Upgrade StorageOption to attach CONTENT of arbitrary URL?
First, thanks for great work on this project.
Suppose I am trying to add the thesis at http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/2005/abstracts/05-193.html to my Zotero library. I visit the page and click Save to Zotero. A new item is created. The “translator” does not do a good job and I fix most of the fields by hand, but that’s not especially surprising in light of the source. However, what I then want to do is attach a copy of the full-text PDF, and have it be stored and managed by Zotero just like when I add a paper from a digital library or publisher’s page where Zotero knows where to find the full-text PDF URL.
As a human, I can easily see which link has the full text, right-click, and Copy Link Location. Then in Zotero, I can right-click on the item and in the Add Attachment menu, I have the following options:
-Attach snapshot of current page (but there’s already one attached; this doesn’t seem useful).
-Attach link to current page (but there’s already a snapshot and the contents of the URL field; this doesn’t seem useful).
-Attach link to URI (so this lets me attach a link to an arbitrary URI, which makes the resource subject to link rot and not able to store in-PDF annotations; this isn’t what I’m looking for).
-Attach stored copy of file (which might apply to a file already on my computer, but the file I want to attach is still on the Internet; this isn’t quite what I’m looking for).
-Attach link to file (Again, this seems to apply just to files already on my computer; this isn’t what I’m looking for).
If I go back to the Web page and click the link, I get Firefox’s dialog asking if I want to save the file or open it with an external PDF viewer. If I middle-click, I get a new blank tab with that dialogue, but trying to Attach Snapshot of Current Page from here produces a snapshot of “blank.html” rather than storing the full text.
The workaround seems to be to download the full-text version without Zotero and then Attach Stored Copy of File, but if I do that and then open/edit the full-text PDF, it’s not clear where those changes will wind up. I don’t want to spend hours reading and annotating and then lose that work because the file was stored in Temporary Internet Files or something like that; I know this kind of thing is not adequately prevented in Zotero (and had that message reinforced when I had to re-compose this whole post after the page refreshed for some reason, because there’s no sense of auto-saving drafts on these forums).
Another workaround is when I click the link to download the file, there's a Save to Zotero option, but this creates a loose PDF that is not associated with its "parent," nor is there any easy way to get both that PDF (which has a filename that there is no field for in the Thesis item) and the Thesis item close to each other in the same filtered view of My Library, unless I create a temporary folder with both items, or temporarily change the field content of e.g. the item title, to match the filename. Those are not user-friendly workarounds.
Could there be a new option in Add Attachment which is Attach Snapshot of URI or something like that?
Suppose I am trying to add the thesis at http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/2005/abstracts/05-193.html to my Zotero library. I visit the page and click Save to Zotero. A new item is created. The “translator” does not do a good job and I fix most of the fields by hand, but that’s not especially surprising in light of the source. However, what I then want to do is attach a copy of the full-text PDF, and have it be stored and managed by Zotero just like when I add a paper from a digital library or publisher’s page where Zotero knows where to find the full-text PDF URL.
As a human, I can easily see which link has the full text, right-click, and Copy Link Location. Then in Zotero, I can right-click on the item and in the Add Attachment menu, I have the following options:
-Attach snapshot of current page (but there’s already one attached; this doesn’t seem useful).
-Attach link to current page (but there’s already a snapshot and the contents of the URL field; this doesn’t seem useful).
-Attach link to URI (so this lets me attach a link to an arbitrary URI, which makes the resource subject to link rot and not able to store in-PDF annotations; this isn’t what I’m looking for).
-Attach stored copy of file (which might apply to a file already on my computer, but the file I want to attach is still on the Internet; this isn’t quite what I’m looking for).
-Attach link to file (Again, this seems to apply just to files already on my computer; this isn’t what I’m looking for).
If I go back to the Web page and click the link, I get Firefox’s dialog asking if I want to save the file or open it with an external PDF viewer. If I middle-click, I get a new blank tab with that dialogue, but trying to Attach Snapshot of Current Page from here produces a snapshot of “blank.html” rather than storing the full text.
The workaround seems to be to download the full-text version without Zotero and then Attach Stored Copy of File, but if I do that and then open/edit the full-text PDF, it’s not clear where those changes will wind up. I don’t want to spend hours reading and annotating and then lose that work because the file was stored in Temporary Internet Files or something like that; I know this kind of thing is not adequately prevented in Zotero (and had that message reinforced when I had to re-compose this whole post after the page refreshed for some reason, because there’s no sense of auto-saving drafts on these forums).
Another workaround is when I click the link to download the file, there's a Save to Zotero option, but this creates a loose PDF that is not associated with its "parent," nor is there any easy way to get both that PDF (which has a filename that there is no field for in the Thesis item) and the Thesis item close to each other in the same filtered view of My Library, unless I create a temporary folder with both items, or temporarily change the field content of e.g. the item title, to match the filename. Those are not user-friendly workarounds.
Could there be a new option in Add Attachment which is Attach Snapshot of URI or something like that?
Also, with default Firefox settings, if you click on the PDF linked to the page you provide above, it will open in Firefox, not an external viewer. You can then do Add Attachment --> Add Snapshot of Current Page to attach it. You can adjust file handling in the Firefox preferences.
You can also use Zotfile to specify a download folder and then click to attach the most recently downloaded file to your item (that's under Manage Attachments, I believe).
In other words, there are plenty of options of doing what you want. Problem with adding more option is that the attachment options are already rather many, I think a 5th one would not be a good idea.