Qnotero (formerly Gnotero)

sebastiaan.mathot
Dear Zotero users,

I've released a new version of Gnotero, the standalone sidekick to Zotero. So new, in fact, that I've renamed it to Qnotero. The name change reflects a change in the underlying toolkit: I switched from Gtk2 to Qt4.

The general idea has remained the same: A simple tool to provide quick access to your Zotero references from the system tray. But Qnotero should be faster than Gnotero, it is prettier (and themeable) and it provides better compatibility with Windows.

Hope you enjoy it and please let me know of any problems you encounter!

http://www.cogsci.nl/software/qnotero

Kindest regards,
Sebastiaan
  • asplundj
    edited October 31, 2011
    I get an error when trying to start the windows version and the qnotero.exe.log file says:

    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "qnotero", line 33, in
    NameError: name 'exit' is not defined

    The program still starts though
  • sebastiaan.mathot
    Ow, thanks. I'll fix it and push out a bugfix release in the near future. You get this error only if you try to start Qnotero when it is already running, right?
  • garrigus
    I've installed Qnotero 0.47 on two systems and have the same trouble on each. When I try to run a search in Qnotero, nothing comes up.
    On both systems I used the "Auto-detect" feature to let Qnotero find the Zotero folder.
    Ubuntu 10.04 running the most recent Firefox-for-Ubuntu version 4.0 and Zotero 2.1.9.r10389
    and
    Windows 7 running Firefox 8.0 and Zotero 2.1.10

    I 'm probably missing something pretty basic here -- any ideas?
  • sebastiaan.mathot
    I've installed Qnotero 0.47 on two systems and have the same trouble on each. When I try to run a search in Qnotero, nothing comes up. On both systems I used the "Auto-detect" feature to let Qnotero find the Zotero folder.
    I suspect that Qnotero has auto-detected the wrong folder (it just picks the first folder that contains a file called "zotero.sqlite"). In this case, you can check in Zotero where the data folder is (Preferences->Advanced->Data directory location) and point Qnotero to that folder in the preferences dialog (right-click on systray icon->preferences).

    Hope this helps!
  • garrigus
    I was pretty confident the directory Qnotero found matched the one Zotero indicates in "preferences". Just to be sure, I copied the Zotero data directory on the Ubuntu machine to an entirely new location and changed Zotero's preferences. Restarted Zotero and it is working from that directory. Entered the new location manually in Qnotero preferences and I still get no response to search terms. Started and stopped Qnotero a couple of times just to be sure. Does Qnotero need time to index zotero.sqlite?
  • sebastiaan.mathot
    Hi Garrigus,

    Sorry for the slow response, I've been away from office.

    Qnotero indexes pretty much instantaneously. Perhaps a few hundred milliseconds, but certainly nothing that should be noticeable. It's very strange that Qnotero fails to find your references.

    Could you perhaps run Qnotero from a terminal an post the output? Some additional info might be helpful as well, notably the Zotero version and the relevant path names.

    Sebastiaan
  • SiGi
    Hi sebastiaan,

    qnotero is very nice and fast. Thanks.

    For me it would be really fine, if I have two additional features included:
    - the search should also includes tags - not only title, author, date.
    - found attachments should be opened by the standard programm of the operating system. Not only pdf attachements should be viewable.

    SiGi
  • sebastiaan.mathot
    Hi Sigi,

    Thanks for your suggestions! I listed them as feature requests on GitHub.

    I'm not yet sure about the opening of non-pdf attachments. It may be useful on some occasions, but it also adds complexity. I'd have to think about the best way to implement this.

    Sebastiaan
  • SiGi
    Hi Sebastiaan,
    thanks for considering my suggestions.

    I have another feature request. It would be nice, if qnotero also search the only-pdf-attachments entries in the Zotero database (only by title, there are no author,.. informations). I have a lot of pdf attachments which have no parent full item with all meta data in my zotero database. (Mostly the unread pdf articles).

    So zotero / qnotero would also be usefull searching a simple pdf-archive.

    But this feature request is for me not so important as the request above.

    SIGGI.
  • sebastiaan.mathot
    Hi Siggi,

    Someone already put in that request: forum.cogsci.nl/index.php?p=/discussion/57/search-bug

    :-)

    Sebastiaan
  • alexhubbe
    Hi all,

    I am having the same problem that garrigus had several years ago. Basically, the search is not working. I am sure the Qnotero points to the right folder and also tried to paste the zotero folder to other location and the problem persists.

    Any idea?

    thanks in advance,

    -Alex

    Below is what appears when I run the qnotero from the terminal

    libqnotero._themes.default.__init__(): using '/usr/share/qnotero/resources/default'
    qnotero.reInit(): using GnoteProvider
    libgnote.__init__(): failed to locate Gnote
    libzotero.__init__(): zotero_path = b'/home/alexhubbe/MEGA/MEGAsync/zotero'
    no such table: creatorData
    "sni-qt/3740" WARN 08:46:42.107 void StatusNotifierItemFactory::connectToSnw() Invalid interface to SNW_SERVICE
    qnotero.updateCheck(): opening http://files.cogsci.nl/software/qnotero/MOST_RECENT_VERSION.TXT
    qnotero.updateCheck(): most recent = 1.0.0, current = 1.0.0
    libzotero.search(): search for 'Hubbe' completed in 0.003s
    saving!
    libqnotero._themes.default.__init__(): using '/usr/share/qnotero/resources/default'
    qnotero.reInit(): using GnoteProvider
    libgnote.__init__(): failed to locate Gnote
    libzotero.__init__(): zotero_path = b'/home/alexhubbe/Documents/zotero'
    no such table: creatorData
    libzotero.search(): search for 'Hubbe' completed in 0.003s
    libzotero.search(): search for 'Hubb' completed in 0.002s
    libzotero.search(): search for '2017' completed in 0.002s
    libzotero.search(): search for '2016' completed in 0.002s
  • bwiernik
    What version of Zotero are you running? I don't believe that Qnotero has been upgraded to work with Zotero 5.0 (which had very substantial changes to the database structure that Qnotero accesses).
  • alexhubbe
    Zotero 5.0...

    thank you!
  • sebastiaan.mathot
    That's correct. I'm aware of the incompatibility with Zotero 5 (painfully aware even, now that I've upgraded myself too). But I haven't gotten around to looking at it.
  • jonemo
    I recently upgraded to Zotero 5.0 on Ubuntu 16.04 and spent ages trying to figure out why Qnotero did not yield search results anymore, and why the directory I browsed for seemed to be wrong or why it couldn't be identified automatically. Thought I'd seriously messed up the configurations of zotero.sqlite or something. Seeing this thread, I am glad to find out it's just that Qnotero is not compatible with Zotero 5.0 yet. Would love to see Qnotero made compatible again, it was so fantastic for my workflow. In the meantime, are there any tricks in the books to get it to work somehow?
  • sebastiaan.mathot
    No tricks, I'm afraid! I will really have to take a look at the new database structure and update Qnotero to use that.
  • LiborA
    Sebastiaan do you have any time-schedule for this?
  • sebastiaan.mathot
    I'm afraid not!
  • Max3M
    2 years passed, the problem not solved. Effectively, Qnotero is dead...
  • ealbiter
    edited September 17, 2019
    Hi everybody, I just have started to actively maintain Qnotero, with Sebastiaan's blessing. The code is still hosted in GitHub under this repository:
    https://github.com/ealbiter/qnotero
    I've already fixed the compatibility problem with Zotero 5.0.x, created a macOS bundle, and made other changes.
    Any comments, bug reports, and suggestions are welcome.
    I hope you enjoy the new version of Qnotero
  • guidogorgoni
    Hi, this is an excellent new I just discovered, I was missing qnotero functionality, thank you very much for your work (and please don't give up).

    On a Kubuntu 18.04 64 bit system I just tried to install qnotero as instructed but it fails returning this error:

    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "setup.py", line 22, in
    from libqnotero.qnotero import Qnotero
    File "/home/name/Downloads/qnotero-2.1.1/libqnotero/qnotero.py", line 31, in
    from libzotero.libzotero import LibZotero
    File "/home/name/Downloads/qnotero-2.1.1/libzotero/libzotero.py", line 27, in
    from libzotero.zotero_item import zoteroItem as zotero_item
    ImportError: No module named zotero_item

    any help would be appreciated, thank you
  • ealbiter
    I just realized that Ubuntu and its derivatives default to python 2 and qnotero needs python 3.3 and above. Try these instructions and let me know if they worked:
    1. Install dependencies, if not installed:
    sudo apt-get install python3-pyqt5 python3-distutils
    2. Run install command:
    sudo python3 setup.py install
  • guidogorgoni
    It worked perfectly for me, thank you, issue solved.
    Now I finally have back Qnotero, please keep on maintaining it!

    It would be good updating the information on the Zotero plugins page (https://www.zotero.org/support/plugins), which still indicates lack of compatibility with Zotero 5; also it would be good to include trhe link to your GitHub repo.

    Thank you very much for your precious work, I will advertise it.
  • bentle
    Fantastic that it's updated to work with 5.0.

    What would be very helpful would be if among the options was to open the record in Zotero and/or indicate what library the record is in. This would significantly overcome the lack of cross-library search within Zotero.

    Along the same lines, would it be possible for it to mirror the UI that is in the word processor integration (citation selector), where results from different libraries are separated under different headings?

    Obviously, I've no idea if any of this is feasible, but thanks very much for making it available again!
    Tom
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