Upgrade StorageZotero 5.0 Beta
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Startup is currently significantly slower in 5.0 — we're working on that, but for now with a large library you'd want to leave Zotero open when possible instead of closing and reopening frequently.
Once open, the UI should generally be much more responsive, with various operations that hung the UI no longer do so. Some operations that affected many items are now batched instead of performed all at once, which should avoid out-of-memory problems. And some operations (e.g., moving many items to the trash) should just be dramatically faster.
And, of course, the new sync architecture is designed to handle very large databases that couldn't be synced under the old architecture.
We still have a lot more optimization to do, but one of the benefits of 5.0 is a very large test suite that should allow us to work on performance issues quickly and safely. If there are specific operations in 5.0 (beyond startup) that people are finding slow, we can take a look.
@dstillman Can you give a sense of database sizes and slowness. For example, what might be the startup times for databases with 500; 2000; 20,000; 100,000 items? Just ballpark or best estimate numbers to get a sense of what you meant in that quoted part.
As I'm sure you know, Zotero 4.0 stored data in Application Support. That meant that 1) PDFs and other files weren't indexed by Spotlight and 2) starting in Sierra it wasn't possible to annotate stored PDFs, because Preview would refuse to modify files within Application Support, since it's not meant for files that need to be directly user accessible.
And since Zotero includes a database, it can't use ~/Documents, which in Sierra can be synced via iCloud.
So ~/Zotero is really the only option. (In future versions, we'll also likely try to make the contents of ~/Zotero a bit more user-approachable.) It checks before doing an automatic migration. Do you mean for a new installation? I don't think we have a check there, but it should also be extremely rare for someone to have a ~/Zotero that's not a data directory and not have an existing installation with another data directory. But I suppose it could pop up a dialog that gave the option of proceeding (which you'd want to do if you deleted zotero.sqlite on purpose) or quitting.
~/zotero is my zotero-related development directory. It felt a little strange to have it claimed without consulting me TBH. I understand the reasons behind the choice for ~/Zotero better now, but I still wonder whether it wouldn't have been better to split the dirs in such a case -- ~/L/AS/Zotero for the DB, and ~/Documents/Zotero for the attachments. But that's really not a big deal I guess.
For the vast majority of people, this will automatically do the safe and appropriate thing. Since all current users of Zotero for Firefox will need to install the standalone version for Zotero 5.0, it doesn't make sense to prompt whether to use the Zotero for Firefox data as it did in 4.0.
I do occasionally clear out the profile as I work (easiest way to sandblast a profile filled with test data) but this would mean if I do that, Z5 may accidentally claim my production Z4 profile as it starts up? That's scary TBH. I do understand the vast majority argument, but in this case it works out rather inelegantly for the this particular non-vast-majority user. It may mean that I'd have to find a separate system to do my dev work on, and that's wholly new compared to Z4; ZSA 4 never did things like this.
And while my use-case is of course a-typical, I have what I consider to be a very compelling reason to want to have both Z5 and Z4 running. One is my work environment that I need to manage references. The other is where I'm trying to get a version of BBT working. BBT won't magically appear, I need to be able to work on it under 5.0 while I still use 4.0. If I understand your explanation correctly this is doable if I'm cautious, but I'm not well known for my cautiousness and I'd rather not have to rely on it under stress. So I think I'll opt for something that strictly separates these two environments. Maybe two systems (but that'd be a pain TBH), maybe something that'd allow me to isolate Z5 in some way. Or perhaps a new user profile.
If someone has experience with app isolation on MacOS, color me interested.
Even with Z4 profiles, I wouldn't expect this to be a problem — easiest would be to just ensure that there's no Zotero data in the Firefox profile marked as Default=1. Alternatively, you could just avoid nuking Standalone profile directories (perhaps with a script that filters out relevant prefs and localstore.rdf when if you need to reset things) and have multiple profiles pointed at different data directories.
But a separate user profile would certainly be the simplest and most error-proof. With Fast User Switching that should be pretty painless to use.
You can't protect paranoid Users from deleting folders for programs they just installed. This will happen when you just mistrust the programmer of the software you just installed...
Funny to read when they break their installations on trying to be wise... do they stilll know that they are connected to the Internet when they retrieve some articles and even download them?
As I read it, the folder is not directly user-editable. But any user will find ways to do so.
Just to be sure : the update from version 4 of zotero standalone to version 5 (final release) will perform automatically ?
We organize trainings these days and must be clear on this point.
(I could'nt find the answer in that theard or searching the forum).
Thanks
[fr] Bonjour.
Juste pour être certain : la mise à jour de la version 4 de zotero standalone vers la version 5 se fera automatiquement ?
Nous organisons des formations ces jours-ci et devons être clair sur ce point.
(désolé je n'ai pas trouvé l'information plus haut).
Merci
On: Windows 7 Pro, 64-bit
1. Zotero Preferences > General: Clicking on "Update now" for translators and styles either does nothing or changes to "Error". Could this be related to the Amazon AWS outage?
2. Would be nice to be able to double-click or right-click on "My Publications" and go to the profile page where the publications are displayed.