zotero Standalone is closed, the right click menu works normally. I imagine the right-click menu function is not coupled to Zotero Standalone, or gets locked out of the database when Zotero Standalone is open. Not a big deal, once I figured the situation out, but may be worth a note in the instructions (unless I simply overlooked it).

dstillman

@bruce-retrotope, see above:

Beyond that, at some point we'll likely add the ability to save a PDF link to Standalone from the connectors, but again, you can already just drag the link.

When you're using Zotero for Firefox with Standalone closed, that's the full Zotero. When Standalone is open, it's in connector mode, and the connectors don't currently support saving links — PDF or otherwise — via right-click. (It's actually a bug that you even see the option. In fact, if you open Standalone before Firefox instead of the other way around, you won't, and it won't appear at all in the upcoming new dedicated Zotero Connector.)

There's a ticket for adding this. That includes translator-based saving of linked pages, but saving of linked PDFs may be able to happen first.