[GUI Plugin] Zotero Metadata Importer

[DaltonST]

Version 1.0.67 - 2020-07-13 RIS File export: add new pushbutton for exporting L1/L4 Tags that have the absolute path of the respective Calibre book (instead of the path of the intermediate temporary file) to provide the ability to "Link" to the original Calibre book rather than importing into Zotero the physical book file itself.

Caution: "Linking" a Calibre book instead of "Storing" it in Zotero disables the ZMI "Collection Comparison" function for each Linked book, since by definition the Linked book does not physically exist in Zotero storage.


DaltonST

[kobrick]

Originally Posted by DaltonST

Version 1.0.67 - 2020-07-13 RIS File export: add new pushbutton for exporting L1/L4 Tags that have the absolute path of the respective Calibre book (instead of the path of the intermediate temporary file) to provide the ability to "Link" to the original Calibre book rather than importing into Zotero the physical book file itself.

Caution: "Linking" a Calibre book instead of "Storing" it in Zotero disables the ZMI "Collection Comparison" function for each Linked book, since by definition the Linked book does not physically exist in Zotero storage.


DaltonST

New update works perfectly for linking files. Exactly what I needed, thanks so much!

[DaltonST]

Version 1.0.68 - 2020-07-20 Qt tweaks.


DaltonST

[DaltonST]

If you must use ZMI in the near future, do not upgrade to Calibre 5.7.

Calibre 5.7 totally redesigned a small piece that ZMI uses to notify the Calibre GUI that it needs to entirely reload its list of books due to new books that it did not know about when it was originally started. ZMI uses the "old" small piece (that no longer exists), hence ZMI is broken in 5.7.

As soon as I can change ZMI to use the new functionality in 5.7, I will do so and upload a new ZMI version.


In the meantime, you might want to install the 32bit version of Calibre 5.6, and use ZMI from that version. You can still be using 5.7 on the 64bit version, including the identical settings, etc., although the ZMI Icon on the ToolBar will disappear because ZMI will fail to load.



DaltonST

[DaltonST]

Version 1.0.69 - 2020-12-13 Compatibility changes for Calibre 5.7. Minimum Version now 5.7.

Note that if you use the RIS File Type plugin, Extract RIS Citations (RIS), you must upgrade it also due to an unrelated and different change required by Calibre 5.7.




DaltonST

[DaltonST]

Version 1.0.70 - 2020-12-14 Technical changes to improve performance.



DaltonST

[ngirard]

Hi and happy new year,

I'm using ZMI v1.0.70, Calibre v5.10 and Zotero v5.0.95 on Linux (Ubuntu 20.04).

I sucessfully performed the following steps:

1. Create a RIS file by selecting 2 books and clicking the button labelled "Export RIS file for 'Linking books' in Zotero [selected books]"
2. Import the RIS file into a new collection in Zotero
3. Quit Zotero

At that stage, I clicked on the button labelled 'Retrieve ZKey from Zotero attachments [just imported]', and a dialog box appeared, displaying this error message: "Retrieve Keys from Zotero Database: Zotero Storage Database is LOCKED. You must exit from Zotero before ZMI can retrieve the Zotero Key for your Calibre books just exported and then imported."

I verified that no zotero process was running.

How may I solve this problem ?

Cheers

[DaltonST]

File locking is an OS function, and I only use Windows 10 to develop and test my plugins. I suggest simply restarting Calibre, then ZMI, then using the "get collections" function in ZMI again. It should pick up anything that is missing for each collection that you specify.



DaltonST

[ngirard]

Originally Posted by DaltonST

File locking is an OS function, and I only use Windows 10 to develop and test my plugins. I suggest simply restarting Calibre, then ZMI, then using the "get collections" function in ZMI again. It should pick up anything that is missing for each collection that you specify.

Thanks for your reply. For some reason I wasn't notified of it.

I'm afraid I couldn't find the "get collections" function you mentioned...

Also I didn't find any repository for ZMI's source code. Would you be willing to create one on e.g. GitHub, in order to help investigating & contributing to the project ?

Cheers

[partnoonein]

Hi Dalton

I have spent a lot of time past few days
1) trying to figure out what the ZMI plugin is supposed to do between Calibre and Zotero and
2) how to make it work with Calibre and Zotero

Here is what I am hoping to accomplish.
(*) Use Case: Any changes made to metadata for a pdf in calibre or Zotero should be synced (either through export/import manually or automatically). I want to store all files in calibre and none in Zotero storage.

• Did not touch the default value of M2 (extra = {path})
• I select a file in Calibre and export (using the ZMI: Export RIS) from ZMI a RIS file for "Linking." and import that into Zotero standalone.
• I import the RIS file into Zotero using "Link to files in Original Location" and "Place Imported collection and items into the new collection."
• (It says linked files cannot be synced with Zotero, not sure what that means btw)

I cannot "Retrieve ZKey from New Zotero Attachment" (I made sure that Zotero standalone was closed for any lock release on the DB). When I hit that option "Retrieve Zkey," nothing happens (again, Zotero standalone is closed). I then go to my ZMI Comparison tab and try to compare Zotero collection items to calibre books. The tab finds my Zotero collection and comparison says :

Total Collection items in Zotero: 1
Total Collection items in Calibre: 0
Key: XXXXXXXX type: book title: myTitle content: None path: None
Expected differences are equal to the actual differences listed above.



Other questions include the following:

• How do I sync/export (auto or manual) between Calibre and Zotero for existing files or newly added files in either
• Is there a user guide in addition to the screenshots provided in this thread and hovered tool tips? The reason I ask this is that I am at a loss to understand how I can manage metadata seamlessly between calibre and Zotero using ZMI

Thank you very much for spending the time to answer my query.

OS: Windows
Calibre 5.16.1 (64bit windows)
ZIM plugin 1.0.70
Zotero standalone 5.0.96.2

[Aurélien L]

Hi,

Thanks very much for this great extension!

I'm a bit lost, I don't understand how to do two things:

1) Importing only books from Zotero to Calibre (and not papers)

2) Having a common storing books folder for Zotero and Calibre. I use Zotfile, so all my papers and books on Zotero are in the same folder with a title "Author Year Title.pdf". Is it possible that Calibre use directly this folder i.e without duplicating the files in an another directory?

Thanks very much for any help!

[remy]

Hi
Any update about how to use this plugin ?
I'm a lost between calibre and zotero.

Thanks

[BetterRed]

The developer hasn't logged on since mid-February.

[vorcisrdr]

One potentially dumb question: I would like to use a custom tag (in my case I have built a way to classify my material using a 'genre' tag that uses dots to separate topics and this is used to convert to a folder structure I can easily follow in the device -i use a boox note-) and a custom output path for the zotero items.

For example, my books go into /Books/genre1/genre2/genre-or-author-short.
I would like my papers to go into /Papers/topic-or-tag based on subcollection/author-or-nothing

How can I accomplish this? And thank you for this plugin!!

[DaltonST]

Deleted due to new official release. See Original Post.