【BUG feedback】The 5.0.97 beta will disable the ZoteroQuickLook plugin

yuna351628
The 5.0.97 beta will disable the ZoteroQuickLook plugin, which will be downgraded to 5.0.96.2 and can be reused with QuinkLook，recommended to turn off automatic updates
  • yeqiongtianmang
    yes it also happens in my zotero
  • enozkan
    I don't know if the original author of the Quicklook plugin is active anymore, and if the plugin can be made to work. But as a data point from one user, a scrollable preview of an item's pdf (with a simple space bar action on the item itself) is an order of magnitude more common action for me than opening a pdf in a separate tab and annotating it. Indeed, most of the time, I just read the abstract and scroll through the figures and look at specific parts of a paper - I don't open a PDF reader for any of that. Even better, hitting space bar again would get rid of the preview and you back to Zotero right away. This was all seamless in Zotero on a Mac.

    It appears when the beta moves to stable, we'll lose the current Quicklook plugin for good (Disabling the new PDF reader in Zotero beta's preferences did not bring back Quicklook functionality.)
  • dstillman
    I don't know why the plugin broke, but I doubt fixing it would be difficult. The PDF reader should be fairly irrelevant here. The main difference is that you won't see annotations in the preview.

    I like Quick Look in general on macOS, but in Zotero I don't see a huge difference between 1) pressing space bar, scrolling in a pop-up window, and pressing space bar again and 2) pressing Return, scrolling in a tab, and pressing Cmd-W.

    The biggest difference in Finder is that the arrow keys will move to the next file while the preview window is still open. I don't know if that worked for the ZoteroQuickLook plugin. Supporting that use case, and showing annotations, would be the main reason to support something like this natively in Zotero (along with making it cross-platform, of course).
  • AbeJellinek
    IMO, macOS Quick Look's major advantage is that it doesn't get in the way or interrupt your workflow. At least on my machine, opening a PDF in Zotero and then closing it again unfocuses the main library table - the arrow keys no longer move me up and down between items, so I have to click somewhere in the library or press tab an indeterminate amount of times before I'm able to move around with the keyboard again. That goes a surprisingly long way toward making the built-in PDF viewer workflow feel less fluid. If the focus were restored, though, I think it would be a more even match.
  • enozkan
    Thanks, Dan. When one Cmd-W's the tab of a PDF, it does not go back to library, but to the next open PDF tab. So, going back to the Main Library tab for more perusing requires mouse action (or closing all open PDFs one's working on). Maybe focus should go back to previous tab (or Main Library tab) when one closes a PDF tab? I don't know if that's the right thing to do for best/expected user interface experience, but going back to previous tab makes sense to me.

    Finding ways to make Quicklook native to Zotero (and cross-platform) would be nice. It may also address the needs of those who want a pdf preview window in the Library view (which does not make sense to me at all). I can't remember if arrow keys worked to move from one file to another within ZoteroQuickLook, but the speed with which QuickLook opens PDFs for preview is great compared to any pdf reader, whether it is Zotero's version or Acrobat.
  • dstillman
    At least on my machine, opening a PDF in Zotero and then closing it again unfocuses the main library table
    We'll fix that. Issue created.
    When one Cmd-W's the tab of a PDF, it does not go back to library, but to the next open PDF tab.
    That's a known issue and will be fixed.
  • yidi_qi
    Not sure about other platforms but on macOS quicklook renders files much faster. Especially for files like .xlsx you would have to wait 3 to 4 seconds for Numbers to load without quicklook. Also you can do everything with just one hand, using two fingers to scroll and the third one to preview. Hopefully someone can fix this.
  • wanghongtao
    edited July 18, 2021
    "The arrow keys will move to the next file while the preview window is still open."
    ZoteroQuickLook plugin supported that function on win10.

  • yuna351628
    I gave feedback to the developers, and if you have the same questions, you can reply at this link
    https://github.com/mronkko/ZoteroQuickLook/issues/41
  • Atanas
    This is a feature that I am sorely missing in the Beta version. I am on macOS and much like enozkan, I too mostly just press the space bar to quickly review.

    Please bring back this feature!
  • bthomaslee
    FWIW, I too would love to have a viable version of this plugin for current/future releases of Zotero. I agree with @enozkan that it's much faster to use Quick Look than it is to open the pdf in a pdf viewer, whether it's Zotero's or a third-party one. I'm using Acrobat. So none of the fixes with ease of navigation with Zotero's new, internal viewer would affect my use-cases. Oh, and there was some discussion above about whether the Quick Look plugin would update an existing preview window to display the currently selected item in the Zotero library whenever you select a new item (like Finder does in macOS). If my memory is correct, the plugin did not do this on my Mac. You could select another item, but the preview window wouldn't update. You had to close it and open it again. But that was fast and easy enough to do.
  • wanghongtao
    edited September 19, 2021
    "I like Quick Look in general on macOS, but in Zotero I don't see a huge difference between 1) pressing space bar, scrolling in a pop-up window, and pressing space bar again and 2) pressing Return, scrolling in a tab, and pressing Cmd-W."

    In win10 "Ctrl-W" doesn't work.
  • wanghongtao
    edited September 19, 2021
    The developer said: "I don't really have the time to diagnose the issues here. If someone would like to take over maintenance of this plugin, please contact me. At this point, the Zotero PDF reader is much faster than QuickLook ever was on any system. I would recommend just using the Zotero PDF reader. This would primarily require changing your keyboard shortcut to Enter/Return instead of spacebar."
  • dstillman
    edited September 19, 2021
    In win10 "Ctrl-W" doesn't work.
    @wanghongtao: Not sure what you mean by that. Ctrl-W certainly closes a PDF reader tab in general. If that's not working for you, start a new thread and provide the exact steps you're trying.
  • wanghongtao
    edited September 19, 2021
    I figured out that another software occupied the shortcut "Ctrl-W". I removed it, and the problem solved. I wanna delete that comment, but I can't. Sorry for that.
  • wanghongtao
    edited December 23, 2021
    Someone found the problem.
    https://github.com/mronkko/ZoteroQuickLook/issues/41

    1. The space key is occupied.
    The Bata Zotero occupied the space key, and I just change the space key to ‘~’. In zoteroquicklook.js line 558, I changed as follows:
    if (((event.keyCode==192 ) && !(event.ctrlKey || event.altKey || event.metaKey)) || (key == 'y' && event.metaKey && !(event.ctrlKey || event.altKey))) .

    2. The QuickLook bridge executable (Win) can't be found correctly.
    The problem may be at lines 36-48 in zoteroquicklook.js. Unfortunately, I don't know JAVA so I can't solve it at the code level, and can only specify the location of 'bridge.exe' with the 'CustomViewCommand' parameter.
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