Zotero 8 is out. It includes a new Add Citation system and tab-based notes that might -- might -- make me stop using Zettlr.

This is an early review -- I've found that major changes in Zotero take a bit of time to assess, usually during the course of writing a paper or two (or even a book!). I'll give a quick run down of my impressions of the new features.

Improved PDF and Snapshot Reader

The PDF reader now sports a much nicer dark mode look -- a dark blue background with grey text, rather than a simple inverted colors. It looks really good and seems a lot easier to read.

Web page snapshots also load this way. At first, I thought it might not look that good, but so far it's quite lovely to look at. And, it appears Zotero 8 solves a small problem I've seen with web snapshots: namely, that doing a ctrl-f search results in almost invisible highlights. With the dark background, the highlights are much easier to see.

Along for the ride is a subtler change. Unless I accidentally hit an option somewhere, Zotero 8's default annotation tool is now underlining instead of highlighting. At first I was a bit put off by this, but I kind of like it better this way.

Notes in Tabs

A major change is in terms of note behavior. Notes can still appear in the side pane, but now double-clicking on a note opens it in a new tab.

That is a big change -- one that could solve a problem I've had with Zotero since it was first created: synthesis. As I've written before,

Synthesis is not an area Zotero is useful for, in my view. As I've said before, it works better with notes tied to specific citations. Think of annotating a book or PDF. It's just not good for a multi-citation thought -- while it can store "standalone notes," I think they get lost in the system.

Over the past few years, I've used Zettlr to synthesize ideas across multiple sources -- a stage of writing that I use in between note-taking on specific sources and writing first drafts in LibreOffice. Zettlr has been useful for this because I can tag notes and move between them easily, so it has beecome a key tool for working out initial ideas.

Zotero has always had the capacity to do "standalone" notes. But looking through my library, I only have 112 of them -- and I've been using Zotero since 2009! It's clearly not been in my habit to use that tool.

However, I'm starting to wonder if Zotero's new note tabs could change all this. These tabs now include easier access to note-level tagging and other options, like linking notes to other items. I can imagine having tabs of PDFs open, each with their own specific notes, and a standalone note tab also open, where I can compose ideas based on multiple sources.

And since Zotero's built-in search and tag-based sorting is a lot more powerful than Zettlr's, this might make it much easer organize project files.

The downsides here are that Zotero notes are stored in a database, not in simple Markdown files. In addition, Zotero is a bit more computer-intensive than Zettlr. Finally, and most concerning, syncing anything in Zotero requires use of Zotero's central servers (yes, one can run your own but it's very complicated), so if I have material that I absolutely do not want leaving my computer, that's a no-go.

New Cite-While-You-Write Design

The new cite-while-you-write is a mix of the "Classic" add citation dialog and the search-bar style one. I always used "Classic," so the new version, which shows the library below the search-bar, is familiar enough to use.

Plus -- and this is another point in favor of using Zotero for synthetic notes -- I can simply add the contents of a note directly into LibreOffice. Those notes appear to match the style of LibreOffice. This could be a very cool approach -- take notes in Zotero and then insert them into LibreOffice for refinement into a draft.

Bugs

I found a bug in 8.0 involving the PDF reader freezing up. I reported it and it was fixed within days -- a lovely moment for FOSS development.

But there are still a few bugs that, while not nearly as incapacitating as the PDF reader freezing, are annoying nonetheless. One is a case of the "wiggles" -- sometimes when I add text to notes from a PDF, the notes "wiggle" around, as if parts of the text are loading and unloading quickly. I also see "wiggling" (sorry, can't describe it better than that) in the PDFs themselves on occasion.

Another is that the new cite-while-you-write is slow. It reminds me of when Zotero first went "standalone" (i.e., instead of only being a Firefox extension). Zotero Standalone was very slow early on, but it's greatly improved. I'm hoping the cite-while-you-write system is optimized.

FOSS Academic Lifestyle Dream Analysis: I Likes It

As usual, the mighty Zotero remains a central part of my FOSS Academic Lifestyle Dream. I'm always surprised more people aren't using this tool. And with the simple addition of notes in tabs, Zotero is expanding its capabilities in really exciting ways. I'll report later (after writing an article or two!) about how it's going.