RTF/ODF Scan for Zotero

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  • OK. I'll try. Thanks.
    Actually I found this plugin some hours ago, so I'm not good at managing it.

    Thanks again.
  • @Rintze et al.

    The translator install failure has been fixed in a fresh release of the plugin.
  • edited November 30, 2016
    I tried the plugin. It's wonderful. It's what I has looked for.

    The original RTF scan function doesn't work for Korean, which is 2-byte language. Until now, I haven't be able to use Zotero scan. So ODF scan plugin is a wonderful alternative. How happy I am!

    I have one suggestion.

    My goal is to make .doc files using Scrivener and Zotero.

    Yesterday, I wrote some lines with footnotes and Zotero scannable cites in Scrivener and compiled it into .odt file. When I opened the file on OpenOffice, footnotes are turned into plain text. That is, although contents of footnotes were alive, they were in plain text with connections broken.

    So I had to compile the file into .doc file on Scrivener, open it, save as .odf file on OpenOffice, scan it with RTF/ODF plugin, open .odf file, and re-save it as .doc file on OpenOffice.

    As a result, I got what I wanted. It was good, but a little bit complicated.

    My suggestion:
    Would you modify or make plugin to scan .doc file using Scannable Cite?
    I think it will be a good news for 2-byte language users like me.

    Thanks.
  • it'd be .docx, not .doc and it would require basically a complete rewrite of the most complicated part of the code (the one that parses the markers from the file and replaces them with LO Reference Marks/Word Fields, which I'm afraid neither fbennett nor I have the capacity for (in his case mostly time, in my case a mix of time and ability). We'd be happy to take pull requests, of course.
  • Thanks for your kind reply.
    I hope someday I can use the plugin scanning .docx.
  • Hi @adamsmith, @fbennett, and others,

    I really like the Scannable Cite citation syntax, because it's so well readable and so close to the APA syntax, which I use. I started to write my thesis using the Scannable Cite syntax, but recently learned to love pandoc and would thus prefer to compile my document using pandoc-citeproc.

    1. Do you think, it possible to compile a document with the Scannable Cite syntax using pandoc-citeproc? I know that you don't have much to do with pandoc-citeproc, but I am wondering what the RTD/ODF scan plugin does exactly.

    2. If that does not work: Is it possible to mass-replace the Scannable Cite citations with citations that pandoc-citeproc likes (e.g. "@doe99")?

    Best, Julian
  • RTF/ODF Scan plugin(zotero-odf-scan-v1.0.33-fx) cannot be installed in Z5.0(104) standalone, although it is installed in Z5.0 FFX without error.
    Is this the problem of Z5.0 standalone or that of RTF/ODF Scan plugin?

    The error message : The add-on "RTF/ODF Scan for Zotero" could not be installed. It may be incompatible with this version of Zotero Standalone.

  • ODF Scan is not currently compatible with the beta version. We'll try to get it out in time for the final release, but no promises on that. We'll definitely get it to be compatible eventually though.
  • I really think the "RTF/ODF Scan for Zotero" should be the default and only citation scan system. The stock RTF scan is broken beyond repair and having two system that do the same things is useless.

    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/63396/replace-rtf-style-scan-with-the-rtf-odt-plugin-style
  • I agree with gagarine.

    RTF scan is't compatible with non-English authors. It can't recognize authors' names.

    So I think it's better to use RTF/ODF-Scan-like plugin with some types of files including .txt or .doc files.

    Thanks.
  • I obviously think ODF Scan is better than RTF Scan, else I wouldn't have invested that much time in it, but I _don't_ think it currently serves as a useful replacement, starting with the fact that it requires LibreOffice, but also because even though we've invested quite a bit of time in our documentation, people keep misunderstanding how it works.

    My vision of this is that we'll get official citekey support in Zotero 5.1, which would allow for unique, machine-readbale, human-recognizable citekeys like @smith1776, which would then allow for pandoc-like citation markers instead of the often ambiguous and poorly parsed RTF-scan ones.
  • edited December 18, 2016
    +1 for citekey but take a look at the universal citekey http://support.mekentosj.com/kb/cite-write-your-manuscripts-and-essays-with-citations/universal-citekey . I think universal citkey is a elegant solution.


    In the meantime, for zotero 5 why keep the RTF scan? It's a dangerous feature. You try with some author, it works. Then you write 10'000 words, and it breaks.

    EDIT:
    Their is an JS implementation of universal citekey https://github.com/cparnot/universal-citekey-js

    The problem with bibitext citkey is the risk of collision (same key but different document).

    A good citekey scheme should have these basic properties:
    - human-readable
    - easily parsable by our program
    - easily disambiguated by the user

    But here are some more properties that are useful:
    - compatibility across multiple manuscripts for an individual author
    - compatibility across multiple manuscripts and multiple libraries for co-authors collaboration

    The super cool features, is you can use different citation software that support universal citkey and you will have the same citkey!

  • edited December 18, 2016
    I don't well know about the technique. But anyway, as non-English user, I want Zotero to recognize every item including non-English authors through scanning function.

    If it is necessary, I'll test anything and give comments concerning the function.

    I recommend Zotero to anyone around me who writes thesis. However, without the scanning function Zotero would be less attractive.

    Thanks.
  • First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who has helped develop the RTF/ODF scan. It allowed me to write in my program of choice, scrivener, and almost without a hitch changed all my scannable cites into active zotero references in a NeoOffice odf when writing my thesis.

    My problem is now reverse conversion of the zotero references to scannable cites so that I may have my corrected thesis in scrivener. When I convert the corrected odf with active references to odf (markers) with the RTF/ODF scan, the scannable cites are "almost" correct, but that last field always reads |zg:undefined} instead of containing the reference ID from zotero. Have I overlooked something?

    Thank you in advance for any suggestions.
  • that shouldn't happen. Can you send the file (or, better yet, a minimal excerpt of the file with which the problem occurs) to my e-mail listed here: http://www.sebastiankarcher.com/curriculum-vitae/
  • Hi, is it possible to have multiple sources not sorted alphabetically by the plugin but in the order of the text?
  • On a global level, that's a question of the citation style -- some do and some don't auto-sort in-text citations.
    On a one-by-one, no, that's not possible with ODF Scan. The equivalent of the "Keep items sorted" checkbox in the word processor add-on isn't available via our markers. You'd have to go back and implement that after the conversion.
  • I made a small tweak of zotfile.js to enable extracted annotations to be displayed in Scannable Cite format based on the zotero item.key.
    See here for details:
    https://github.com/jlegewie/zotfile/issues/175

    Many thanks for RTF/ODF Scan. I find it really useful and hope it gets updated to work with Zotero 5 soon after the final version is released.
  • I've just been playing around with the 5.0 beta, which is awesome. I'm worried about fully converting to it, though, since I rely so much on RTF/ODF scan.

    I realize this is a hypothetical, and you guys are doing this on a volunteer basis, so I'm hugely thankful for any all work that you do. But is there any sense of when a 5.0 compatible version of RTF/ODF might be available? Are we thinking in the next months, or more like the end of the year, or next year? Any time frame is awesome, of course.

    Thanks!
  • edited February 23, 2017
    I think it may be working already. In a separate Zotero-based project (Juris-M) where I'm spending my dev time lately, it is displaying the ODF Scan popup. Unfortunately, the default export style selector seems not yet to be working in that project, but you could try installing the plugin in Zotero 5.0 to see what happens. The beta version is here -- no guarantees at this point, but it might just work.
  • Thanks Frank. But why do you say you 'think' it is working already? Have you switched? Can anybody confirm this now works? Because indeed - this has been my main inhibition to jump to the 5.X beta.
  • As he says -- he's testing on the juris-m fork, where it mostly works and the parts that don't are likely due to remaining juris-m bugs, but since neither Frank nor I have tested this in 5.0 for real, we'd have to rely on others to report back to say anything more definite.
  • Thanks Sebastian. So I guess I'll wait to hear back from others who have actually tried this with the 5.X beta to report back. I have too many 'production' projects going on where we rely on this RTF/ODF Scan for Zotero plugin. So that I don't want to mess those up with this update. [As I am also waiting to make the jump to LaTeX-based tools instead of Google Docs/LO). But so I am really eager to test it out too though!
  • edited May 8, 2017
    I have problems with the latest 5.0 beta (193+12e7b7b) and the RTF/ODF scan plugin (10.0.34) + LibreOffice 5.2.6.2.

    I had it working at some point some weeks ago, but after latest updates, it doesn't seem to work anymore. The RTF/ODF plugin for Zotero It seems to convert the references fine, but when I open the converted document and open the plugin preferences in LibreOffice to select the desired style (APA), LibreOffice just stalls indefinitely.

    I have tested with various test documents, to check for badly formatted references, with no luck.

    Which versions of the plugins works with the latest 5.0 beta?

    Any ideas?
  • How are you generating your ODFs? I'd be surprised if that end of things were affected by the Zotero version.
  • I generate with the ODF with Typora, which writes in Markdown and converts to ODF with pandoc. It should generate relatively clean code, but you are probably right, something in the original document breaks it.

    I have tried to find the faulty elements by elimination, but after hours, I haven't located it. So now I give up and "just" re-do the references directly in LibreOffice or Word.
  • Could you test with ODF from google or LibreOffice directly?
  • edited July 16, 2017
    Did anything happen here? I get a 'could not be installed' error message and there is no more 'scannable cite' in my citations...
    UPDATE - my bad. Not sure what happened here, but the beta version for Zotero 5 re-installed just fine now.
    UPDATE 2 - the styles for some reason load extremely slowly (it takes a few minutes). And scannable cite does not appear. I will try first un- and then re-installing it.
    UPDATE 3 - did that, but still no 'scannable cite'. Am I the only one to have this problem (running 5.0.4-beta.3+0f965b0de)?
  • @sdspieg -- probably unrelated, but you should likely revert back to the non-beta release of Zotero 5.0 (simply by re-installing). Dan has mentioned that they're planning to start testing out some slightly less stable features on the beta branch.

    I don't know why you're not getting Scannable Cite -- that worked for me -- but worst case you can just manually download from
    https://github.com/Juris-M/zotero-odf-scan-plugin/raw/master/resource/translators/Scannable Cite.js and install by placing it in the translators forlder in the Zotero data directory.
  • Sebastian - I miss-wrote: the beta version I was talking about installing was of the RTF/ODF scan add-on. But I did indeed still run the beta version of Zotero itself too. I have now installed the final version of Zotero 5 and have removed and re-installed the beta of the RTF/ODF scan add-on, but I still get the same problem (here is where I see that it takes so long - I'd say about 2 full minutes or so). Which is ironic, because my actual (very large) libraries now do indeed load a lot faster :) 

    So the add-on does appear to install properly (see here); I did download and put the scannable cite in the right folder (see here), but I cannot see it in the list - even after closing and re-opening Zotero (see here).  Any ideas about what might have gone wrong? Thanks! 

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