Help with ibid. citations - have last used reference selected by default

srippon

For most of us, ibid. citations crop up often, for example when citing a series of quotes a text. But the word processor plugins, the MS Word Plugin, at least, does little to support this operation.
For each ibid., we need to click the "insert reference" button, then search again for the source, then select it and input the page number before clicking OK. Could the plugin be designed so that whenever a new reference is inserted, the last source selected is selected again by default? This would helpfully remove the unnecessary bolded step for ibid. citations.

mark

I haven't cited using an ibid. type style, but what happens if you simply copy-paste the citation field and do a Zotero refresh? I would think that should work.

adamsmith

nope. You can't copy and paste citations within a document, regardless of style. (cut and paste as well as copy and paste to different documents work).

mark

Really? Are we talking about the same thing? I regularly copy and paste a citation field, for instance when I quote multiple excerpts from a source. I have not used an ibid-generating style so I don't know whether that is handled correctly but in my experience copy and pasting citation fields and editing them later does work.

Simon

You can copy and paste fields (definitely) or bookmarks (I think) in Word, and bookmarks in OpenOffice.org. You can't copy and paste ReferenceMarks in OpenOffice.org (because OpenOffice.org strips the formatting).

adamsmith

oh, sorry then - I've only ever used this in Ooo with Reference Marks and just assumed that was a general feature.

mark

So to be clear, srippon, you can simply copy and paste citation fields in Word and click edit citation to change the page number. The ibid should be automatically generated upon a Zotero refresh.

srippon

Thanks Simon and mark, it's good to know that I can copy and paste citations in Word (Is this still true for footnoted styles where Zotero creates the footnote?)

But could the plugin still be modified to have the last source ready by default as I suggested? That would make things even simpler than copy/paste/edit/refresh. (BTW this desire is independent of whether the style is an ibid. type style or not.)

mark

That doesn't make much sense to me — the desire is not independent of citation practice and academic field and my impression is that yours may not be the most common use case. In my experience, adding a citation to a different source than the last cited one is by far the most common use case, and I suspect this holds for many fields. I think in this respect the plugin works well the way it does, certainly since you have the copy and paste option.

srippon

Mark - I don't understand your response. All that prompts the request is that from time to time (at least), most scholars want to cite the very same source twice in a row. That's common enough that they even invented "ibid." notation to make it easier.

In any case, the proposed change shouldn't intefere in any way with citing a different source (obviously I do that a lot myself, so it would be rather stupid to ignore that use case!). All I'm asking for is that the last source item shows up highlighted in the "Add Citation" dialog unless and until the user chooses or searches for another. (The Edit Citation dialog already has a similar feature, for obvious reasons.) What's the perceived downside here?

srippon

Mark, I assume since you haven't responded again that your objection has now evaporated?
(BTW, I just noticed your earlier comment: "I regularly copy and paste a citation field, for instance when I quote multiple excerpts from a source", suggesting that the tweak I proposed here would be of regular use to you yourself!)

Simon

The "classic" add citation dialog is being replaced for the next Zotero release. The new dialog will make it much easier to select citations, so this may not be necessary. But if we did want to implement it, we could make typing "Ibid" select the previously used reference.

adamsmith

The "classic" add citation dialog is being replaced for the next Zotero release. The new dialog will make it much easier to select citations, so this may not be necessary.

that's very exciting - the current dialogue is indeed a bit clumsy. Do you have anymore on what you'll do? And that'll be for the 3.0 release?

Rintze

https://twitter.com/#!/stakats/status/96908516320755713
https://twitter.com/#!/stakats/status/96974024369905665

Simon

The basics are already available on the trunk, albeit disabled by default. Sean took a couple screenshots here and here.

srippon

Simon, Your comment made me realize that my title for this thread was unnecessarily confusing: I really wanted to see the last used reference *highlighted* in the add citation dialog, not actually *selected*. Having it one click away from selection would be perfect! Is there any reason for *not* implementing this tweak (in either the "classic" or planned dialog)?
Like adamsmith, I'd love to hear more about the new add citation dialog plans in any case!
Edit: Pics of new dialog were posted as I was editing and clarify plans and reasons for ibid suggestion, thanks. Looks interesting!

adamsmith

ooh, I like it - and yes, using ibid to call up the last reference makes perfect sense with that.

ericaustinlee

srippon's suggestion is exactly what I was thinking of today myself. I constantly have to cite from the previous text (as does anybody who finds themselves commenting upon a text in the humanities), so it would be helpful if there was (if highlighting/selecting seems to scare off developers for some reason) if there was simply a small little 'ibid' or 'previous ref' button in the dialogue that popped up. It seems like the kind of thing Zotero would be great at :)

ericaustinlee

Or, another thought: adding the ability to due stuff with a 'last-cited' option in a saved search? That way the user could make a saved search based on the last X number of cited items. Hurray for modularity!

adamsmith

I think the way forward will really be to just type ibid in the new interface. Zotero devs are constantly - and rightly - concerned with GUI clutter and overload and this is a solution that wouldn't cost any gui space but be quick and effective.

Saved searches can't really work on this - especially since Zotero now embeds citation data so not everything in a document (that you're co-authoring) needs to be in your library. More generally, Zotero doesn't record when you cite an item.

joCalejandro

Erased