Why don't you just use 'custom location' under general settings to put all pdfs into your tablet folder so that you don't even have to deal with sending files to the tablet etc.?

Update is pretty much what 'send' does when the attachment already is on the tablet (except the extraction but that can be changed easily)...

A modified tag is probably what I am going to do to easily access modified attachments. I just would like to somehow automatically update this tag.

When you modify the code to keep an original copy of the file in foreground mode, I suggest that you connect it to the tablet.storeCopyOfFile option, which currently doesn't do anything in foreground mode.

One bug report and one suggestion:

Bug report: When I close all FF windows and open one again (without quitting FF), Zotfile context menu from the list pane (e.g. Rename Attachment) has 'warning' above it and doesn't work. It recovers only when I restart FF. I'm on FF 10.0, OSX 10.7.2, but it happened with FF 8, too.

Suggestion: I hope ZotFile could automatically rename the PDFs at the time they are attached: for example, when we save items with 'Preferences -- General -- Automatically attach associated PDFs..' option on.

The suggestion is what you saw on the mail. I'm posting just to share it with everyone. Thank you again for the great plugin!

For Standalone users, Zotero 3.0.1 currently does not update zotfile automatically. 3.0.2 will solve this problem but for the time being, I recommend that Standalone users update to zotfile 2.0 manually.

afabl, Zotero does not allow any linked attachments for group library items simply because the link is only valid on your computer (you also can not create the manually). So zotfile also can not add a linked attachments to a group library item - it's just not possible in zotero...

Star7, just go to 'zotfile preference'->'adv. settings' and press the button to add the search again...

Very excited about the annotation extraction feature. That being said, I can't get it to work.

I've tried a number of different files highlighted with ezPdf Reader on Android, or Foxit under Windows/Linux(wine) and when I click on extract annotations in Zotero I get the same result - the progress bar reaches a certain point and then just sits there. I have to escape out of the process to end it and no result are produced. The only relevant error I can seem to find is:

[JavaScript Error: "zitem.getType is not a function" {file: "chrome://zotfile/content/zotfile.js" line: 535}]

First, thanks for this awesome plugin! I have a question and a couple of suggestions for new features.

Question:
I am enjoying the annotation extractions feature, but I wondered if there was a size limit to pdfs from which annotations can be extracted? It works fine for articles, but when I try to extract from pdf books, the progress bar flashes on the screen, and then disappears without creating a note.

Suggestions:
1. I would love to be able to optionally extract each comment to a separate note. Then I could tag and access the notes individually later.
2. It would be great to be able to use a markup code in my annotations to designate a zotero tag. That way I could code my annotations, and when they are extracted into notes, they could be automatically tagged. It would streamline my workflow so that I would only have to read and interact with each source one time. If my first suggestion was implemented, it would be great to have the option to apply the tag either to the specific annotation, or to the all annotations in the document.

Thanks again for your work.

Joscha: I tried a few different pdfs. Some of them are journal articles, some created by me, some ebooks, and all produce the same result. For good measure I downloaded acrobat X yesterday to see if highlighting using that program would work but it had the same result. This is with fresh Firefox restarts. I also tried the hidden preference you suggested and got the same results. I'm beginning to suspect user error...

Can you tell me any reazon why ZotFile freezes up Zotero for about 2 minutes after moving a file to the tablet folder? (I'm using the "create a link when moving" option). The file would sync to the folder, then to Dropbox, then I would sync and open it on the ipad, but Zotero would still be frozen.

erazlogo, I assume that happens because zotero indexes your pdf files, is that correct? When I was indexing my files, zotero always froze and the linking of tablet attachments trickers the indexing. You can either disable indexing or switch to background mode. Does that solve your problem?

Thierry.C, looks like the file got lost at some point. Can you open the file by clicking on the attachment in Zotero? Maybe the file was missing in the first place (which zotfile should handle). I had no problems with the DOI. What are the steps to reproduce this?

Thanks for your response yesterday, Joscha.

Resolved:
Ok, previously (2 days ago) I couldn't extract annotations from large pdfs, but if I saved the annotated pages into a smaller file, then the extraction worked. (BTW - no errors appeared in the console, and annotations were done with Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro.) But now, after updating to Zotero 3.0.2 yesterday, they all work. Maybe they are unrelated, but I am happy.

Follow-up Question:
I didn't understand your response to #2 -- "I added 1 to the list. I am not sure about 2. It would be okay to add a tag to the notes with annotated text but some specific markup that triggers a tag doesn't sound like a general solution."

You say it would be okay to add a tag to notes, but not with a markup -- what are you thinking would be an alternative?

Maybe I am using the term 'markup' incorrectly. I was envisioning an option in the settings that would toggle zotfile looking for something in an annotation that would indicate: (1)A tag (or tags) should be added to the note which will be created, and (2)what the tag(s) should be. Of course, I was hoping that this would work with suggestion 1, that each annotation could optionally be saved as a separately tagged note.

My guess is that many who are doing research are organizing ideas in individual tagged notes that can be organized and sorted separately. Being able to label/tag them while you are reading (and annotating) would prevent the need to go back and re-read and process each note a second time.

Thanks for your thoughts on this.

Thierry.C, it's seems to be the file but I don't know what the problem is either. Maybe the file is locked? I created a zotero group 'zotfile'. When you apply for membership, I will add you so that you can upload the file. I wasn't able to make the group entirely public because public groups do not allow attachments.

Guppy, I just don't want to implement a solution that is very user specific and not of general interest. But maybe you are right and other people are interested in something like this. I will think about adding something like this when I work on the handling of the extracted annotation stuff the next time.

egerhardt, the pdf library used by zotfile (pdf.js) simply doesn't support all pdf standards yet. It should capture errors though, skip the page in question and put the error message on the console. For mac users, the poppler based extraction tool is an alternative but currently has problems with special characters. I suggest that you do the same as I just told Thierry and upload affected files to the zotfile zotero group. It would also be good to get more infos about the error messages, especially if they are related to a zotfile file (chrome://zotfile/...).

Note that I only have about 15 MB left on my 100MB free account. Should be enough for a couple of pdfs but no random or very large pdfs. Usually the error can be pinned down to specific pages.

First I would like to add my thanks for a great program; then, of course, to raise a problem. Recently -- I'm not sure when it started -- everything I do with zotfile moves the attachment to the tablet, whether I want it to or not. That is, "attach a new file" creates a link in Zotero and puts the file in my tablet (dropbox) directory; and renaming a file also puts it in the tablet directory. Furthermore, the "Get from tablet" entry is greyed out, so the only way I can get it back is manually. This happens both in standalone (3.0.1 and, I think, the version before that) and in Firefox.
Is there some setting I'm missing?

Joscha, I finally deciphered the origin of the bug:
In fact, the file is not in question.
The problem comes from an unauthorized character in one of the field that is used for generating a path, namely the colon (:) in the name of the publication.

So, I think all fields should be processed in the same way the title field is processed for what concerns unauthorized characters, i.e., replace \/:*?"<>| on Windows platforms by a separator, or by nothing.

Hopes this helps to improve your already great add-on!
Thierry

EDIT: Another problem happens when using subfolders (e.g., \%T\%w\%y) and a field is missing. In that case, one cannot use "locate the file" since the path is known as, e.g, "\%T\\%y" instead of "\%T\%y". It is however strange to me that directly opening the file works smoothly (as if the path was defined or interpreted differently).
Anyway, I think the best solution to both avoid this error and provide a systematic classifying would be to replace missing field(s) by a common name specific to the field, as it should be done in a bibliography.
Example:
root\Journal Article\Journal of Power Sources\2005
root\Journal Article\Unknown journals\2005
root\Journal Article\Journal of Power Sources\Unknow dates

"Unknown journals/dates" replacement names are just examples. One could imagine "Undefined journals", "Other journals", "NA dates" or the French "[s.d.]" (sans date).