Multi-computer and multi-cataloger use
Just started using zotero today. Looks great! But have already run into my first problem screaming out for a feature.
I spent the morning at home on my laptop building a bibliography. This afternoon I am at my office working on a different project. I've just realized I am starting up two different library collections on two different computers. I'd love to have one library I can access from anywhere. I've adopted del.icio.us as my bookmark system primarily for this benefit. It is key to me using most any software as I have three regular computers I move among.
Related: I do my research as part of a team. Allowing the full team to share a single library would be a godsend.
I spent the morning at home on my laptop building a bibliography. This afternoon I am at my office working on a different project. I've just realized I am starting up two different library collections on two different computers. I'd love to have one library I can access from anywhere. I've adopted del.icio.us as my bookmark system primarily for this benefit. It is key to me using most any software as I have three regular computers I move among.
Related: I do my research as part of a team. Allowing the full team to share a single library would be a godsend.
While the Foldershare-solution (I use pathsync btw) may be Windows only there are lots of similar sync tools available for *nix systems too. I wonder if it would be possible to use Zotero in combination with a CVS -- as this would also allow group collaboration, as requested by dmittleman. Unfortunately I'm not geeky enough to assess the effort such a solution would require and therefore wait patiently for the Zotero-way to synching and sharing :-)
-j
How can I access my library from multiple computers? Can I store my Zotero library and associated files on an external drive?
It seems as if Zotero opens the library when the browser opens and keeps it open until the browser closes. Is this the case?
If Zotero opened the database when it needed to make an update and then released it when the update was complete the FolderShare approach would work fine, with just the odd "Retry" needed if FolderShare and Zotero tried to write at the same time. If there was a way to get Zotero to close the db without closing the browser that would also help a lot.
An comments or hints would be appreciated, thanks!
Even on platforms that don't lock the DB, like OS X, this would be a pretty good way of corrupting the database.
Close Firefox first.
The other Dan said :
>>>We will be providing a way to synchronize collections between computers and to share collections in a group in 2007
So I'll try closing/opening the browser until this comes out, any idea
when that might be?
Ideally I'd like to wrap my `svn commit` command in a shell script that dumps the zotero database to a file inside my svn tree, then I can wrap my svn update with a script that imports the file from the svn tree to zotero. This should work in mac and *nix, and could be achieved using .bat files for windows.
If there's no way to get firefox to pass on things to the plugins while its running (or to get a new firefox instance in the command line to run silent and not spawn a window), I guess we could rig up something using sqlite3 to dump out the database to RIS or some other suitable format.
Cheers
Jin
Figured out how to do it off the SQLite3 page
http://www.sqlite.org/version3.html
for the save script try
"save.sh"
#!/bin/sh
echo "usage saves.sh 'my message in single quotes'"
cd /absolute/path/to/zotero
sqlite3 zotero.sqlite .dump > /absolute/path/versioned/directory/zotero.dump.sql
cd /absolute/path/versioned/directory
echo $1
svn commit -m $1
"restore.sh"
#!/bin/sh
cd /absolute/path/versioned/directory
svn update
cd /absolute/path/to/zotero
cat /absolute/path/versioned/directory/zotero.dump.sql >sqlite3 zotero.sql