PDFs must be in ~/Zotero/storage

[slagathor69]

This is probably obvious but PDFs must be stored in ~/Zotero/storage.

I was having issues with the application finding any PDFs at all but realized since I use ZotMoov, all my PDFs are kept in a custom directory of ~/Desktop/Zotero PDFs so I can have these synced to cloud to read.

In case anyone else has same issue: to solve this, I selected all files in Zotero with Cmd/Ctrl-a and then from Tools > Attachments > Convert all linked files to stored.

It would be nice if in future versions of this application, a custom directory of PDFs was able to be set but unsure how incompatible this is, given program uses the sqlite file.

Either way, I really appreciate this application and love that I can use the custom ollama hosted on my remote desktop!

[aahepburn]

There may be a way to fix this relatively easily, I will check how those paths are being resolved right now and will see if it's possible. Thanks for the idea

[aahepburn]

@slagathor69 You can specify custom storage paths in Settings. See the latest version: https://github.com/aahepburn/RAG-Assistant-for-Zotero/releases/tag/v0.4.5

[slagathor69]

That's awesome! Thank you for incorporating this feature. Much appreciated.

[slagathor69]

@slagathor69 You can specify custom storage paths in Settings. See the latest version: https://github.com/aahepburn/RAG-Assistant-for-Zotero/releases/tag/v0.4.5

@aahepburn Hey so I've tried setting a custom PDF path running this on both macOS and Linux now and both give same error saying "Indexing Failed: All X new items failed to index. Common causes: PDFs not found (check storage path), network drive issues, or file permissions" so I just reverted to workaround described below for now.

My use case is like this:

1. I add article to Zotero
2. ZotMoov automatically moves (not copies) PDF to cloud backed directory so nothing exists in ~/Zotero/storage
3. I open PDF in Zotero, read, highlight, annotate and it saves it to cloud backed directory so edits sync to all my other devices
4. I use RAG-Assistant-for-Zotero to ask questions about library PDFs

Unfortunately the only workaround I've found to be able to use RAG-Assistant-for-Zotero with this setup is to convert all linked files to stored files, sync new items to RAG-Assistant-for-Zotero, and then use ZotMoov to move all the ~/Zotero/storage PDFs back to cloud directory (it must be set to move not copy otherwise it'll open ~/Zotero/storage PDFs by default and my annotations won't sync). Then I repeat this process whenever I add more PDFs I want to use with RAG-Assistant-for-Zotero.

If you are able to advise how to get this working, I'd appreciate it.

Thank you

[aahepburn]

Hey, yes, I think I found another issue with how absolute paths were being formatted. I just pushed a fix (hopefully). It will be released in the next version in a couple of days.

[aahepburn]

@slagathor69 This should be fixed as of v0.4.6

Let me know if you are still having issues.