Upgrade StorageShare Extension of file links in Zotero iPad Client
When the attached files stored in Zotero are linked files, Zotero can not open them directly.
When the attached files stored in Zotero are on WebDAV storage, Zotero would open it with its built-in editor, which separates pdf and annotations into two files. However, personally, I prefer the same-file manner.
I wonder if it is possible to add a long-press action on the attached file items which pop out the file URL in an iOS/iPad share extension menu so that users can access it in a simple shortcut script to construct a URL scheme and open the file in another app (e.g., pdfexpert).
An example:
1. given a linked file and access its URL "collection/this_is_a_linked_file.pdf"
2. rewrite the URL with a shortcut script to "pdfexpert://SyncedFolders/collection/this_is_a_linked_file.pdf"
3. then open this url scheme with this shortcut script can redirect us to the pdfexpert app.
This procedure can be applied to WebDAV storage as well.
When the attached files stored in Zotero are on WebDAV storage, Zotero would open it with its built-in editor, which separates pdf and annotations into two files. However, personally, I prefer the same-file manner.
I wonder if it is possible to add a long-press action on the attached file items which pop out the file URL in an iOS/iPad share extension menu so that users can access it in a simple shortcut script to construct a URL scheme and open the file in another app (e.g., pdfexpert).
An example:
1. given a linked file and access its URL "collection/this_is_a_linked_file.pdf"
2. rewrite the URL with a shortcut script to "pdfexpert://SyncedFolders/collection/this_is_a_linked_file.pdf"
3. then open this url scheme with this shortcut script can redirect us to the pdfexpert app.
This procedure can be applied to WebDAV storage as well.
As far as I know Zotero doest support linked files on iOS, and the downloaded files are within Zotero database, which isn't available/exposed to other apps on iOS (this is how iOS works, it has much more limitations than MacOS)
Let me explain it in detail. Assume that we have a linked file kept in Zotero database, then Zotero should have the absolute/relative path to the linked file. Moreover, we can put that file on a net disk (e.g., Onedrive). On iOS/iPad, expose that relative path through share extension such that we can handle it with the shortcut app. On the other hand, the pdfexpert app is able to connect many net disks including Onedrive. Thus, we can construct a URL scheme and jump to that file on the pdfexpert app.
In a more detailed explanation, the Zotero database can store a linked file like "~/Dropbox/Zotero/xxx.pdf".
Of course, this path is not available on iOS. However, if Zotero iOS can give a button "share" where we can read this path as a string, then it could be easy to write a shortcut to read the relative path "Zotero/xxx.pdf", then pass this relative path to the iOS app with Dropbox sync to find the file.
This is actually realized in https://github.com/MiracleXYZ/ZotExpert for the web version of Zotero. The only thing is that Zotero iOS does not have this button for us to read the "~/Dropbox/Zotero/xxx.pdf".