Don't modify date when renaming attachments

mark
I'm syncing my storage folder externally and I find that files are being transferred even for renames. This is cumbersome, especially since I have lots of large (5 - 50 Mb) PDFs. It is caused by the fact that Zotero not only renames the file, but also modifies the date when doing a 'Rename File from Parent Metadata'. Is there a reason behind this, or can it be modified such that only the filename is affected?
  • dstillman
    It's not quite so simple, unfortunately. For WebDAV syncing, Zotero transfers ZIP files, which avoids a whole range of issues. The ZIP file on the WebDAV server contains the old name until overwritten, and, even if we added some logic to propagate the renaming operation to other synced machines without re-uploading, new machines that pulled everything down would get the new metadata but find a ZIP with the old filename, which it would have no record of. One solution would be to automatically change the filename of a single file within a ZIP on download if it didn't match the metadata name, which would let us skip the upload when renaming PDFs and other single files. This won't work for snapshots, but those are generally smaller anyway.

    There will be another file sync option in Beta 7 for which this won't be an issue.
  • mark
    I should've mentioned, but I don't use the storage sync option of Zotero for the moment — what I meant by 'syncing externally' is that I keep my storage folders in sync using SyncToy.

    Looking forward to Beta 7 then!

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