there are notes, and then THIS. what's the diff?

reimerth · September 5, 2012

If I click on a note in the centre pane (I don't know the pane-naming conventions), it comes up in an editor in the right pane. If, however, I click on a pdf attachment in the centre pane, the right pane shows its title etc. on top, and then also provides an editor beneath. What is it that happens in this editor? Is this also a note? The centre pane gives no indication if a pdf has rich text info or not, which actually makes me nervous about using it so much (to make notes on the associated pdf). Just because it isn't named, doesn't mean it's going to disappear ever, right? Also, the option to edit in a separate window isn't available as it is for right proper notes. Why?

Gracile · September 5, 2012

Is this also a note?

Yes.

The centre pane gives no indication if a pdf has rich text info or not, which actually makes me nervous about using it so much (to make notes on the associated pdf).

That's reasonable, I don't use these "integrated" notes so much too.

Edit: just to clarify, these notes -which I (mis)called "integrated"- have nothing to do with comments written _into_ pdf files.

adamsmith · September 5, 2012

I'd still be curious about their official status - why are they there? Is there any risk that they'll disappear?
A brief statement from Dan would be great.

Gracile · September 5, 2012

I agree. They're real notes seemingly (indexed for search, etc.)but their existence is precarious.
There's no special warning message when you delete the pdf. And maybe, the pdf icon could change (in overlaying a small yellow spot).

Ideally, they should appear as a child (of the pdf) even in the UI.

Edit: these "integrated" notes appear under all attachments.

dstillman · September 5, 2012

They're there...because they were there in Zotero 1.0. I'm not sure how widely used they are.

We have no plans to remove them at this point. It's not impossible that at some point the ones on child attachments would be moved to separate sibling notes under the same parent [edit: or child notes, as Gracile suggests, if we allow more than two levels of hierarchy], but we don't have any plans to do so.

The next major version of Zotero will also provide an indicator in the center pane of their existence.

dstillman · September 5, 2012

To be clear, we certainly wouldn't ever just delete the content. If they're ever moved, it'd be in a way that preserves the content and the association.

adamsmith · September 5, 2012

They're there...because they were there in Zotero 1.0.

:-).
thanks Dan, that's good to know - having the visual in the center pane will be nice.

FHeimburger · September 5, 2012

I use them to transcribe archival material and find them very handy for that - I create an item for whatever manuscript etc. I am working on, I might add a note on general interest etc., and then I attach photos of the archival source - either as jpg. if there are only a couple or combined into a pdf if it's a longer document. Either way, OCR usually does nothing to my material, so my next step is to transcribe whatever is in each picture straight into the 'integrated' note. That way the link is preserved between the metadata, the image and the content.

It took me a while to come up with this solution and it certainly works very well for me. The transcribed text will show up in searches and the next click takes me straight to the photo, if I need a reminder of what the document looked like.

Gracile · September 5, 2012

Dan:

I'm not sure how widely used they are.

Just some thoughts for the future, from my experience. I don't use them so much. But when I add a note of this kind, it's to be sure to remember something about the attachment when I'll open it. The fact that the note appears under the attachment info in the right pane is a good feature (probably the only advantage of these notes). That should not prevent to have them as child in addition (if a new level is added) in the future.