32-bit executable files in Zotero 5.0 for Mac

jpcirrus

I see that in Zotero 5.0.81 for Mac that the 2 files ~/'Library/Application Support/Zotero/'{pdfinfo-MacIntel,pdftotext-MacIntel} are both still 32-bit. I was wondering what the implications of this are that macOS Catalina will not run 32-bit executables and if they should not be compiled as 64-bit?

dstillman

The Zotero application bundle includes 64-bit versions of those executables that work on Catalina.

~/'Library/Application Support/Zotero/'{pdfinfo-MacIntel,pdftotext-MacIntel}

This isn't a path where Zotero has ever installed those files.

If you've been using Zotero for a while, there would still be older executable files in the Zotero data directory, and if for some reason Zotero 5 was unable to migrate your data directory, it could still be located at ~/Library/Application Support/Zotero/Profiles/[random].default/zotero. If that's the case, you should move that to ~/Zotero (capitalized). (Zotero would only not have migrated that in rare situations — you had multiple data directories, you already had something at ~/Zotero, security software prevented it from moving the directory, the old data directory was symlinked or on external drive…)

If you're actually seeing these files at the path you gave, you likely moved them there yourself manually and should delete them.

Old executables in the active data directory will be deleted automatically in a future version, but there's no harm in deleting them manually if you want to.

jpcirrus

Thanks for the clarification. Yes, I have been using Zotero since 2016 and that was the date on those files (now deleted together with some other detritus). The reason they were there is that after the migration to Zotero 5.0, I changed the Zotero Data Directory, after manually moving the directory with Zotero closed, to the above path to keep it all self contained and not to make ~/ too busy. The only query I have about what remains is a directory called ExtractPDFAnnotations which contains files from 2011. I was wondering if that was from Zotero (so can be removed) or possibly from the Zotfile extension? Many thanks for your help.

dstillman

ExtractPDFAnnotations

That's from ZotFile. I don't know if it's still used.

I changed the Zotero Data Directory, after manually moving the directory with Zotero closed, to the above path to keep it all self contained and not to make ~/ too busy.

Note that we moved the data directory out of Application Support specifically because of problems when it's located there. PDFs within Application Support aren't indexed for Spotlight, and Preview in Sierra stopped allowing saves back to files within Application Support. And since the Documents directory is often synced in iCloud, which could risk corrupting the database, we use ~/Zotero, similar to Dropbox, Google Drive, Adobe, etc.

jpcirrus

I am using Zotfile to manage my PDFs in a sub-directory of ~/Documents (synced with Dropbox). I don't use Preview and don't use iCloud for document storage, and Zotero has been working well since the migration, so am comfortable. I wasn't aware of the reasoning behind the decision to use ~/Zotero, so thanks for the explanation and am now aware of the implications, and possible consequences, of my decision