link to PDF annotation disappears (see note for conditions)

erazlogo

After I create "Note from annotations" I occasionally do something else in Zotero before exporting that note into Markdown. In several cases, the link to the annotation disappears while I'm doing something else and when I export the note, I only get the link to the PDF.

I finally was able to reproduce this reliably: I created a "note from annotations," then checked the link to the annotation--it was there. Then I switched to item fields and edited the date of the item. Switched back--the link was no longer there.

ID: D1260770083

Now it is possible that this happens in other conditions also (i.e. when I close and reopen Zotero), but I only was able to reproduce the error reliably in this case.

martynas_b

The custom note template is interfering here. Highlights must have quotation marks to remain active.

erazlogo

Highlights must have quotation marks to remain active.

Why?

martynas_b

For technical reasons. But we might reconsider that in future.

Why you don't want quotation marks?

erazlogo

I save quotes separately from my own comments in Obsidian, so I don't need quotation marks. I know of others who prefer to save comments as blockquotes which is enough of a distinction so those people don't need quotation marks either.

If you can get around this technically, I recommend coding for both quotes and no-quotes options. Right now, you have the notes templates option which breaks down in a way that is not explained anywhere in the documentation.

But please don't abolish the customizable notes templates. I am so grateful for them. Otherwise, I'd have to delete quotation marks manually every time.

dstillman

I know of others who prefer to save comments as blockquotes which is enough of a distinction so those people don't need quotation marks either.

Do you mean highlights as blockquotes? We support that. We just don't support highlights in paragraphs without quotation marks, in part because we don't really want to encourage saving quotations without either quotation marks or blockquotes — something to indicate that it's a quotation.

It's not even clear how this would work on a practical level — the quotation marks function as delimiters for the quotation, so it can survive edits. If there were no quotation marks, there would be no way to reliably edit it. The only possibility might be to always show a background color or underline, regardless of the annotation-colors setting, so that it was clear where the annotation started and stopped, but I don't really see us implementing that just to support some rarely used custom note template formats.

Best as I can tell, the sorts of workflows that omit quotes are mainly for people using tools like Obsidian where the annotations end up as discrete objects, in which case it would seem to make sense for an Obsidian integration plugin to pull the annotations directly — with some template system of its own — rather than going through the Zotero note system at all.

erazlogo

Best as I can tell, the sorts of workflows that omit quotes are mainly for people using tools like Obsidian where the annotations end up as discrete objects, in which case it would seem to make sense for an Obsidian integration plugin to pull the annotations directly — with some template system of its own — rather than going through the Zotero note system at all.

Yes, that would be ideal, and as far as I know this is coming eventually.

I've only used "Make a note from annotation" as an intermediate step for exporting to Obsidian, so you may be right that for working in Zotero quotation marks are best.

I did mean comments as blockquotes. The point is to distinguish between quotations and your own comments, and leaving quotations as regular text with comments as blockquotes accomplishes that goal as well as the reverse. Why not that?

You should also consider that people may not use the exact highlights as quotations in writing--they may want to use part of a quotation, or a paraphrase down the road. I am not sure that your restrictions will make sense in that scenario.

I don't really see us implementing that just to support some rarely used custom note template formats.

My point was not about "rarely used" templates (how would you even know that, did you do a survey?). You have a feature--link to the annotation disappearing for no apparent reason--that is not documented on the page where you explain how to create note templates. The page implies that quotation marks for highlights are optional, when they are really not. Zotero documentation should explain this.

dstillman

I did mean comments as blockquotes. The point is to distinguish between quotations and your own comments, and leaving quotations as regular text with comments as blockquotes accomplishes that goal as well as the reverse. Why not that?

Because in one case the quotation is in an element designed for quoting and in the other the quotation is in regular body text without any indication that it's not the user's own writing, and we think it's dangerous to support that.

You should also consider that people may not use the exact highlights as quotations in writing--they may want to use part of a quotation, or a paraphrase down the road.

Using part of the quotation is fine, and that's where the quotation marks come in — Zotero and the user can know what's still the quotation even as it's edited. For paraphrasing, that's kind of the whole point — it should be clear as people are working what's the exact quotation, rather than encouraging dangerous, questionable editing of quoted text.

But again, it's not even clear how this would work on a practical level within Zotero, and if you're using these quotes in some other system (e.g., Obsidian) where you have another way of identifying these, you should ask the plugin author to pull annotations directly and offer a way to categorize them appropriately as discrete entities.

The page implies that quotation marks for highlights are optional, when they are really not. Zotero documentation should explain this.

I mean, they're optional — they just don't function as annotations without them if they're not placed in blockquotes, and as I've explained, it's not clear how they even could. But I've added a note to the documentation to clarify this.

We may also change the default {{highlight}} to include quotes when not placed in a blockquote, so you'd have to use {{highlight quotes='false'}} to explicitly remove quotes somewhere else.

erazlogo

Well, the plugin I use (Zotero Integration) now exports annotations directly, so my problem is solved. Thanks for the explanation--I look forward to seeing how Zotero notetaking/writing setup will work when it's completed.