Upgrade Storageplease add better integration with Scrivener
I have tried the rtf scan, and it doesn't work using the latest versions of Zotero, Scrivener, and Snow Leopard. It would be great to have a plug-in just as there is for Word and Open Office. Thanks.
I don't know what other users do - I doubt the Scrivener-Zotero combination is all that frequent, not least because they have never integrated particularly well.
If RTF-scan worked sufficiently well for you before, you should probably focus on getting that working again, starting with a more detailed report of what isn't working.
And yet, it's a project with limited resources: a handful of paid developers, and (unfortunately) not a big outside developer community.
So it's not sensible for them to spend those limited resources on platform-specific applications with very small (relatively) user bases, when they are already supporting both Word and Open/LibreOffice.
If I were you, I'd use the RTF scan feature.
Anyway, that Zotero would not write any field content is odd - did you try different citation styles? E.g. try with an in-text style like APA or APSA?
I used Zotero's default, figuring that would be the safest.
I think I might just write in Scrivener, using a few cryptic cites, export the document to Word, which I'll have to do anyway for publishers, then add the cites using the plug-in. It's all still faster than typing everything in!
Your initial request for more integration between Zotero and Scrivener: the good news is that it does work, although not perfectly.
You might want to have a look at this and some of the linked posts over at the Scrivener forum. Although I share your particular cause you'll understand that it makes sense for Zotero and its volunteer team to improve the existing rtf-scan feature, which can be used in many apps beyond Scrivener, rather than come up with a plugin for a specific app.
edit: fixed the link, thanks adamsmith.
The problem with using Endnote or Bookends (what some on that forum are suggesting) is this will probably limit you going forward.
I do think Zotero (both its data representation, and the rtf scan functionality) need to be improved to properly support this workflow. It's way too easy to have collisions just inserting an author and date, and so there really needs to be a way to store stable, human-readable, IDs, and to use those. There also needs to be support for th full range of features in the Zotero word/openoffice integration.
Towards that end, I would love to see Zotero simply support the syntax developed by the pandoc community.
However, I would like to keep the option of using regular author-date format alive. I'm thinking of two different usage scenarios:
Using labels is clearly superior if I'm authoring alone.
But if I'm co-authoring with someone who isn't using Zotero or something directly compatible I'd still like to be able to tell him/her "just use author-date in curly brackets. with the following rules..."
Use a default output style in Zotero that generate autor-date with curly bracket like this one: {Autor, date} then manually add the page.
http://rapidshare.com/files/449644793/RTF-Scan-Dragdrop.csl
Then RTF scan and have your result display with the needed style.
I wrote it down here basicly to have the info available on our forum so it can be found by search funtions.
The problem I see, frankly, is that Scrivener's footnote implementation is awkward and pretty weak overall. And while RTF scan is adequate for simple citations, as I understand it, it can't handle multiple items, or prepended/appended text--is that so? If not, could someone please provide a link here to some relevant instruction? Either ability would go a long way towards solving my own issues with the combination of the two.
Thank you!
On the downside that means that a lot of possible outside developers have already found their preferred method of writing with Zotero and aren't likely to take this up. On the upside, it means that a lot of groundwork for improving RTF-scan is already done.
All that said, I did think that multiple citations worked in the current rtf implementation. At least the documentation seems to suggest it does: http://www.zotero.org/support/rtf_scan
1. Reading with Preview
2. Taking notes with DevonThink (I wrote a script that automatically insert the formatted and unformatted selected reference in EndNote (see here)
3. Making draft with Scrivener (copying unformatted references from DevonThink notes!!!)
4. Scanning document in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice
I think this is the best workflow for academic writing!
I'd use Zotero again if I have the possibility of applescript (for the step 2) and a good rtf-scan (for the step 4).
- I can have the right template for different kind of reading notes (citation, paraphrase, summary, ideas). I can fill this template with a screenshot from pdf, or manual adding of text.
- At the end of the template I automatically have the selected EndNote reference: formatted (Author, Title, Publisher, City, pages etc.) and unformatted {Autor, Year #ID @Pages}. The unformatted reference is very important because when I will work with Scrivener, I copy it in the footnote for example. I DON'T NEED TO SEARCH AGAIN AND AGAIN AFTER THE REFERENCE, LIKE IN ZOTERO!!! This is very nice and less time consuming!!!
In the step 4, the scanning process will transform all these unformatted references in formatted references, according with the chosen style (APA, Chicago Style, etc.).
I think this is the quickest workflow ever! Of course, you have to pay for EndNote, DevonThink and Scrivener. But if you are a researcher, it really deserves money.
Go ahead and use it if that's what you want, but using extremely non-free products like Endnote imposes costs on your profession/community as well as on yourself by imprisoning your data in proprietary formats.
(also, we're not deaf, no reason to yell).
1. rtf scan is feckless for serious projects.
2. support for applescript doesn't exist
For the first point, I've been waiting for more than 1 year. No hope. For the second I'm already hopeless…
I'm joining the conversation late, but everyone seems to be assuming Scrivener has to output an RTF file for Zotero to scan. But what about using Scrivener's MultiMarkdown feature with BibLaTeX?
Zotero already has BibTeX citation export and can export references into a .bib database. Anjo7539 has written a Zotero to BibLaTeX translator. (MMD has its own citation format, but it's very primitive, so I won't discuss it further.)
It seems to me that we're not that far away. We just need:
- A way to export BibLaTeX citations, with <prenote> and <postnote> fields
- A way to export the .bib file corresponding to these citations. Jason Friedman describes a way to automate this. (Will this work with Zotero Standalone?)
- If one is writing a specific document, one would simply add all its references to a collection dedicated to the document. This would then be used to create the .bib file.
- Ideally, there would be two enhancements. (1) Citation exports would be intercepted by a dialog allowing prenote, postnote, and author omission before pasting the citation into Scrivener; this is the plugin everyone has been asking for. (2) Instead of exporting a separate .bib file, a standalone program would access the Zotero library directly through Zotero's API.
- Another enhancement would be giving the user some control over the key format. Personally I've used the same algorithm for over thirty years and have had at most 2-3 problem keys. (first 3 letters of primary author's last name, first letter of last name, first letters of other authors' last names, 2-digit date, first major word in title; everything capitalized as they would be in a reference.) Zotero's key algorithm may be more foolproof, but it makes for awkward text.
Most of this seems rather easy. I realize not everyone will want to use LaTeX. But it's not too hard to go from MMD to WYSIWYG formats, like Word or OOo.Am I missing something, or are we this close?
I'm hoping that what marsh says is true, and that it might be closer than I thought.
I have some programming experience, although none with LaTex, but I would be willing to help out if there's anything I could do to help make this work. Thanks.
#anti-segregation
The same is true for the suggestion outlined by marsh above - anyone should feel free to start this.
There is a fairly active and very responsive listserv for development issues, with questions you can always go there
http://groups.google.com/group/zotero-dev
(and to subscribe to this thread, there is a button on the left under "Notification".
One way for a non-programmer to increase the chance that someone will pick this up is to make it as easy as possible. For example creating a wiki page that describes how you would like such integration to work (possibly with screenshots and sketches). Also you can point direct links to the Scrivener developer documentation that describes how plugins or extensions can be developed for that software.
Is there a place documenting a Scrivener api or how to write extensions for Scrivener?