Will future support for images in notes be compatible with the currently unsupported feature?

cheflo

The Zotero documentation mentions that images in notes are not officially supported at the moment. It also says that support will be added for this feature in the future. Can something be said about if the future image support will be compatible with the current implementation? In other words, will I lose all the images I have pasted into my notes when this becomes an official feature? Or can I keep using it if I am fine with it not being officially supported at them moment

The problems I have read about and experienced myself are syncing errors due to note length and that copying images from notes into other application does not work. I am fine with these limitations for the time being, as long as I will not lose all my images once the official support is rolled out.

I think pasting screenshots into notes is a great way to summarize and mentally anchor key concepts from articles, videos, and web pages so I would very much like to keep using this unintended feature. In the future, it would be great if pasted images could be automatically detected and extracted into linked files, which then are references via zotero links from the notes.

  • DWL-SDCA
    What I do is to save the image(s) to a file on Dropbox (or some similar service) and paste the link within my note. It is a work-around but I find it efficient. I should add that I haven't tried to click-follow the links from within Zotero.
  • cheflo
    Thanks @DWL-SDCA , but that doesn't show the image in your note, just the link right? I would like pasted images to be visible in the note itself to facilitate quick review.
  • emilianoeheyns
    It's technically possible, it's just not at a convenience level that's right for most people; if you right-click the note and select "source code" you can edit the raw HTML; if you paste something like

    <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhEAAOALMAAOazToeHh0tLS/7LZv/0jvb29t/f3//Ub/
    /ge8WSLf/rhf/3kdbW1mxsbP//mf///yH5BAAAAAAALAAAAAAQAA4AAARe8L1Ekyky67QZ1hLnjM5UUde0ECwLJoExKcpp
    V0aCcGCmTIHEIUEqjgaORCMxIC6e0CcguWw6aFjsVMkkIr7g77ZKPJjPZqIyd7sJAgVGoEGv2xsBxqNgYPj/gAwXEQA7"/>

    in there, hey presto, image in note. But I have no idea whether it will cleanly sync. I see that Zotero changes it into a

    <img src="blob:resource://zotero/3ced167c-fa4e-aa4a-8dbb-3acf9b507241" alt="" /> when you close "source code" view and I don't know what to make of that.
  • cheflo
    Hmm I believe that is the same behavior I described in my first post above, isn't it? I can paste a screenshot into a note and it show up fine, and if I check the note source I see a blob:resource:// section as you describe.

    I believe that the full data:image string is still part of the note somehow and because of that these notes exceed the max allowed length for syncing. This is fine for me since I don't need zotero online and I backup my databases and files locally, but I hope to find out if the future official note image support is likely to preserve old images in notes or if it would wipe them for some reason.
  • emilianoeheyns
    Ah yes of course, sorry.
Sign In or Register to comment.