I am using Zetero 2.0b7.2. After I click to import the RIS file a pop-up appears prompting me to save or open (usually Papers is the default). I wasn't sure if this was a bug or I was doing something wrong.

Thanks....I worked around it by changing the Import Character Encoding in Zotero's Advanced preferences from "auto detect" to the UTF -8

I would like to transfer my library from Papers on a mac to Zotero on a PC. How should I proceed?
Thanks!

I did exactly that yesterday, if you are not easy with the terminal, vi and sed, forget about it. Things that you have to do are here:

1/ Say goodbye to Papers 1.9 and export your library as a .bib file, open this file in vi.

2/ open the created bib file and run these commands in vi

%s,\.pdf},\.pdf:application\/pdf},g
%s,file.*null)},,
%s,.*\\url.*,,g
%s,local_url\ =\ {file:\/\/localhost,file\ =\ {file\.pdf:,g

this will transform the following buggy lines in the original bib file:

url = \url{http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/29/8/2355},
url = {http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/29/8/2355},
local_url = {file://localhost/Users/lalala/Documents/Papers2/Articles/J_Neurosci_Bla.pdf}


into such lines that zotero important likes

url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4475-07.2008},
file = {file.pdf:/Users/lalala/Documents/Papers2/Articles/J_Neurosci_Bla.pdf:application/pdf}


if you had imported the original .bib file directly, you would have had all the articles in zotero, however the link to the pdfs would be broken.

3/ I recommend you move all your pdfs to where Zotero stores the documents, namely the storage folder. Check "Data Directory Location" from the preferences. There is a folder there called "Storage". So you have to change accordingly the path "/Users/lalala/Documents/Papers2/etc..." to "/Users/lalala/LOCATIONOFDATADIRECTORY/storage".

4/ I recommend that you sort your articles by title in Papers before exporting. This is helpful when the importing crashes, then you would easily go back to the .bib file and find out which entry is making the trouble. I had many cases where the path to the pdf was not correct and this makes the importer crash. So you might need few repeats until you get all your data in zotero.

What you say makes very much sense, today I realized that all the pdf files that I had moved in storage folder were absolutely not used by Zotero when opening a reference. Zotero created its own folder structure and copied all the pdfs inside these folders. So I basically I ended up deleting all the pdf files that I myself copied. The step 3 is absolutely useless as Dan says.

no. very unlikely to happen, too.

yeah--Zotero has open and pretty well documented source code...makes that a whole lot easier. (Sync is btw. also a bit of a misnomer for what Mendeley does: it's only one way, so it's more like an automatic import.)