Can I tell Zotfile to rename PDF files not using any hispanic characters?

llinfeng

My digital reader is really limited at handling hispanic characters: papers saved with a single character, say "é" should fail the system. While it is super nice for Zotfile to name the PDF files sincerely, I am very reluctant to "simplify" author's name to address this renaming problem. However, in order to keep the PDF entries synced to the Zotero hyperlinks (in the library, where PDF is a subnode to an item), it is not efficient, if ever possible, to rename the PDF files all by themselves.

Is there a setting that can I turn on, to restrict the character-sets used when renaming the PDF files through Zotfile? An example would be:
* From: Bramoullé_Kranton_2007_Public goods in networks
* To: Bramoulle_Kranton_2007_Public goods in networks
Enforcing such restriction will solve my multi-folds synchronization problem: from Zotero entry, to local PDF file, and finally, to the digital reader. [And, this very restrictive digital reader is SONY DPT-RP1. Their software team is not at all responsive.]

Thank you!

All the best,

-Linfeng

bwiernik

At this time, no, it is not possible to have Zotfile remove special characters.

adamsmith

Since we're talking a limited number of special characters- (6, if you're just looking at Spanish) - I think it actually should be possible to handle that using replace in a ZotFile Wildcard: http://zotfile.com/#user-defined-wildcards -- but this is admittedly a bit techy if you've never done something like that.

steffeno

Could somebody please give an example how one can replace the German Umlauts in the PDF file names with the user-defined Wildcards in zotfile?

What I want is this:
ä->ae, ö->oe, ü->ue

Unfortunatly, the option 'remove special Character' does not do the trick but this:
ä->a, ö->o, ü->u

dcsw2

On a similar note to the above, is there a way to have Zotfile strip out commas from PDF filenames, for the same reason that commas in filenames cause syncing to fail.

I can't see the safest way to go about this using regex. Any suggestions anybody?

qqbb

@dcsw2 You could check if this user wildcard does what you want:

Set extensions.zotfile.wildcards.user to this value:
{"1": {"field": "titleFormated", "operations":[{"function": "replace", "regex": "[,]", "replacement":""}]}}
in the Config Editor and use the wildcard %1 in Zotfile's renaming scheme.

You can find more examples here: https://github.com/jlegewie/zotfile/issues/455.
(Some of the documentation on the Zotfile website might be outdated.)

leonryrko

@steffeno You could use
{
"1": {
"default": {
"field": "author",
"operations": [
{
"function": "replace",
"regex": "[ä]",
"replacement": "ae"
},
{
"function": "replace",
"regex": "[ö]",
"replacement": "oe"
},
{
"function": "replace",
"regex": "[ü]",
"replacement": "ue"
}
]
}
}
}

to replace the Umlauts in the author names. Adapt the code for other fields, if needed.

rdiaz02

@qqbb Thanks a lot, it works great! (I am not @dcsw2, but I found your answer when searching for how to remove commas from filenames.)

swang251

It is possible with ZotFile
ZotFile Preferences --> Advanced Settings --> Remove special characters (diacritics) from filename.