Upgrade StorageHow to rationally handle italics, sub- and superscripts in the title field (chemist's rant)?
Hi guys. Chemists often have to deal with literature involving formulas appearing in many fields, including title, keywords, etc.
AFAIK the only way to use sub- and superscripts as well as italics these days in Zotero 4 and even beta 5 is to use html markup language. Which apparently makes casually-looking title with many chemical formulas an unreadable mess. Take for example this article: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ic980410c with the original title
Stepwise Cluster Assembly Using VO2(acac) as a Precursor: cis-[VO(OCH(CH3)2)(acac)2], [V2O2(μ-OCH3)2(acac)2(OCH3)2], [V3O3{μ,μ-(OCH2)3CCH3}2(acac)2(OC2H5)], and [V4O4(μ-O)2(μ-OCH3)2(μ3-OCH3)2(acac)2(OCH3)2]·2CH3CN
which in Zotero looks like this:
Stepwise Cluster Assembly Using VO [sub]2[/sub] (acac) as a Precursor: [i]cis[/i] -[VO(OCH(CH [sub]3[/sub] ) [sub]2[/sub] )(acac) [sub]2[/sub] ], [V [sub]2[/sub] O [sub]2[/sub] (μ-OCH [sub]3[/sub] ) [sub]2[/sub] (acac) [sub]2[/sub] (OCH [sub]3[/sub] ) [sub]2[/sub] ], [V [sub]3[/sub] O [sub]3[/sub] {μ,μ-(OCH [sub]2[/sub] ) [sub]3[/sub] CCH [sub]3[/sub] } [sub]2[/sub] (acac) [sub]2[/sub] (OC [sub]2[/sub] H [sub]5[/sub] )], and [V [sub]4[/sub] O [sub]4[/sub] (μ-O) [sub]2[/sub] (μ-OCH [sub]3[/sub] ) [sub]2[/sub] (μ [sub]3[/sub] -OCH [sub]3[/sub] ) [sub]2[/sub] (acac) [sub]2[/sub] (OCH [sub]3[/sub] ) [sub]2[/sub] ]·2CH [sub]3[/sub] CN [sup]1[/sup]
("<" and ">" are replaced with "[" and "]", accordingly, to display unparsed html code block on forum)
It gets even worth when attached PDFs get renamed according to the metadata, causing unintuitive and long file names as all the <> tags are by default dragged into the filename for some reason.
In addition, when exporting library to BiBLaTeX, it would be neat if at least subscripts in chemical formulas wouldn't be handled with $_x$ tags per appearance, as it again makes unnecessary long and hard to read and parse titles in *.bib file. There is a number of packages like chemmacros of mhchem which can place subscripts properly on their own. I guess BiBLaTeX export feature could be improved with a new option like "Use \ch for formulas" or "Use extra chemmacros package" or similar.
So I've been wondering, whether I'm doing something wrong here or whether I'm missing the point entirely. Taking care of chemical stuff in writing shouldn't be this hard as I see it.
P.S. Yes, I'm aware of the post from 2014 https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/34236/easy-superscripts-and-subscripts-without-html-coding discussing the similar matter. Using special characters won't help here as there are too many use cases, and they are not covering all of them.
AFAIK the only way to use sub- and superscripts as well as italics these days in Zotero 4 and even beta 5 is to use html markup language. Which apparently makes casually-looking title with many chemical formulas an unreadable mess. Take for example this article: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ic980410c with the original title
Stepwise Cluster Assembly Using VO2(acac) as a Precursor: cis-[VO(OCH(CH3)2)(acac)2], [V2O2(μ-OCH3)2(acac)2(OCH3)2], [V3O3{μ,μ-(OCH2)3CCH3}2(acac)2(OC2H5)], and [V4O4(μ-O)2(μ-OCH3)2(μ3-OCH3)2(acac)2(OCH3)2]·2CH3CN
which in Zotero looks like this:
Stepwise Cluster Assembly Using VO [sub]2[/sub] (acac) as a Precursor: [i]cis[/i] -[VO(OCH(CH [sub]3[/sub] ) [sub]2[/sub] )(acac) [sub]2[/sub] ], [V [sub]2[/sub] O [sub]2[/sub] (μ-OCH [sub]3[/sub] ) [sub]2[/sub] (acac) [sub]2[/sub] (OCH [sub]3[/sub] ) [sub]2[/sub] ], [V [sub]3[/sub] O [sub]3[/sub] {μ,μ-(OCH [sub]2[/sub] ) [sub]3[/sub] CCH [sub]3[/sub] } [sub]2[/sub] (acac) [sub]2[/sub] (OC [sub]2[/sub] H [sub]5[/sub] )], and [V [sub]4[/sub] O [sub]4[/sub] (μ-O) [sub]2[/sub] (μ-OCH [sub]3[/sub] ) [sub]2[/sub] (μ [sub]3[/sub] -OCH [sub]3[/sub] ) [sub]2[/sub] (acac) [sub]2[/sub] (OCH [sub]3[/sub] ) [sub]2[/sub] ]·2CH [sub]3[/sub] CN [sup]1[/sup]
("<" and ">" are replaced with "[" and "]", accordingly, to display unparsed html code block on forum)
It gets even worth when attached PDFs get renamed according to the metadata, causing unintuitive and long file names as all the <> tags are by default dragged into the filename for some reason.
In addition, when exporting library to BiBLaTeX, it would be neat if at least subscripts in chemical formulas wouldn't be handled with $_x$ tags per appearance, as it again makes unnecessary long and hard to read and parse titles in *.bib file. There is a number of packages like chemmacros of mhchem which can place subscripts properly on their own. I guess BiBLaTeX export feature could be improved with a new option like "Use \ch for formulas" or "Use extra chemmacros package" or similar.
So I've been wondering, whether I'm doing something wrong here or whether I'm missing the point entirely. Taking care of chemical stuff in writing shouldn't be this hard as I see it.
P.S. Yes, I'm aware of the post from 2014 https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/34236/easy-superscripts-and-subscripts-without-html-coding discussing the similar matter. Using special characters won't help here as there are too many use cases, and they are not covering all of them.
Anyway, thanks for clarifying the current situation.
As for now it seems like that there were no improvements regarding rich-text support for the last couple of years, so I most likely going to switch to JabRef as a primary reference manager, and use Zotero for casual small-report writing as usually in that case there is no need to provide full title in the bibliography section.
So I get the feeling I'm probably using the wrong tool here. Zotero has a lot of great features, and it's #1 tool for me when one needs to produce something simple with Writer/Word, but these imperfections I mentioned above make it really hard to use Zotero intensively for heavyweight stuff.