Request: Save snapshots only if no other attachment

bwiernik
I have kept the Save Snapshots setting turned off as long as I've used Zotero because I never want to save a snapshot of things like scholarly journal article webpages (I just want the PDF). Would it be possible to have a setting where snapshots are not saved if there is another attachment file that exists (ideally, whether or not it's available -- I still don't want to save the publisher webpage even if I don't have access to the PDF at save time), but to save one otherwise (eg, blog posts, newspaper articles, etc)?
  • dstillman
    edited February 7, 2023
    I still think the solution there is to just remove snapshot saving from the vast majority of translators — essentially all that support PDFs. Originally I think part of the idea was that the snapshot could give you searchable content in the absence of a PDF, but I don’t think that’s a compelling enough reason, and given the increased availability of PDFs even in the absence of institutional subscriptions these days, I think we should only save snapshots for the kinds of resources you mention.

    If there’s agreement on this, I can open a tracking ticket for this, and people can identify translators that need to be updated (or, I guess, we can just grep for translators that save both).
  • bwiernik
    I think that makes sense. Especially with the Unpaywall integration and other sources of PDFs.
  • adamsmith
    It's a bit tricky because of html full text. The vast majority of users will want the PDF, but html is of course much better for accessibility, so there's likely a small but important group that does want the html when looking at full text.
    I do agree with the general sentiment and I think snapshots of abstract pages are indeed useless
  • migugg
    I think it is a very good idea to only save snapshots if there is no pdf. Obviously the best solution would be if there were an option to select it (as per adamsmith' point), but I assume this is tricky as this is done in the translators.
  • bwiernik
    Would it be possible for there to be a setting to save the HTML page in addition to the PDF that could be enabled for accessibility needs but defaults to off?
  • adamsmith
    A preference that can be addressed in translator code (turned to no snapshot by default) sounds good to me
  • RamonMi
    I noticed a checkbox named Automatically take snapshots when creating items from web pages in Settings-File handling. However, if I deactivate it, all HTML snapshots will be prevented from attaching to the current item when saving a regular item from the browser using the Zotero connector. This is unreasonable for general web projects.
    Could we consider adding a sub-checkbox under the above checkbox to choose whether the HTML snapshot will be attached automatically from the Journal web, e.g. ScienceDirect? PDF/Epub attachments may be preferential for users over HTML snapshots.
  • AbeJellinek
    Yes, attachment priority customization is in the works.
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