How to reference a location within a snapshot from a note

StephenR0 · March 8, 2009

I need to distill information from large web pages. I'm not a Zotero guru, but I would like to snapshot these web pages and write stand alone notes that summarize various aspects of these pages. But I would like to be able to include some kind of pointer from the items in these notes to the specific places in the large web pages that support the item in the note. Ideally, I would like to be able to click on hot spots next to the items in the note and be taken to those places in the large web page to review the logic of what I've written. Is there any way to do something like what I've outlined or am I trying to use this tool for something it was not intended? Thanks.

Steve

adamsmith · March 9, 2009

hmm - that seems relatively complicated, but not impossible -
The easiest solution would seem to be to include html links in the note (possible with the richt text notes in 1.5b) to the snapshot - that only works, of course, if the webpage is programmed in a way that allows jumping to different section, but I imagine that must be the case. Of course the link should go to the webpage snapshot stored in Zotero and not to the www address (so would be something like C:/.../Zotero Folder/webpage.html#subsection)

StephenR0 · March 9, 2009

Good idea. Unfortunately, these pages are not programmed that way. I did discover that I could put an annotation in the snapshot and put a unique code in it that can be found with the firefox find function. That's involves coming up with a coding system to use across all of my notes. But it does seem to work. However, it seems to me that Zotero knows where all my annotations are. So it should be relatively simple to point to them from a note somehow. Maybe this is in the category of an enhancement to Zotero.

adamsmith · March 9, 2009

can you post a link to an example of such a webpage? This seems very odd for a large webpage. The annotations are stored in a meta-file, this wouldn't appear to be easy.

StephenR0 · March 9, 2009

Here's an example:

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/printthread.php?threadid=134046

This is the print version of a forum thread with over 800 posts. I chose a small one. :-) I use the print version so I can search through the whole thread and extract the information that I need. Most of the posts aren't important, but scattered throughout the thread are heuristics that I need to collect and be able to reference. As far as annotations being in a meta-file, Zotero is able to place them correctly in the snapshot. So obviously, the location information is available in some fashion.

adamsmith · March 9, 2009

ah ok - it's the print version - that explains the absence of sections - the actual forum does have a unique URL for each post - but there you can't look at the entire thread at once, so that's no help.
I don't know then, but from what I know that's harder than you think, esp. because afaik the Zt. annotation function hasn't been written for Zotero specifically.

bdarcus · March 9, 2009

This sort of example is really unfortunate, because the HTML has no real structure. Typically in new web applications of this sort, every entry would be tagged as such, and each would get it's own id. This would enable you to directly refer to it from your own local notes.

While I suppose in theory Zotero could add ids to local pages, that wouldn't actually work in this case because the HTML is so heinously bad. Even XPointer wouldn't go very far.

StephenR0 · March 9, 2009

You may be right. I think I'll see if this gets any more comments and at some point put in a request for a feature to address this functionality. My current feeling is that my situation may be specialized, but the idea of being able to develop ideas in notes (or somewhere) and reference and track a network of supporting source text is not that unusual. I expect that many knowledge workers have this problem. Thanks.

erazlogo · March 9, 2009

There is a ticket for moving snapshot annotations into the data layer, effectively making them regular notes with a locator that points to a spot on a web page. Once that is done, one should be able to link to annotations as "related" items, or even directly from note text if developers devise a way to link to any Zotero item via url, as previously discussed on the forums.

StephenR0 · March 9, 2009

Thanks for the pointer. I don't feel so alone since the priority is set to critical. I guess I'll wait and try it in 1.5 b2 if something doesn't change by then. Actually, that's much sooner than I would have hoped for a change like this. I did do some searching in the forums, but I didn't find the discussions that you referred to, but it sounds like they're coming up with something I can use.

erazlogo · March 9, 2009

I did do some searching in the forums, but I didn't find the discussions that you referred to, but it sounds like they're coming up with something I can use.

Requests for urls to Zotero items come up mostly in discussions about linking from other programs to Zotero (see below), but this feature would work for your request also. It would be great to have this capability.
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/1222/hyperlinks-back-to-zotero-item/#Item_8
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/4930/using-zotero-as-a-research-diary/#Item_5

For discussions on making snapshot annotations equivalent to notes, see:
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/1900/
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/2294/notes-as-attachements-versus-as-annotations/

GrantRobertson · March 11, 2009

I would like to be able to include some kind of pointer from the items in these notes to the specific places in the large web pages that support the item in the note. Ideally, I would like to be able to click on hot spots next to the items in the note and be taken to those places in the large web page to review the logic of what I've written.

OK, I'm not positive this would work but it is worth a shot. In addition, this method would require Zotero 1.5, be relatively tedious, and require knowledge of HTML editing.

In Zotero, go to the snapshot attached to the entry. Click "Show File" and open the selected file in an HTML editor. Insert your own bookmark. In the Zotero note, edit the HTML and create a link to that specific file and bookmark.

As I said, this would be tedious but it would do what you want. I use a programmable keyboard (the Logitech G11) and can program keys to quickly type things like the HTML codes for bookmarks and links. That would speed things up quite a bit. Plus, if you just opened that HTML file up and kept it open in your HTML editor as you worked, you could just click over to the document and add a bookmark link wherever you wanted. Remember, you can stick a div tag with an id anywhere you want. You don't have to find an existing div tag and use its id.