Workflow question: export bibliographic data & notes per file, add as attachment to pdf

barto1

PDFs can have attachments and there are a couple of command line tools that can add attachments to pdf files.

I'd like to export the bibliographic data as a bibtex bib-file, as well as any notes as a txt file separately for each pdf in zotero.

At the end, I want zotero to add these two files to the respective pdf (e.g. by using an external tool like pdftk).

(another extension would be to tell Zotero to look for attachment for pdfs it is about to import. If there is a bib file with only one entry, ask the user if the file should be used as reference for the pdf. And if there is a txt file, import it as notes.)

I know that Zotero doesn't do this as of now. But would it be very difficult to implement this function?

Is anybody else interested in this?

bwiernik

I’m not familiar with attachments to PDF files. Where are you getting such files from? A publisher website? Are you making them yourself? Or somewhere else? I can recommend a good workflow, but need some more information on the sources.

adamsmith

The idea is essentially to attach notes&metadata to the PDF -- it's an interesting, if non-standard idea. The PDF standard allows for attaching all types of files within a PDF -- you can attach PDF files to PDF files, even. I have no good idea on workflow, I'm afraid. This would be one of those places where an improved commandline API with Zotero would really be nice (which is generally planned, but don't think going to happen super soon).

barto1

@adamsmith:

exactly. It would have a large number of advantages. Suppose you're sharing a couple of papers with colleagues in a research group: You've already extracted the metadata for them, reviewed them, added some notes.

Now, not everybody is connected to the same zotero server and not everybody is even using zotero.

If "pdf+attachments(metadata&notes" could become a kind of format that is also recognized by other bibliography managers, people could automatically import the papers into their own system.

But even if this doesn't become a format of its own, you could always extract the attachments manually and import the bibtex-file as well as the notes into your own program.

> . This would be one of those places where an improved commandline API with Zotero would really be nice (which is generally planned, but don't think going to happen super soon).

is there a way to keep track on the development of the commandline API or contribute to it?

adamsmith

is there a way to keep track on the development of the commandline API or contribute to it

I don't know -- @dstillman would have to say.