Chrome App Store - Possible step to Google Docs Integration?

aatawfik

I have a feature request that might aid in the Google Docs Integration. I know there is currently a Zotero plugin out there in the Chrome App Store. I would recommend enhancing this a bit so that it mimics the Word Plug-in.

So the user would

1. Clicks on the Chrome App
2. A pop-up comes appear that reads the authors from your zotero library.
3. The user can type the two or three authors they want to include. Similar to how this is done in Word. (ie - Johnson and Johnson, 2012; Smith and Smith; 2010)
4. It pastes the text wherever the cursor is currently located. So if the individual was using Google Docs, it would place the author's name in there.

What i'm suggesting doesn't necessarily have to link with the bibliography right now. Users can drag and drop now to Google Docs if they want in the meantime. Although that bibliography linnk is a huge part of what Zotero is about, this might help in the meantime to provide a lookup and editing of the in-text paragraph citations.

adamsmith

You realize that you can already use quickcopy from Zotero to drag&drop (or insert via clipboard) citations?

http://www.zotero.org/support/creating_bibliographies#quick_copy

I believe Dan (the lead developer) has expressed a lot of skepticism on "shooting" references from Zotero to wherever the cursor is. So I doubt anything like that will be implemented (and if so it'd be in Zotero itself, not in the Chrome/Safari connectors, which are purposefully lightweight).

The way forward for google docs - just like all other non Word/LibreOffice word processors - is an improved RTF-scan
http://www.zotero.org/support/rtf_scan

dstillman

Well, it'd be blindly triggering the insertion in Zotero that I'd object to. This could in theory be implemented in the connectors, but I don't know if it's worth it when there's Quick Copy and RTF Scan. Someone could certainly write a separate Chrome plugin that did this, though.

fbennett

Enchancing RTF scan to work with Zotero keys (like this) would give you very workable integration with Google Docs.

Google Docs will save to ODF format. It should be possible to replace RTF scan keys with live Zotero links in an ODF document. If someone were to produce such a converter, it would give us integration with many external tools. It would make quite a splash.

adamsmith

Frank - why do you think ODF is so much preferable to RTF? I thought RTF can do footnotes etc. And doesn't citeproc put out RTF by default? (these are actual questions - I don't know a ton about this).

fbennett

With RTF, you can insert a formatted reference, but it will just be a static string. ODF can store and retrieve live Zotero references, so you should be able to return a linked document that is editable in Zotero. Apart from that convenience, a scanner that works on ODF documents could merge freshly-added "Scan" references with existing Zotero links already in there, and return contextually correct cites -- it would be more robust.

fbennett

In passing, there's another handy feature in the design. Drag-and-drop cites in the form described under the link above include a zotero://select link, so you can click from your document back to the Zotero item. I don't think that's possible yet from the word processor plugins. (That's nothing to do with ODF vs RTF, but it's nifty so I thought I'd mention it.)

fbennett

I've done a few little tests, and discovered that creating a linked ODF document from the proposed drag and drop markers is astonishingly simple. There is no need to call Zotero; we can just insert the markers, and the word processor plugins will take over from there.

I'll open a discussion on zotero-dev for this.