Available in preview: Zotero PDF reader and new note editor

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  • warguelles
    Yes!
    These buttons are included for a long time in the Acrobat Reader. If you skip to a reference or to a figure, with these buttons you can always go back to the point you were reading.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    @jdinning: Can you start a new thread and say a bit more about the workflow you're looking for, with examples of output?
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    @warguelles: OK, thanks. We'll think about that.
  • warguelles
    @dstillman Please, refer to point 2 of @safonso comments about these previous and next view buttons
  • jdinning
    @dstillman will do. That said, I'm not sure how to add examples of output in this forum. But I will open the thread and and we can address it over there :-)

  • richard.masters
    Are there differences in the API for the Zotero beta over the release version?
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    @richard.masters: Not sure what API you're referring to, but you can post to zotero-dev with specific technical questions.
  • constancappcarvalho
    So awesome! Just tried it! It's great! Still a bit slow and unstable, but that's expected from a beta version. I love this so much that literally the only thing that's missing to match my workflow is an orange highlight color! :P
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    @constancappcarvalho: What do you mean by unstable? If there's a specific problem, you should report it so we can fix it.
  • constancappcarvalho
    edited March 11, 2021
    @dstillman just occasional “un-smoothness” when scrolling the pdf (but only rarely), sometimes there was a subtle lag when selecting different panes (like going from citation info to note editor, or from annotations on the left to thumbnails), a bit of flickering occasionally on the annotations left pane (mostly when scrolling, but not everytime, and only less than a second) and there were 2-3 times that when using a tool, the tool icon in the button disappeared for less than a second and came back. Also, it was a bit slow loading the annotations of a few PDFs, but those had a lot of annotations, so I don’t fault Zotero for it, tbh

    These were so minor and random, that it probably could just as well be due to my PC (it was syncing a large amount of files to OneDrive) or the PDFs themselves.

    But if you want any more information, the pdf files I opened or anything else I can help, just ask me and I’ll do my best :)

    EDIT: and I think I only noticed these because Zotero usually runs so smooth for me, even in my other, older and slower PC (not the one I used for the beta). Otherwise I probably wouldn’t even think of it
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    5.0.97beta3 updates:

    - We've made various improvements to the note editor toolbar. Paragraph styles and character styles, including list and blockquote options, are now available from a single drop-down menu. An alignment option is now available again in the toolbar.

    - It's now possible to delete notes from the PDF reader by right-clicking on a note in the notes list and choosing "Move to Trash".

    - It's now possible to get back to the note in the items list from a menu in the note editor toolbar or from the notes list context menu. "Edit in a Separate Window" has also been moved into that menu.

    - You can now import Mendeley highlight and note annotations into Zotero.
  • ranza
    Looks good! Although the pdf links appear to be broken (can't go easily to references), nor navigate forward (CMD + ]) and backward (CMD + [) with the standard shortcuts. Are there plans to implement this?
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    @ranza: The links in the outline tab will be fixed.
    navigate forward (CMD + ]) and backward (CMD + [) with the standard shortcuts
    Navigate what, exactly? In what app have you used them previously?
  • adamsmith
    The links in the sidebar actually work for me (though hierarchies (h2/h3 etc. in the sidebar don't show, even though they do in pdf.js), but regular URLs in the PDF, both external and internal, don't work at all. I'm thinking that's what ranza is referring to as well.

    Back and forward shortcuts are very useful with internal navigation of PDFs:
    e.g. you click on a hyperlinked reference, it goes to the bibliography, then you hit alt+backwards arrow (that's what it is on Windows in both Acrobat and pdf.js in Firefox; I'm guessing cmd+][ is the Mac equivalent) to get back to the reference.

  • dstillman Zotero Team
    OK, thanks. Back and Forward navigation buttons were brought up previously, and we'll consider them.
  • ranza
    edited March 11, 2021
    @adamsmith exactly. Thank you.
    @dstillman I really hope they'll get past considerations :-) It such a standard in pdf readers that it wouldn't be surprising if there was already a "module" for pdf.js for this.

    Also I didn't mean the links in the outline (I hardly ever use them), but the links to references, like "[1]" which usually navigate you to the bottom of the paper.
  • hgunz
    @dstillman This really is a superb, extremely useful addition to Zotero which has amazing promise. Clearly it's taken a lot of work, for which, very many thanks. An observation and a question:

    1. In terms of performance on my rather elderly Win 10 machine, there are frequent lags after an action (e.g. deleting an annotation). I only mention it because you were asking someone else about the performance problems they were referring to; I'm sure these are Beta issues only.

    2. I'd like if possible to avoid being assassinated by my fellow users of a large Group library who may be reluctant to plunge into the Beta experience. You explain above that this is why the new features haven't been implemented for Group libraries (thank you!). When you do implement it for Group libraries, will there be a way for individual users to maintain this block, so that these libraries stay usable for non-Beta users?
  • Peajee
    Hey everyone! Great job on the new functionality, this is so awesome and I have been waiting for something like this for a long time. Thank you so much!

    I really don't have anything to complain, all the new functionality works flawlessly on my Ubuntu 20.04 machine.

    One convenience feature I am missing however is to re-open pdf tabs opened in a previous session. I do not want to have to reopen all pdfs after restarting Zotero.

    Am I just missing the right setting for this, or is this functionality not implemented yet?
  • adamsmith
    @Peajee
    One convenience feature I am missing however is to re-open pdf tabs opened in a previous session. I do not want to have to reopen all pdfs after restarting Zotero.
    not currently possible but planned, see https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/377292/#Comment_377292
  • Peajee
    @adamsmith Great! Thank you very much for the response!
  • llity
    @dstillman Thanks, I hope to there a quick button open with the system default PDF tool.
  • Xuwl
    Thank you very much for your team's work. It doesn't highlight words when searching, which confuses me. Thank you again!
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    It doesn't highlight words when searching
    @Xuwl: That's a bug that will be fixed.
  • Xuwl
    edited March 13, 2021
    @dstillman Thank you for your reply, I have recommended many classmates to use Zotero and they have abandoned Endnote and Mendeley lol. wish you the best!
  • bentle
    edited March 13, 2021
    Loving working in the new Zotero, and using the notes function much more than previously.

    To that end, would it be possible to have more functionality built into the Numbered List format? For instance, would it be possible to have it number in structured multi-level format. For example:
    1.
    1.1
    1.2
    2.
    2.1
    2.2
    2.2.1
    2.2.2
    2.3

    Apologies if this is already possible. Thanks for all the hard work and wonderful results!
    Tom
  • bentle
    Not sure if this is a request or a question: is there a shortcut key to move back and forth between the PDF pane and the notes pane? This would be very useful while taking notes on a PDF, and would be much faster than reaching to the mouse each time.

    Thanks!
    Tom
  • drscaliskan
    You are awesome guys. Thank you very much for yours ( developers) efforts. Thanks
  • kingkenny
    tap with three fingers to look up in pdf reader，please
  • scottsmyth
    I love being able to open PDFs in Zotero, I'd also really like an option to open PDF in default external viewer as well though. I used this feature a lot in Mendeley.

    I've seen the responses above, but surely it'd be trivial to just pop "open pdf externally" to the context menu?
  • eporte
    After a few days of intensive use I confirm that it works well and that this is excellent news. On the other hand, it allows me to consider going a little further in the use of Zotero. The fact that you can put "tags" to annotations is very useful to consider doing data analysis. Is it planned to improve the search engine to allow this? For example: tag "education" + "theory" - "France" = all citations related to the keywords "education" and "theory" not including "France".

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