Quote:
Originally Posted by mr.giroro
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I use Endnote for managing my references. Endnotes also creates a directory for each PDF files linked to the software (and keep the PDFs in the respective directory). Now that I have an Iliad, I have to have Four different copies of the same documents in four different folders--two for Iliad (one for sync and the backup created by Companion software), One for Endnote, and one for the main collection. This not only wastes space on my hard drive (7GB x 4 = 28GB) but also requires a lot of my attention to manage them. It would have been much easier if I could simply sync my literature directory with Iliad.
Also, any further revision to my document collection/structure gets much more complicated. As I have to sync back and forth between Iliad and PC, this makes room for mistake and headache. I see there is a lot of room for improvement in Iliad's software (certainly for such an expensive piece of gadget). I hope the usability of the software gets better sometime in the near future. Otherwise, I may have to go back to my X60 Tablet and continue to destroy my eyes with the flickering screen 
Thank you for your comments and suggestions. |
OK, I see your problem. iRex mucks around with the location of PDFs in one way, endnote mucks around with them in a different way. At first I thought that endnote was just pointing to an existing file because the menu option says "link to PDF" but it actually makes a copy and stores it in a sub-directory. At the risk of appearing provocative, perhaps it is endnote that should do things differently
I think, however, that there is a way of coercing things to work so that you could have a single copy of each PDF (and then back it up somewhere), and have easy access from endnote and be able to view the PDFs on the iliad using the contentlister to navigate. I think you could do something based on a kludge that I find useful. First I'll explain my kludge and then how you could use it.
I have a single folder on my USB key with all my articles in it as PDFs, each PDF in a container folder with manifest file. I name the PDFs in a consistent manner so I find it easy to find a particular reference if I know the first author. I can use the iliad search to find all articles by author xxxx, for example.
When I am working on a project or paper, however, I like to keep the papers that I am reading and using for that project with that project. I think of my full collection as a library, and the copies that I keep with a paper or project as items that I have borrowed from the library.
One of the many things I like about linux is symlinks, where you can refer to the same file by creating symlinks in different places. This goes beyond what windows shortcuts offer. On my linux box I used to create a symlink that links to the articles that are in a project.
The iliad uses linux, but by default USB and CF memory do not use the linux file system so symlinks don't work. But I found that it is possible to create a container folder with a manifest.xml file that works like a shortcut. I have created a script to do this for me, so now on my PC all I do is select a container folder on my USB that has the PDF article, hit a hotkey and it creates a new folder with a manifest.xml that points to the original PDF. It knows about the mount points on my PC and on the iliad and changes the path accordingly. I then move that "shortcut" to the appropriate place on the USB key for the paper that I am working on. When I use the USB key on the iliad and select the shortcut it opens the PDF at the original location. It even uses the same scribble file so any notes I made previously are visible and any new notes I make are available no matter where I open the PDF from.
Now, endnote stores the location it has saved the PDF to in the endnote database. I think therefore it should be possible to do the following:
i) export some fields from endnote, including the location of the PDF file to some text format that can be used in a script.
ii) process the exported information and for each reference to a PDF file create a folder and manifest.xml that points to the correct location of the PDF file. The paths would need to be corrected to allow for what they would be on the PC versus what they need to be on the iliad---that should be part of what the script does.
If you have your endnote file (and it's data folders) plus these "shortcuts" on your CF disk then you have all of your library in one place. When you use it on your PC you can search for and open the PDFs using endnote. When you use it on the iliad you can use the "shortcuts" that refer to the actual locations of the PDFs in your endnote data folders.
This way you use endnote as your master for managing your references and you just run the script whenever you need to create the shortcuts.
And then you can just back-up the CF card regularly with any kind of sync software (there is even rsync.exe for windows) just in case you
lose it in a Swedish library.