Comment by nickledave
3 hours ago
For 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.
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've been wanting to try it. In what way is it finnicky?
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?
User data exports are available as csv, xml, and latex, with original documents available in original input and also pdf.
It's also all open source and local-first. You can also add your own self-hosted WebDAV server for syncing across clients. Also, it's developed by a nonprofit organization.