When will v1.5 be out of the developmental stage?

pirategenes
Hi,

I'm wondering when v1.5 be released from the developmental stage. I'm about to start writing my dissertation and would like to use Zotero v1.5 and Word 2008 for Mac OS X (Leopard), and I noticed your time line indicates it should be fully released by now. However, everything else on your site indicates that v1.5 is still in development which makes me hesitant to use on such an important project.

Thanks in advance for your response, and if you have any other suggestions on the best way to use Zotero on a Mac for making large documents like dissertations, that would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!
  • dermarc
    I'm in a similar situation, the only difference is that I'm going to write my diploma thesis.

    Using a latex environment is another alternative I'm thinking of right now, but that would require some additional learning effort (especially for a larger project like a dissertation it might be worth it, though).
  • pirategenes
    dermarc- I thought about using latex but I'd rather not spend time learning a whole new platform when I have other important projects going on at the same time as the dissertation writing.

    UPDATE- I got an email back from someone at Zotero and, apparently, v1.5 will move from preview to beta in about one or two weeks.
  • dermarc
    great :)
  • mark
    Besides, the latest Sync previews are very stable anyway. I've published a peer-reviewed paper very recently using Zotero 1.5 Sync Preview.
  • pirategenes
    mark- that's great to hear.

    I tried using Zotero (v1.0.9) for a recent paper but found the Word integration to be quite buggy. For example, references that are sorted numerically in the text were displayed in an unusual format if I made any kind of additions/subtractions/changes to the references. More specifically, something that should be displayed as (6,7,10-14) would be displayed as (6,10-14,7) or some other strange way.

    Hopefully these issues have been resolved in v1.5 because I would prefer to use Zotero for everything rather than transferring to EndNote during the manuscript writing process.
  • unhammer
    @dermarc: Regarding the learning curve, there are some very good "beginners" LaTeX programs. Try eg. LyX, a semi-WYSIWYG LaTeX editor which works on Windows, Linux or Mac. (Semi-WYSIWYG as in "it looks sort of like using Word, only it edits LaTeX and lets you check the source code if you think there's an error--think Dreamweaver for LaTeX. LyX just completely takes away the LaTeX learning curve.)

    LyX also requires "a latex distribution", there's links on the LyX-page to the downloads, I've tried installing both MikTeX (Windows) and MacTeX (for Mac), and they're really simple to install.
  • dermarc
    @unhammer: Thanks for the tip. Originally i was thinking of TeXShop or maybe Smultron as a way to write my source files. I'll have a look at it in the next couple of days.
  • bdarcus
    A good general rule of thumb IMHO is that you should only consider LaTeX if either a) you don't need to ever distribute your source documents (PDF is fine) or b) places that you might need to submit such source documents to accept LaTeX (which is typically only likely to be the case in the sciences).
  • adamsmith
    I'd second Lyx for beginners, but generally a good LaTeX editor makes learning LaTeX surprisingly easy.
    For LyX there has even been some effort to facilitat integration with Zotero.
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/537/lyx-support/
    Bruce is 100% right on when not to use LaTeX - in PoliSci I know a decent amount of scholars who alternate between LaTeX and Word depending on co-authors and the general audience they're writing for.
    I think learning a bit of LaTeX is worth it even if its just because you'll be able to produce _way_ cooler (and by cooler I mean slick, professional looking, uniformly lay-outed run on any computer anywhere) slides. (LyX also does slides I believe)
  • MTBradley
    A good general rule of thumb IMHO is that you should only consider LaTeX if either a) you don't need to ever distribute your source documents (PDF is fine) or b) places that you might need to submit such source documents to accept LaTeX (which is typically only likely to be the case in the sciences).
    There are several ways to get .tex to .rtf, of course.
  • bdarcus
    @MTBradley: Yes, but in my experience, they are not in the least bit reliable, particularly WRT to citations and bibliographies. It's really not worth the hassle in my view.
  • rmjohn
    I used to love looking at my PDF documents and presentations I created using LaTeX while doing my PhD. however, when it comes to publishing many journals tell you to send stuffs in MS Word. Even though there are soft wares that can convert from PDF 2 Word, many a times, the conversion process is not very smooth. The equations and large tables generated LaTeX will lose its structure once converted to word. But inspite of all that LaTeX is an experience in itself. The output will pay off all your pains :)
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