Workflow setup

workflow
Author

Yi Jou (Ruby) Liao

Published

February 11, 2024

General overview and useful links for my digital workflow setup.

Reference manager: Zotero

Zotero 6 (stable)

Zotero 7 (beta)

  • Possible to have both installed on same device accessing same files, but I ran into issues with conflicting extensions so I generally only use Zotero 7

Zotero core setup & guides

Tutorial: The Best Reference Manager Setup (Zotero + ZotFile + Cloud Storage)

  • Zotero only has 300 MB cloud storage on its free tier! I highly recommend to set up cloud storage for storing PDFs from the start.
  • Slightly outdated tutorial, should work okay for Zotero 6

Filename renaming template:

{{ firstCreator case="snake"}}{{ year suffix="_"prefix="_" }}{{ title truncate="80" case="snake"}}

Zotero extensions

  • Better BibTeX for Zotero: bibliographic data management utilities, especially useful for citekey formulas
    • Current citekey formula: auth.lower + '_' + shorttitle(1,1).lower + '_' + year
  • Zotero Attanger (Zotero 7): basically the auto move and rename file function from ZotFile
  • ZotFile (Zotero 6 only): auto move and rename file, send / retrieve PDF from tablet (a bit finnicky), not maintained anymore
    • File renaming rule: {%a_}{%y_}{%t}

Currently not used:

  • Better Notes for Zotero: improved notetaking within Zotero
    • Export from Better Notes markdown to Zotero has been kinda wonky so sticking to base Zotero notetaking for now, which has been regularly getting updates and new features

Digital notes & brain: Obsidian

Obsidian

Obsidian vault is currently stored in my Google Drive / cloud storage and periodically backed up to GitHub repository.

Obsidian extensions / plugins

Highlights:

Miscellaneous

To-do list: Todoist

\(\LaTeX\) compiler: VSCode w/ LaTeX Workshop

PPspliT: PowerPoint add-in that splits animations steps into separate slides for ease of export to PDF