alt Hacker NewsFor folks who are wondering:
This post is about Zotero. https://www.zotero.org/
If you are not an academic, you might not know Zotero.
It is such a pleasure to use. Every app should be like this.
I read everything in it, including books I'm going through right now from https://teachyourselfcs.com/
It also does an amazing job of taking snapshots of posts. I use it all the time to grab posts from HackerNews so I can mark them up.
And it automagically syncs everywhere across devices and lets me store way too many files on the web like the ADD packrat I am, without breaking a sweat.
In short, this software just works, and it works well. So when somebody behind Zotero talks about how to develop software, I listen.
And it's a fun post with some history. You should save this post to Zotero, and then read it.
Replies
What I dislike about Zotero is that it's a pain in the ass to self host. In my department I could spin up a local Zotero server for our PhD students and give them basically unlimited sync, but it's really finnicky
I was looking for software that would let me bookmark recipes (from web pages) and let me scrawl my notes on them. "Needs more of this or that ingredient" "Use less salt". This might be it.
It's baffling actually that Firefox doesn't let you annotate bookmarks, it seems such an obvious feature.
I could dig into their documentation but I'd rather ask an enthusiast. Is it still possible to get your own data out in a nice and easy format? I was once all-in on a note-taking app that slowly got worse and worse and it was a hassle to escape, so now I always consider it before starting.
If Zotero ever enshittifies or just disappears would I still be able to access my data and transfer it to something else?
> You should save this post to Zotero, and then read it.
I might be dense - but I added this story as a URL to my library on Zotero on Android - and I don't see any way to read it "on" Zotero? I can apparently create a citation, however.
Ty! I suspect this will replace some subset of this for me:
- Calibre Ebook reader - Browser bookmarks for article sites - Reference manuals/docs - Biology papers of interest
The guerilla advertising on HN is probably the most transparent lol
Unrelated, but I love when people describe software with the phrase "just works".
It suggests a certain... simplicity that I chase in all of my developments. The amount of EFFORT to get software from "works but..." is interesting. You can get something that works 99% of the time, but that never quite fits the "just works" level of quality that we love to see.
Really, there's an immediate feeling of joy I get when I interact with software that "just works" knowing how much effort it takes to get something to that point.