Annotation round trip with file formats other than PDF (ZotFile...)

bjohas

Hello all,

I was wondering whether there are other file formats that have similarly high integration as PDF in terms of the "annotation round trip", i.e. store in Zotero, open in (e.g.) Acrobat, annotate, extract annotations.

Clearly Word files (or ODT) would allow opening from Zotero (and saving back), but is there a way to automatically extract certain markup?

Similarly for ePub (see also https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/297784, https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/284843#Comment_284843): Is there a way of annotating ePub, and extracting the annotations back into a note? Clearly some eBook readers allow annotation, but those may or may not be stored in the actual ePub file, and thus may or may not be available for extraction.

Bjoern

adamsmith

I'm afraid not, no. I'm not sure what would be feasible given the current state of available open libraries, but I can say definitely that nothing has been done.

bwiernik

During the period that Zotfile and Zotero were initially developed, only PDF had good open source text and annotation reading tools. Since then, ePub and other formats have had tools developed. The Zotfile developer doesn’t have the time or resources to add support for other formats himself, but would accept contributions from the community. I’m not sure where adding full-text indexing support for other formats is on Zotero’s development priority list.

bjohas

I wonder whether it might be an idea to try to fundraise, to fast-track some ideas? Maybe if one had a little bit of money for bounties, it could stimulate more development? Or, if we can get more funding, perhaps employ somebody working together with the existing developer team?

sdspieg

What amount of funding are we talking about here (ballpark)? Because if the developer is indeed open to incentivization, there are probably a few other functionalities that could be added. I'm especially thinking about some simple manual QDA-stuff, where we could not just highlight and annotate excerpts from pdfs, ebooks, etc., but also assign (multi-level) codes to them, that could then be exported for analysis into spreadsheets, etc. Think sthg like RQDA, for instance. Also see this discussion. 

adamsmith

I'd be very suprised if Joscha, ZotFile's developer, who is one of the world's most successful early-career sociologists (check out his completely insane publication record: http://jlegewie.com/), were available for regular development tasks. Obviously other people could work on ZotFile, though, but I wouldn't know of anyone ready to jump on this who is working in the Zotero universe in general.

I haven't forgotten about the Hypothesis idea. They've recently added epub support.

sdspieg

I haven't forgotten about the Hypothesis idea. They've recently added epub support

You must be reading my mind :) I was just looking for a way to annotate my ebooks, and asking Kovid about it! But so for those of you who want to find out more - check here.

bjohas

Thanks for the posts - very interesting. Is there a "wish list" somewhere? We could have some community discussion around new features, and then see what's on the roadmap, and what needs more funding? I'll start a new thread with this as well (https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/70726/wish-list).