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Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

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Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#51

Post by Libbum »

boyband6666 wrote: post #37
zwaps wrote: post #6

Zotero has improved a lot, while Mendeley has repeatedly regressed. Mendeley used to be quite a good program, but recently you can not export annotated PDFs meaningfully. For example, sending a folder of annotated PDFs to a co-author during a literature review is impossible. This is obviously the case since Elsevier does not want you to trade research papers, whether you have lawfull access or not. The updates that t…

Zotero has improved a lot, though sadly it still has a way to go on the user experience of Mendeley. My main gripes are - The way that it still doesn't play nice with cloud services (syncing the directory and its just a matter of time until you get database corruption. It takes a lot of wonky setting up to get it to kind of work, which just shouldn't be the case - The lack of developers and thus slow pace of improvem…

What cloud service are you attempting to connect to? I'm using my universities' box.com account - which generally has pretty appalling support (on linux at least). Zotero has managed this flawlessly.

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#52

Post by Lord_Nightmare »

justinclift wrote: post #4

Reading through that, it seems like Mendeley uses SQLite for it's local database. There aren't that many SQLite encryption libraries around (generalising), so it's probably using either SQLCipher or SEE. https://www.zetetic.net/sqlcipher https://www.sqlite.org/see/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki There's a reasonable chance the page size and passphrase is stored or cached on the machine. If someone (not me) takes the time an…

They're using SEE, see https://eighty-twenty.org/2018/06/13/mendeley-encrypted-db

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#53

Post by veddox »

phren0logy wrote: post #34

To anyone looking for an alternative, I'd just throw out there that I've been very happy with ReadCube. It's proprietary subscription software, but that's a trade-off I can live with for a great browser plugin, mobile apps with good annotation, cloud storage of annotated articles, seamless syncing across devices, and a high-quality Word citation plugin that works on the Mac. This company bought Papers, the Mac app, a…

I used ReadCube several years ago when it was still really new (and free). Great program, very pretty interface - but it didn't work on Linux. When I switched from Windows, I had to let it go.

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#54

Post by veddox »

Mendeley is (or at least, was) a great software. It works on Linux and did exactly what I needed. Half a year ago, I suddenly couldn't open my PDFs anymore from within the desktop app. Web interface still worked, mobile still worked, just the desktop version was broken. (Which happens to be the only one I seriously use.) When I wrote to them several months later inquiring into the issue, they told me they were still working on the fix. (It's still not working on my machine.) Now this. Perhaps I really should look into Zotero...

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#57

Post by lvs »

Entertainingly, it was precisely that update that induced me to drop Mendeley and switch to Zotero. After updating to that version, every login attempt at the app failed. I guess it hadn't fully updated the database because import into Zotero worked flawlessly. I was pleasantly surprised by how much better Zotero has gotten in the last few years.

The browser and MS Word plugins actually work pretty well, although several of the citation style templates seem out-of-date.

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#59

Post by eythian »

aw3c2 wrote: post #48
jjoonathan wrote: post #33

Mendeley also snitches evidence of your SciHub habit to Elsevier. It probably won't amount to anything, but do you really want to bet against Elsevier becoming exceptionally greedy, desperate, or both?

Please provide some citations for that claim.

They would, but they can't export them.

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#60

Post by erreJulian »

I´ve been using Zotero for a long time now and I can’t recommend it enough. Along with several plugins, such as ZotFile [1] and ZoteroBetterBibTex [2] I’ve been able to build a very flexible workflow that allows me to work either in a traditional processor, in Latex and even in Markdown+pandoc on iOS. Recently they also added support for Google Docs [3] and it does seems to be working quite well. It enjoys the benefits of open software, such as an engaging community and support.

[1] http://zotfile.com [2] https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/ [3] https://www.zotero.org/support/google_docs

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