Links, not copies

dirgles
I have a directory full of pdfs that I want to link to. I prefer to link, not copy, because these pdfs change over time (I add notes, comments, etc) and I have two copies (1 at work, 1 at home). Under no circumstances do I ever want Zotero to make a copy.

Unfortunately, it seems impossible to do this. As soon as I index my references, Zotero seems to want to make copies. Ok, turn off indexing.

But then when I want to sync my two directories (export from one and import into the other), there seems to be no way to export links only. Every single format seems to insist on importing copies. I was able to go into the Zotero DB and force the attachments to behave like links, but I'm weary of mucking around in there and it would be a huge pain to have to do that every time I import.

Am I missing something obvious?

Thanks :)
(other than this big stumbling block, I think Zotero is great!! I really hope I can figure this one out)
  • dirgles
    I mucked around with the RIS translator using Scaffold, but I couldn't figure it out. It seems like the translators have no control over this behaviour?
  • dstillman
    edited February 13, 2008
    But then when I want to sync my two directories (export from one and import into the other), there seems to be no way to export links only
    Import/export really isn't meant for syncing two Zotero installs. Not counting the upcoming server-based sync functionality, there are many other ways to sync multiple directories—you can find a dozen or so threads on the topic in these forums, plus some pointers in the documentation (with more instructions coming).

    There could be an export option for preserving links, but exports then become platform-specific (unless the links used relative paths, but those break cross-volume). The general use case for export is to send a reference to a colleague, in which case you'd most likely want the file to be copied into the export directory.
    As soon as I index my references, Zotero seems to want to make copies.
    What do you mean by this? Zotero will extract the fulltext content into a text file, but it shouldn't duplicate the file itself.
  • dirgles
    Dan, thanks for writing back.
    I realize import/export isn't the best mechanism for syncing, but I wasn't sure how else to do it. I'll look around the forums as you suggested.

    The bigger problem, though, was attaching links to files.
    This first arose because I wanted to import a massive Endnote DB, from which I wanted to preserve links to files. I never figured out a way to do this aside from manually changing the Zotero SQLite DB after the import.

    As for exporting... you're right, it would be challenging to cover all the scenarios you listed. I think relative paths would be an easy first step though. If, while importing, we had the option of specifying a new root directory for all imported links (only the ones that are relative paths), I suppose that might help. As for the cross-platform issue, would it be so hard to convert the links so they are happy on the dest platform?

    Taking a step back though, if we're going to assume that exports will always copy the attachments (which seems reasonable, although it would take up a lot of space for someone just wanting to copy links), all of the above problems would go away if, when importing, I had some way of just saying put the copied attachment in dir X and make it a link. So an import dialogue would have an option saying something like:

    "[X] Default destination path for attachments?" (unchecking would require you to specify a dir)
    "[X] Convert attachments to links?"

    This would also solve the very first problem I mentioned, which got me into this whole mess. There's probably a better way of conveying this idea, but hopefully I'm making sense?
    As soon as I index my references, Zotero seems to want to make copies.

    What do you mean by this? Zotero will extract the fulltext content into a text file, but it shouldn't duplicate the file itself.
    That's what I would have thought. Maybe this was happening because of the hack I had done (manually changing the internal Zotero DB) to force the imported attachment copies to become links? I'll investigate further...

    Anyway, thanks again!
    For the time being, I'm just using the URL field, but it's a bit of a pain.

    Dylan
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