Upgrade StorageattachmentRenameFormatString
The default for "attachmentRenameFormatString" is '{%c - }{%y - }{%t{50}}' (from <http://www.zotero.org/support/hidden_prefs>;)
Q: Can I change {%c - } so that an article with 3 authors isn't automatically truncated to "<first author> et al."?
Q: Are there fields beside creator, year, and title? If so, how can I use them?
This post:
<http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/2160/is-there-any-automatic-renaming/>;
says that creator, author, and title are the only fields. But the post is over a year old and I figure it's worth checking.
Q: Can I change {%c - } so that an article with 3 authors isn't automatically truncated to "<first author> et al."?
Q: Are there fields beside creator, year, and title? If so, how can I use them?
This post:
<http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/2160/is-there-any-automatic-renaming/>;
says that creator, author, and title are the only fields. But the post is over a year old and I figure it's worth checking.
In addition to using zotero I also keep my pdfs in an external folder for other people. If I can rename automatically including this information it would make it quite quick for others to find particular articles.
I work a lot with articles about state of the art technology in robotics and the developments that you can achieve during 1 year are enormous. It makes a huge difference if the paper was published on January 2008 or Dezember 2008. My filenames look like this:
200801_NameHere
200812_NameHere
I tried adding {%m} to the extensions.zotero.attachmentRenameFormatString line in about:config, but it didn't worked.
Is there a way to add the month in the rename function?
cheers,
Trala
Here's my suggestion:
I organize my pdf files like this: Journal Abbr-Year-Volume-First Page
It's not ambiguous and is suitable for sharing and finding duplicates.
It would be great to be able to rename files in zotero using these fields.
Any plans of adding them?
best,
filipa
Does anyone have any other workarounds that would speed things up?
Cheers
jd
Perhaps the attachmentRenameFormatString could include options like:
{A} for all authors
{An} where n is some integer for the first n authors
{A\n} where n is some integer for the last n authors (I just made up the special character "\" -- not sure if that's kosher).
{an} where n is some integer for the nth author
{c} for the "creator" field as it currently stands.
{J} for the journal name
{j} for the abbreviated journal name (which I think is a standardized field)
This way, I could ask for "{a1 } {A\n}" to get the first and last author.
In other academic areas, someone might want the first few authors (who did most of the work) and the last few authors (in whose labs the work was done)? They could ask for {A2 }{A\2}.
Someone else might want all the authors, as long as there are not too many. They might ask for {A{50}}.
Finally, giving the {J} and {j} options would allow us to include the journal name in the filename.
Thoughts?
Thanks very much for your consideration.
If you're just looking for good ways to find PDF files without opening up the Zotero interface, you may want to look into the Gnotero application (http://www.cogsci.nl/gnotero), which will let you open and copy PDF attachments without opening Firefox/Zotero. It searches authors and titles to locate matching Zotero items and PDFs much faster than a search from within Zotero.
Indeed, the big motivation for custom file naming is so that I can find my PDFs without Zotero+Firefox or some other custom product. Currently, I do this for my own PDFs by typing a few author names into my OS search box and find the papers very easily. I rarely enter the first author (sorry guys!), since I usually remember the senior author's name. A custom filename would allow users to find their PDFs by whatever means they're accustomed.
A related, common complaint about Zotero is the opaque folder structure it uses to save PDFs. Many people have rightly pointed out that one can sidestep this by saving a "smart search" through their OS that includes all PDFs in the Zotero data folder. This is a great idea, but only as good as the file naming of the individual PDFs, since one still has to navigate the "smart search" output to find his file of interest. Again, allowing richer custom filenames would allow users to employ their own, existing strategies for finding files.
In the end, I think the PDF-saving issues of Zotero would be addressed by two features:
1. Custom, rich file naming so one can easily search his/her PDF collection without Zotero or additional software.
2. Drag-and-drop PDF linking so one can easily import his/her non-Zotero PDF collection while maintaining existing filenames and folder structure, and avoiding duplication of PDFs.
I think what most people want is some way to get away from et-al. That should be doable, especially as there is a character limited on titles anyway. Dan has also said that they are willing to add new fields to this.
Since Zotero never calls the last authors I think those aspects dealing with last or nth authors are very unlikely to happen.
That all said, remember that a lot of what Zotero does is driven by grant requirements - which appear to tend strongly towards broader sharing of data and files in addition to the everywhere project.
So I wouldn't expect this to be anywhere _close_ to the top of the dev's to do list atm.
On the upside, at least the naming part should not be too hard to code - so if someone cares enough to get this done the easiest way is probably to write a patch and submit it to the dev list or to trac.
I'm using the rule: 'Journal Abbr-Year-Volume-First Page', and still renaming the downloaded pdfs manually...
best,
filipa
http://www.columbia.edu/~jpl2136/zotfile.html#renaming
which does have journal abbr as an option
- more fields for the rename string
- ability to have different rename strings for different item types
- batch renaming option
The "Creator" column in Zotero includes "et al.", with the period, for multi-author works. This phrase carries over into the file naming, which then results in a potentially problematic period "." in the file name. Periods should be avoided in file names, no, as they are usually the separator for the file type extension, no?
So the file name of multiple authors becomes:
Parmenides et al. - All 4 One and One 4 All.pdf
Is there a way to de-periodize the preference for the "et al" case?
Zotero automatically strips all characters that aren't valid on all modern OSes.