Home-dir-relative storage of linked files.
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Yes, using "U" and "E" works (case sensitive). Thanks for your help (and the plugin).
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/zutilo-utility-for-zotero/versions/?page=1#version-1.1.15
That should allow you to change more than just the drive letter if you want to.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/zutilo-utility-for-zotero/versions/1.1.16
Again, the patch that I submitted for review should be cross-platform compliant. So once it is accepted and you starting saving attachments with relative paths, you should be fine.
However, in some cases, it might hard to convert old absolute paths into new relative paths (eg if you have old Windows paths and you move everything to Linux, the patch won't be able to recognize those old paths as being on the base path). To help with this (and provide a workaround until the patch is accepted), I added the option to Zutilo's "modify attachments" function to replace parts of paths not at the beginning of the path.
So now you should be able to convert Windows paths to Linux paths in two steps. For example, for the path "E:\path\to\attachment". You would first run modify attachments changing "\" to "/" and not restricting to the beginning of the path to get "E:/path/to/attachment". Then you would run "modify attachments" again changing "E:" to "/base" (and restricting to the beginning of the path) to get "/base/path/to/attachment".
it's pretty brief, but should still be clear.
Also, you should be on version 4.0.12
I thought this whole thread started with the question of whether a pdf sitting in some specific path on my computer (say E:\water\literature\xxxx.pdf) can be linked to its citation in Zotero without it being copied (and therefore duplicated) and placed in an opaquely named folder in Zotero's directory such as C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\Zotero\Zotero\Profiles\dvnit91j.default\zotero\storage\MF5Q2SJA. Note that Endnote allows this: one only has to un-check the box which says "copy this file to default folder..." when using Refs-File Attach command.
If you copy your Zotero data to another computer that has that file stored in a different location, but you set the Base directory properly on this other computer, the linked file attachment should still point to the file correctly.
If you set your base directory to for example C:\folder1\folder2 and then link to the file, C:\folder1\folder2\folder3\file.pdf, internally Zotero saves the link as attachments:\\folder3\file.pdf (or something like that). Then when you ask Zotero to open that file, it replaces "attachments:\\" with whatever the current base directory setting is before looking for the file on your computer.
Ctrl-Shift-drag on Windows/Linux, Cmd-Option-drag on OS X
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/28694
At some point in the future, Group Libraries will probably support relative attachment paths, but I don't know how high of a priority that is right now.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/zutilo-utility-for-zotero/