LIDIA Annotations

Zotero plugin for capturing PDF reader annotations in a structured format for the LIDIA project.

The project is set up as a bootstrapped plugin for Zotero 6 and 7. Tested only under Zotero 6.

About

This extension is used to create a database of linguistic diagnostic arguments (hence LiDiA). Users can add linguistic academic articles or books to a shared Zotero folder, create annotations using the PDF reader and use the extension to describe the diagnostic arguments they find in the text. The data is saved as Zotero annotation comments in YAML format. The data will then be read out in a separate web application [1] in order to create a database for the sake of the general community of linguists. The project, together with this Zotero extension, is being documented at [2].

This project is still under active development and is not ready for production use. The plugin was specifically created for use with the LIDIA project at Utrecht University, but the general principle of this Zotero extension may be applicable to other academic projects as well.

Feedback is welcome! You may create an issue or contact one of the developers.

[1] https://github.com/UUDigitalHumanitieslab/lidia [2] https://lidia.readthedocs.io/

Development

Make Zotero ready for the extension (you only need to do this once):

• Create a new Zotero profile with zotero --ProfileManager (here named Develop).
• Configure a custom data directory for the new profile (in this example we use ~/.zotero/zotero/Develop).
• Start the new profile: zotero -P Develop and exit.
• git clone git@github.com:UUDigitalHumanitieslab/lidia-zotero.git /path/to/Projects/LIDIA/lidia-zotero
• mkdir $HOME/.zotero/zotero/Develop/extensions
• echo "<absolute-path-to-source>/build" > $HOME/.zotero/zotero/Develop/extensions/lidia-zotero@cdh.uu.nl
• sed -i '/.*extensions\.lastAppBuildId.*/d' $HOME/.zotero/zotero/Develop/prefs.js
• sed -i '/.*extensions\.lastAppVersion.*/d' $HOME/.zotero/zotero/Develop/prefs.js

This will enable the plugin from the source directory.

Install npm packages:

• npm install

Build and run:

• Make changes in your source
• npm run build
• zotero -P Develop -purgecaches -ZoteroDebugText

Use of React

This extension uses React for rendering part of the UI, as was done earlier in Diego de la Hera's plugin zotero-cita. To make that possible we include a patch to react-dom that is included in zotero-cita as well. This patch forces the use of the XHTML namespace when creating elements, because Zotero 6 by default creates XUL elements.

React also needs to have access to global objects like window and document. This is achieved by passing the window object of the Zotero main window to the bundled JavaScript file when it is loaded in bootstrap.js using the Services.scriptloader.loadSubScript method.

Release

Releases and local builds are made using zotero-plugin.

To create a local build, run npm run build.

To create a release:

• Switch to main branch
• Bump the version in package.json (e.g. 0.2.1)
• Create a signed/annotated tag with the same version (e.g. git tag --sign -m "Release v0.2.1" v0.2.1)
• git push --follow-tags

Reading

• Setting Up a Plugin Development Environment.
• Zotero 7 for Developers