Brace mistake by Exporting to BibTeX

kljklj

Hi,

I need help with exporting my data to a BibTeX file.

Here an example of an output:
"@book{hertel_atom-_2008,
title = {Atom-, Molekul- Und Optische Physik 1: Atomphysik und Grundlagen der Spektroskopie},
isbn = {9783540306139 3540306137},
language = {German},
publisher = {Springer Verlag},
author = {\{Hertel\} and \{Schulz\}},
year = {2008}
}"

The problem now is the output of the author as you maybe can see (should be "author = {Hertel and Schulz},"). What is wrong?

Everything else is fine. I am using Zotero on MacOs. Version 3.0.11.1

If you have an idea what could be wrong, let me know.

THX!

adamsmith

we're currently updating the translator so part of this may be fixed automatically in a couple of days, but how are you entering the author(s)? Why are there no first names?

kljklj

Hi adamsmith,

I entered them by adding a new book and then in the field Author "(full name)". Then an other author with the plus-sign.

The first names are unimportant in my case.

By the way: It might be interesting for others to have a shortcut for getting:
\cite{hertel_atom-_2008}

as a solution is given in a discussion here: "Drag and Drop Bibtex \cite{}".

Thanks!

adamsmith

the "full name" is slightly mislabled - the single field view should be reserved for institutional authors, which should get enclosed in {} in bibtex - obviously not escaped {}, though. If you really only want last names, you should enter them in the "last name" field in zotero, though I'd strongly suggest keeping at least initials, ideally full first names, in your Zotero database, good chance you'll need them in the future.

kljklj

Awesome. With the "first and last name"-fields it works.

@book{hertel_atom-_2008,
title = {Atom-, Molekul- Und Optische Physik 1: Atomphysik und Grundlagen der Spektroskopie},
isbn = {9783540306139 3540306137},
language = {German},
publisher = {Springer Verlag},
author = {Hertel, {I.V.} and Schulz, C.-P.},
year = {2008}
}

THX!!!

Edisz

I am facing the same problems:

@misc{r_core_team_r:_2012,
address = {Vienna, Austria},
title = {R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing},
url = {http://www.R-project.org/},
author = {\{R Core Team\}},
year = {2012},
note = {{ISBN} 3-900051-07-0}
},

May translators are up-to-date.
I saw there is a bibtex.js translator on github (https://github.com/zotero/translators/blob/master/BibTeX.js) and perhabs this is already fixed there... How can I change the used bibtex.js?

adamsmith

this may currently be broken - I'll take a look asap, but might take a week or so.

aurimas

yes, this is broken. I'll push a fix out in a few hours.

Edisz

Thank you both for your work! So this will be fixed in the next version? Or can get the fixes from github or so?

aurimas

this should be fixed in the next few days. it's a bit more involved than I thought. once it is fixed, it will update automatically. I'll post back here when its done.

atreiju

Any news on this? I have the same problem with the \{ \} braces...

aurimas

Sorry for the delay. I'll finish it up this weekend.

aurimas

There's a temporary fix out right now that addresses this.

Edisz

Thanks for working on this. Works on my system now.

choppytoffy

Hi there. I'd had the same problem initially as kljklj and edisz with braces appearing when the author (for organisations) was given as full name only - this is now working great.

However, I've been using {} occasionally in some fields to tell BibTeX to display exactly as stated (e.g. for capitalisation). Also occasionally putting a {} in the "report type" field for a techreport when I want to reference a report that does not have a specific report name as such. This previously stopped BibTeX from automatically inserting "Technical Report". With one of the latest updates all braces are coming through as {\, which isn't nearly as helpful. Is there any way (other than going through the Bibtex file and doing in mannually) of getting round a { in a Zotero field appearing as \{ in Bibtex?? Thanks for your help with this

aurimas

Currently there is no easy way to do this. Your options are search and replace after export, or tweaking the BibTeX translator on your computer to not escape braces for all or certain fields.

I don't see how we can support both use cases though. How can Zotero know which braces should be escaped and which should remain? The best we might be able to offer is a global option that either escapes all braces or none. Perhaps someone has an idea on how to better implement this.

adamsmith

Escaping curly brackets from Zotero to Bibtex is exactly the right thing to do in general - the expectation is that, with the exception of the permitted html mark-up for rich-text - Zotero fields are entered literally - so we'll keep doing this in the official Zotero bibtex translator.

If you want to, you can find bibtex.js in the translator folder of your Zotero data directory http://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data and modify it, but beyond editing in the bibtex file that's the only option we can offer you.

edit: so basically what aurimas says & I also don't have an idea how to better solve this.

choppytoffy

That's grand - I suspected as much, but thanks so much for both of your quick responses on this.

I would have thought in general that braces would appear literally very rarely in most fields (except maybe urls), and since they form a handy way of manipulating entries so they feed through to BibTeX properly, not escaping them would be a better default option for many BibTeX users. That's maybe just because I can't think of any examples however.

But anyway, thanks again.