Format for embedding citations in word processors

ptsefton · March 4, 2007

Hi,

I've just started exploring Zotero in detail. It is very important for the project I work on that we are able to exchange documents between OpenOffice.org and Word. We would be able to contribute to OOo and Word development if needed.

My initial experiments indicate that citations embedded in Word using Fields are lost when the .doc file is opened in OOo. So, can we look at using a mechanism for carrying citation information that will be preserved. One approach would be to use bookmarks rather than fields. I have also considered looking for hyperlinks, matching those against URLs in Zotero and inserting appropriate citations.

What's the current thinking on this issue within the Zotero team?

Peter

dancohen · March 5, 2007

Thanks for your thoughtful posts here and on your blog, Peter. We have had some discussion (as you might have seen) about linking Zotero to various word processors in the forums and also on the dev list. As we noted there, the Word plug-in, while functional, is really an alpha (we're about to fix some of the formatting bugs you note) and we are very eager for Zotero to support OOo as well as other programs. To do so we might rework the Word plug-in as well--I believe the developer uses SOAP to transfer the information to Word and so maybe there is a reusable or generalizable interface piece on which we could base broader interactions. Anyway, I'll mention this interoperability issue and your bookmarks solution to the developer in charge of word processor integration (and possibly have him contact you).

ptsefton · March 6, 2007

Thanks Dan. Happy to talk about this further.

I have another question about the code: it doesn't seem to have a license on it that I could see in the macro editor. Have I overlooked something? Is it possible to get a version under an open source license so we can attempt to contribute?

dancohen · March 6, 2007

In the root directory of the Zotero extension, you'll see license.txt with the Educational Community License (an OSI-certified license that several other big educational open source projects, like Sakai, use). We'll add the license header to the Word plugin in the next release.