Export with PDF

kanzure
Hey all,

I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction for improving zotero. I would be willing to write a plugin. Do I have to modify the XPI archive for zotero for the Firefox plugin, or is there some other scheme?

Here's what I want to do. I read many, many papers. I also like to share them with colleagues and other researchers. The problem though is that not necessarily everyone has access to the same papers, so just exporting a bibliography is kind of next to useless. However, with the "automatically download PDF" mode, there's some potential here.

What I would like to do is write an extension, plugin, or otherwise hack away at zotero such that I have an option of selecting either to (1) export 'collections' in libraries in a format that consists of a tar.gz or zip file of both bibliographies and PDF files; (2) selective ability to create archives of that same style by selecting multiple references within a particular collection.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to do this? Any documents in particular that I should read?

Thank you :-)

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
  • ahoward
    If I understand you correctly, you can already do something very close to this.

    Select the items you wish to export in the center column. Right click and select "Export Selected Items..."

    If you export to RDF and select Export Files, all your items, complete with PDFs, will be exported as an RDF file and an accompanying directory containing all the associated files. If you wanted to ZIP or TAR it from there, that's easy enough to do through the OS.

    Or perhaps you mean something different by "bibliographies"? Exporting the formatted citations to a text file is something you can do separately. If you wanted to write a plugin that would automate some of these features, I'm sure it would be quite straight-forward. I'm afraid I'm not involved enough in the technical end of things to point you in the right direction, but if it's clear what you have in mind, I'm sure someone will come along who can.
  • kanzure
    Thank you Andrew. I didn't know about the RDF file export feature. That's exactly what I've been looking for. Now if only I knew how to use the generated RDF files :-). I guess zotero can re-import them, but what about anything else? For instance, if there's an RDF library for perl or python with which I could generate some HTML that links to the PDF file for a certain title too, that would be even better.

    - Bryan
    http://heybryan.org/
  • tbone
    I was also hoping for something like you have mentioned in the first post where the exported PDFs are organised into folders according to collection.
  • mszargar
    The (mis)arrangement of files by Zotero completely unnerves me. Once you enter there is no way you can use your files the way you want. I had never though of becoming captive in an open source platform.
  • adamsmith
    mszargar - what exactly do you want to do with the files that you can't do?
    As this thread describes, exporting pdfs works fine. As multiple other threads describe, using a saved search for pdfs in your OS can easily display them in one folder. Finally, using the Zotfile plugin, you can also get various forms of file organization outside of Zotero's folder structure.
  • mszargar
    Thanks AdamSmith for the comment, but showing PDFs in one folder does not solve the problem in any way, because all the value added comes from the Zotero collection structure that I have created (and I can not export). I need to Export just the PDFs I have saved in Zotero library enclosed in the collection structure I have created in Zotero (exported as folders). This is the only way, for now, I can share my work with colleagues. The number of files is in thousands and folders in hundreds, so, doing it manually is out of question. I have given ZotFile a try, but I don't see how I can export the folder structure.
  • adamsmith
    Zotfile reader should be able to do this
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/18737/zotfile-reader-zotero-plugin-to-work-with-tablet-ipad-android-tablets-etc/
  • mszargar
    I agree that it is "supposed" to, but for some obscure reason it does not. It makes me go through all folders one by one and select the files I need to export manually, one by one. This is exactly what I have been doing for the last three hours, hence my despair. There is no way to select a whole collection, or even all the files in one collection (In the latter case it lets you do so, but it does not export more than one).
  • adamsmith
    post in that thread then, maybe someone can help.
  • Sankarp2
    I'm trying to get the documents in my library out of Zotero and save them instead as pdf's on my computer; my end goal here is to clear out my zotero library so I can downgrade my storage subscription, but I don't want to lose what was in the library.

    I tried what to do what ahoward suggested:
    "Select the items you wish to export in the center column. Right click and select "Export Selected Items..." "
    but what exactly am I supposed to right-click on (ctrl+left click, since I'm on a mac) to get to the Export Selected Items option?
  • adamsmith
    on the items (or collections) you want to export.
  • Sankarp2
    When I right-click on the items I get the usual 'right-click' menu: Open link in a new tab, Bookmark this link, etc. Export is not listed.

    Could I be missing something obvious or crucial here?
  • dstillman
    edited January 25, 2012
    The instructions are referring to the Zotero client. You can't currently export from the web interface, though that's planned (but that wouldn't include files anyway).
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