51–60 of 63 posts
Another enthusiastic Zotero user here. Current library has 13,775 items and for a low yearly price one can have multi-device sync and support the project. I'm also syncing to a server I own, for complete data ownership (just in case).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't had an issue doing this with a standard WebDAV server and this has been true since 2007 or so.
Did you sync all data to multiple computers without a Zotero account? Zotero's documentation said WebDAV could sync attachment files. But everything else required a Zotero account.[1] [1] https://www.zotero.org/support/sync
WebDAV support is nice to save money, but from a privacy perspective it’s a huge bummer that the sync servers get all your citation metadata. A better self-hosting story¹ is one path to resolving this. End-to-end encryption² similar to e.g. Firefox Sync is another. Zotero has a security overview³ that shows they clearly care about good practices, but it’s still bothersome to have to trust the server when many other applications have proven E2EE works great even for non-technical users⁴.
Unfortunately from the main Zotero dev’s responses, it seems clear that they have no incentive to implement either and probably never will (look, the same comment from 2½ [now 4!] years ago⁵) without some shift in circumstances (massive increase in funding, new regulatory requirements). Even if a community member implemented the entirety of either solution, dstillman can just (rightly, tbh) claim it will increase their maintenance burden when they are trying to support paying customers.
1: https://github.com/zotero/dataserver/issues/105#issuecomment...
2: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/380780/#Comment...
3: https://www.zotero.org/support/security
4: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/advanced-data-prote...
I highly recommend everyone to use Zotero. Their original marketing as being 'for academics' is entirely wrong and it is a first-in-class bookmark/knowledge manager. There are many software recommendations that seem sort of hype-y: Obsidian, Notion, Keybase, etc. Zotero is not that and is a daily driver for me for years. It has also replaced Calibre for me although YMMV there.
Do you pay for their sync or self host? If self host, what do you use?
I used "better bibtex" (?) to ensure files were reliably renamed and moved to an appropriate folder, all automatically.
A real set-and-forget setup that ran without hitch for years.
Zotero is very good nowadays. Its unbearably slow though, and it doesn't seem this will ever get better.
Could you share how/when it is slow? We’re considering using this at work and I’d love your feedback.
Personally, I used auto-export for all additional functionality. So, I didn't use any Word (LibreOffice) plugins that hooked into Zotero or whatever. I'd just consume a giant .bib file as and when necessary.
On modern hardware Zotero is probably fine. And it's reasonably flexible. A suggestion: export/import a big refs file (plus PDF attachments) and see if it can handle your daily workload. I suspect it will.
Another enthusiastic Zotero user here. Current library has 13,775 items and for a low yearly price one can have multi-device sync and support the project. I'm also syncing to a server I own, for complete data ownership (just in case).
How do you sync to your own server? Do you mean just "some" data or did you figure out how to self host their open source (but undocumented) backend?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi @ifh-hn , would you mind sharing what features you feel might make zotero better than text files on a disk? I'm genuinely interested to learn. I've heard of zotero maybe a year or so ago, and was curious about it, but never took the plunge. I manage the bulk of my info/knowledge base across mostly locally-saved text files, with a few other tidbits leveraging PDFs and word process files (.odt, .docx)...and really i…
I use it in an academic sense. I use it browser plugin to one click capture a source. Zotero mostly automatically identifies the source type, author, and other metadata. It can retrieve metadata directly from files like pdfs too. Further it has ability to retrieve metadata from ISBN, doi, and other identifiers. It can export these sources to really any citation style and also integrates with other software for this p…
Another enthusiastic Zotero user here. Current library has 13,775 items and for a low yearly price one can have multi-device sync and support the project. I'm also syncing to a server I own, for complete data ownership (just in case).
How do you sync to your own server? Do you mean just "some" data or did you figure out how to self host their open source (but undocumented) backend?