Zotero is awful. It's heavyweight - in fact, a whole separate browser only to manage my bibligraphy (ever tried to use it with ~10k items?). Provides no CLI interface (to automate workflows with scripts). It's data model is weird - e.g., item types include such thing as "instant message", but more academia-relevant types (e.g., "dataset") are absent ("preprint" was incorporated only recently); ISSNs are treated as properties of articles rather than journals. And it boasts it has included its own PDF viewer, whereas I see it as down-side rather than improvement (more bloatware included - why not just follow the division of labor and delegate this functionality to external viewers... ahhh, yes, there is no annotating standard among PDF viewers...).But all other alternatives for bibliography management I know of are even worse.
ar-jan|2 years ago
Yes, around 13k currently. Startup is slow, but I keep it open so that doesn't matter much. With Zotero 6, speed isn't great for general usage, but workable. Zotero 7 (beta) however feels very fast. I've switched to it already -- most plugins haven't been upgraded yet, but (at least currently) you can switch between v6 and 7 since there's no database updates involved.
bronzecarnage|2 years ago
I hacked it into a python package a couple of months ago in an ADHD hyperfocus induced frenzy. Sounds like you might like it. Still a long way to go, but it's out there and FOSS. Contributions are welcome.
https://github.com/jayghoshter/prem