Thanks, adamsmith.

I am most interested in these issues wrt Zotero 5.0 (Z5):

1. Will we have batch editing of fields such as author name or journal name?

2. Will it be significantly faster when inserting citations in large Word documents?

3. Will it allow in-line citations in Powerpoint?

4. Any major updates to Tags (I love them!)?

5. Will add-ins - such as Zotfile, Zutilo, Prevent Duplicates - continue to work?

6. Will Groups allow "attach link to file" functionality?

7. Can we store Advanced Searches in a nested way, like we do with Collections?

8. Any improvements to Zotero Reports?

9. Ability to preview PDFs?

10. DOI field for more item types?

11. In-built functionality to prevent duplicates (refer to 5)

12. Easier methods to share/transfer items between "My Library" and group libraries?

No to all except 5? That's disappointing.

May be the first release is all about laying the foundation for enabling faster and better updates in future. But really, its been a while since Zotero has had major new features added and I was hoping 5.0 will get us some of these most wanted features. I get a feeling that Zotero is falling behind or at least losing its lead .... Am I wrong?

Whats the good news going forward?

As far as I have seen, almost every part of the Zotero code was changed in a minor to major way as part of 5.0, so this is really a major update, even if most of the changes are to the back end.

Rintze, bwiernik, and Dan: Thank you for the responses.

I understand the need to rethink the architecture and Dan commented elsewhere that the test suite has over 500 (unit?) tests. That's impressive. But please also understand where users are coming from. Some of the features I mentioned have been requested for over five years, so it just feels like a big let down that these are going to take even longer.

Zotero is a gifted horse and as the saying goes you don't look at one in the mouth. But, many of us are heavily invested in Zotero and some, including me, champion for it among peers in our scientific community.

Sync speed has been mentioned multiple times, but how many users need that above batch editing or speed of adding citations in large documents? May be some of these are not possible without the architectural change, but surely some were possible. If a poll of most requested new features has not been done, I would suggest doing one. Give us the wanted features first.

I truly hope we will see new features soon.

A major update not having most (if any) of the top features that have been requested for five or more years isn't really what I'd define as sacrificing "instant gratification."

There is always a balance between end-user features and backend updates. I think Zotero 5.0 got the balance wrong. And we can agree to disagree on that.

Sure we can agree to disagree, but I think, while your disappointment is understanding -- and shared by many of us (recall that pretty much anyone but Dan here is primarily an academic in some capacity and only works on Zotero because we find it useful) -- it is based on a poor understanding of what developing software involves.

Take the test suite. Obviously not something that end users would appreciate much per se. But don't you think that a lot of people would assign a high priority to "Should Zotero be able to make updates that work reliably and without breaking the software temporarily?"

Or the sync infrastructure. No, I don't think faster syncing is a terribly high priority, nor, I think has it been for Zotero devs. But if we phrase it like "Should Zotero work to make sync more reliable and also make it possible to add new item types and add fields to existing item types in the process" I think we'd get a lot more votes.

The other thing is, as bwiernik notes, a lot of the backend changes affected nearly every aspect of the code. Which of course means that any new features based on 4.0 would also have to be re-written for 5.0. I could come up with a question for that, too, but you get the idea.

(Also, I'd invite you to look at the Changelog's since Zotero 3.0, which isn't even 5 years old, to get a sense of the amount of features actually added over the last 5 years; this idea that Zotero hasn't added new features for 5 years is a bit puzzling to me:
https://www.zotero.org/support/3.0_changelog
https://www.zotero.org/support/4.0_changelog

Of course there are many features that have been requested for years. And I'd love for them to have happened yesterday. But features being unfulfilled for years is hardly unique to Zotero. The top requested features on Mendeley's Uservoice are between 3 and 8 years old.

adamsmith and Dan: Thanks, that's more helpful.

"There could be a 5.0.5, or a 5.1, or a 6.0 with lots of new features a FEW MONTHS after that." (caps mine)

You could have just said that earlier in the discussion :)

I am a Zotero evangelist and so am forever hungry for improvements that make my mission easier.

I am an engineer, what Dan said earlier is not quantitative enough. Fuzzy words don't excite me as much ....

Dan's post about Zotero 5.0 alpha:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/zotero-dev/dX2gMoOSwRs


Dan: Any ETA for beta and public release?

Many thanks for the syncing improvements for large databases in Z 5.0.

As part of 6.0 or later, is there any plan to create a mobile Zotero version? Currently on iPad, PaperShip can't handle large databases and the online library display is limited. With the new iPad Pro w/keyboard, and the iOS version of Scrivener coming this summer or fall, it will be possible to do all of the manuscript researching & writing on a tablet and iPhone--it would be so convenient to have the Zotero database easily accessible on the mobile as well.

We know Zotero 5.0 beta is available (yeah!): https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/59829/zotero-50-beta/

The feature I am most eagerly waiting for is "6. Will Groups allow "attach link to file" functionality?"

@Dan or someone, can you provide some update when this feature will be available?

Thanks, @adamsmith. I’ve held back on launching my Zotero group for the lack of this feature. I’ll explain my use case and maybe there a partial workaround.

I have a Zotero library that should be useful to researchers in my field. And yet, it is only the tip of the iceberg. So, I want to use my library as a starting point to create the most elaborate curated bibliography for my field of work. That means hundreds of group members, but may be only a half dozen Admins with edit rights. Let’s call this group “Main”. I also have a second group called “Main_beta” and every member has edit rights. Main_beta is simply used to let members feed/update items in to Main. Members add items to Main_beta and these are copied to Main (and then deleted from Main_beta) by Admins of Main.

This brings me to two issues:

1. If Main is going to become the kind of library I hope it will, then I do not wish to maintain “My Library” separately. Why have two copies of the same item? Plus, syncing items between My Library and Main is going to be a challenge. But I cannot drop My Library because all my attachments are using 'link to file'.

2. If Groups allowed and synced 'link to file', then, interested members can have the same base folder, name their file same, and they are done. No need to even go and attach the link. Right?

Of the two issues, number 1 is a blocker for me to launch my group.

I understood that. I was hoping you'd hear my pain and come up with a stop-gap measure :)

I want to launch that group, harvest the benefits of a global network of researchers, and in the process establish Zotero as the go to reference management tool in my trade.

I had asked WillS, who maintains Zutilo and wrote most of the code for relative links for folders and he was generally interested, but you'd have to check with him if that's still the case.

(Dan has indicated that they're open to this on multiple occasions, including at least once -- probably more often -- on these forums)