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Zotero Better Notes – Knowledge management inside Zotero

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Re: Zotero Better Notes – Knowledge management inside Zotero

#91

Post by Helmut10001 »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #56
Helmut10001 wrote: post #13

Zotero is great, but only if enhanced with plugins and a few settings. I don't use Zotero Better Notes so far, but here's my list: - [Opinionated decision] disable sync - [Opinionated decision] set “Base directory” (Preferences > Advanced > Files and Folders) to local literature folder - every time you download literature PDFs, create a new subfolder with the motivation for search, - prepend folder names by date-stri…

Thanks for sharing these. I already use a number of these on your list. Though I don't use copy-by-link for files. For me one of the key purposes of zotero is that its the place where I keep these files so I don't have to keep them elsewhere where they aren't as easily searchable. I'm excited to try the duplicates merger tool, I've been forever putting off this because the normal way is such a slog. The Tag one also…

Yes, I think this needs to be decided based on preference. I like to be independent in my file/pdf organization, and also search without Zotero through these files. I further consider original file names important and finally sync my literature folder to my Nextcloud, with full-text search. This is why I prefer linking, instead of file management by Zotero.

Re: Zotero Better Notes – Knowledge management inside Zotero

#92

Post by mickelsen »

adr1an wrote: post #32
mickelsen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I just stumbled upon this project and wanted to share, I'm currently using Obsidian for my personal wiki, but I use Zotero a lot as a paper repo and reader, the organization and metadata tools are great, and extending it to a more powerful note-taking tool seems like a no-brainer. Now it just needs an EPUB reader to replace Calibre, then it'd just be the perfect all-in-one personal library. For now I'm using th…

IDK if it helps you, but a simple epub reader is Bookworm.

It's lovely but I'm on a Mac. For now I've been switching between Google's reader and now trying Yomu (https://www.yomu-reader.com/) but ideally I'd use something open source.

Re: Zotero Better Notes – Knowledge management inside Zotero

#93

Post by mickelsen »

timothevs wrote: post #70
mickelsen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vrite was featured recently, I just mention it because I like how the editor does tables: https://editor.vrite.io/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36446045 Obsidian should definitely take a page from that. I'm currently with a plugin they won't add to the community marketplace: https://github.com/Stardusten/ob-table-enhancer

Thanks for the link to the plug-in for Obsidian! This solves so many of the problems I have had switching to Obsidian completely. If only there were a way to enable a three pane layout in Obsidian, I’d be in heaven.

I think you can as it has both left and right sidebars. All settings, plugins, themes get saved in a dot subfolder from your starting point, so you can replicate that layout for other vaults if you want.

I like highly minimal interfaces, so I modded mine with the Border theme and few CSS snippets so it looks like this: https://cldup.com/LAeiG4q2ED.jpeg

Re: Zotero Better Notes – Knowledge management inside Zotero

#94

Post by noman-land »

bmurphy1976 wrote: post #63
noisy_boy wrote: post #17

Obsidian has replaced all (work, home, mobile) note taking solutions everywhere for me. The last want from my side is removing the friction related to editing markdown tables (e.g. multi-line content in cells) - Obsidian has some plugins that makes things better but it is miles behind what, say, confluence wiki offers for tables.

What are you doing to sync your files? I'm current using the git integration and while it works it's a bit too manual for my tastes. I think I'm ok with last write wins as long as the sync stores history. The whole commiting changes, pushing, pulling, dealing with merge conflicts is a bit too much workflow for my notes.

Drop the folder into Nextcloud.

Re: Zotero Better Notes – Knowledge management inside Zotero

#95

Post by bad_username »

noisy_boy wrote: post #17

Obsidian has replaced all (work, home, mobile) note taking solutions everywhere for me. The last want from my side is removing the friction related to editing markdown tables (e.g. multi-line content in cells) - Obsidian has some plugins that makes things better but it is miles behind what, say, confluence wiki offers for tables.

Native PDF search and frictionless adding of metadata to non-markdown files are lacking also.

Re: Zotero Better Notes – Knowledge management inside Zotero

#96

Post by davidy123 »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #75
davidy123 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people should be making tables, they should be making data, which they put into a table via a query. I ran with this for my own note taking system, mdld. https://github.com/vid/mdld , which works with hedgedoc.

A Table is data, don't make things unnecessary complicated. Some data are better managed directly in a table, if you have a good table interface, others are more natural managed in separate files. Each case their own. And how does mdld differ from dataview?

Huh! I hadn't seen dataview before (I think mdld predates it), I'm more than happy to use another work if it's a supported superset. mdld is sort of inspired by Semantic Mediawiki, dataview uses SMW's :: notation, which is a good sign. However, I don't see a few features that mdld has, like concepts, which are very useful, and the hedgedoc application of mdld has some nice dynamic views, for example, creating a gantt chart out of data dispersed across markdown files. In general, its emphasis is creating things out of data to support features like round-tripping, rather than creating self-contained black box information views. But its more of a proof of concept, so I'm going to look at adopting dataview.

Re: Zotero Better Notes – Knowledge management inside Zotero

#97

Post by jmhammond »

superposeur wrote: post #90

I like to annotate pdfs by hand, so import from Zotero into Notability on my ipad. Does anyone know of a good way to automatically reintegrate hand annotated pdfs back into Zotero? Ideally a given Zotero reference entry would have two pdfs, original and annotated, as well as a .note file. (The various plug in options seem only to manage text annotations.)

I realize that below I'm not answering your direct question (and instead just talking about the text-based annotations), but I wanted to document it because I went from handwritten to highlighting and typing (clumsily on the ipad)

I used to do this myself (though with GoodNotes), but I'm switched the Zotero in-built PDF viewer.

The annotations you make in the in-built PDF reader are separate from the PDF file itself to: 1. Easier syncing - the annotations are light, rather than syncing the entire PDF > "We'll always try to support external workflows as efficiently as possible, but it will never match the seamless experience we're able to provide when everything is done within the app." [1] 2. The internal (text-based) annotations show up as notes, which has a neat effect that when I started using BetterNote this morning, it already has every one of my annotations ready to be used. I was surprised and a little delighted (there's a tiny button on the tab bar with a magnifying glass[2], it show all your notes/annotations from EVERY file and lets you link them to your workspace note). 3. You can export your annotations onto the PDF if you want to store them on the PDF itself.

The bad: handwritten annotations don't show up in the notes list (in the Zotero 7 beta build I'm running, at least)[3].

[1]: https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/annotations_in_database [2]: https://app.screencast.com/gv9JBZNpJyoSF [3]: https://app.screencast.com/0YQjZSV54R1Ha

Re: Zotero Better Notes – Knowledge management inside Zotero

#98

Post by evolve2k »

ssss11 wrote: post #46
evolve2k wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charging for the sync is their primary revenue model. Zotero is doing the same. I don’t bemoan this approach that basically gives everything local away for free.

It’s a tricky one in this age of “free”. I’d ironically pay for them to allow my agency and privacy, I’m probably not _most_ people though.

Sorry whete are you missing agency and privacy? It’s desktop first software you can back it up and pretty much sync it as you like.

Specifically regarding Obsidian it’s just a folder full of plain text markdown files, doesn’t get much more portable than that.

Re: Zotero Better Notes – Knowledge management inside Zotero

#99

Post by superposeur »

jmhammond wrote: post #97
superposeur wrote: post #90

I like to annotate pdfs by hand, so import from Zotero into Notability on my ipad. Does anyone know of a good way to automatically reintegrate hand annotated pdfs back into Zotero? Ideally a given Zotero reference entry would have two pdfs, original and annotated, as well as a .note file. (The various plug in options seem only to manage text annotations.)

I realize that below I'm not answering your direct question (and instead just talking about the text-based annotations), but I wanted to document it because I went from handwritten to highlighting and typing (clumsily on the ipad) I used to do this myself (though with GoodNotes), but I'm switched the Zotero in-built PDF viewer. The annotations you make in the in-built PDF reader are separate from the PDF file itself…

Thanks for this information — I’ll give the built in Zotero annotation took a closer look.

Re: Zotero Better Notes – Knowledge management inside Zotero

#100

Post by Capricorn2481 »

noisy_boy wrote: post #85
Capricorn2481 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obsidian has an optional paid sync plugin that works out of the box. You could use Syncthing but I don't think it does text file diffing? Obsidian Sync keeps a version history of each file I have tried to use a plugin called Obsidian Git that automatically runs git commits and pushes on an interval, but I have found it frequently had conflicts and the visual for resolving those conflicts wasn't super helfpul. I ended…

For my notes, it is only me who edits, so I don't have conflicts as such. If I edit notes on the phone while on the move, syncthing syncs to PC once I'm back home; similarly any changes done at home on the PC flow to the phone. I also use the Obsidian Git plugin (though I have disabled automatic commits and commit as and when I feel the need) - haven't had any conflicts so far.

It's also only me editing my notes and I have Obsidian git conflicts all the time.

Also, it freezes my typing every time it tries to push/pull. So if you put it on an interval, to make it more automatic, your typing will just be frozen every however many seconds

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