Upgrade StorageAvailable for beta testing: Google Docs integration
The current Zotero Connector beta for Firefox features an experimental implementation of Google Docs integration. You will need a beta of both Zotero and the Connector.
To begin testing you will need to go into the Connector Preferences -> Advanced and check "Enable Google Docs Integration (experimental)". This will enable a Zotero menu and toolbar button in Google Docs editor, which will allow the full Zotero citing experience previously available on LibreOffice and Word. Before beginning to work, Zotero will prompt you to authenticate the plugin with your Google Account.
More details:
To begin testing you will need to go into the Connector Preferences -> Advanced and check "Enable Google Docs Integration (experimental)". This will enable a Zotero menu and toolbar button in Google Docs editor, which will allow the full Zotero citing experience previously available on LibreOffice and Word. Before beginning to work, Zotero will prompt you to authenticate the plugin with your Google Account.
More details:
- This is a very early experimental plugin and you should not plan any serious big piece writing with it, unless you are willing to backup your document frequently, and perform manual troubleshooting in case of document or citation corruption. That said, we have done a fair amount of testing and the plugin appears to be stable in normal usage and ready for a public preview.
- Citation inserts/edits slow down significantly as the number of citations increases. We will be looking for ways to improve the speed, but due to limitations of the current Google Docs API, it is not clear how much performance we will be able to add. With 100+ citations a single citation update can take up to 10s, so you will want to disable automatic citation updates in the document preferences for bigger document.
- Google Docs provides limited facilities for text formatting. Styles that use small caps fonts will not use a true small caps formatting style in Google Docs and instead will fall back to the "Alegreya Sans SC" font. Citations that have been inserted with disabled automatic citation updates will be inserted with grey background, instead of dashed underlining, like in Word and LibreOffice.
- Copying citations across documents is currently not supported (and we do not guarantee support in the future). Copying citations within a document should work without problems.
- Shared document editing is fully functional as long as both editors have editing permissions for the document. You do not need to share Zotero libraries or be in the same group library -- the citation data is embedded in the document. However, you should avoid inserting or editing citations concurrently. There are mechanisms in place to prevent document and citation corruption due to concurrent citation editing, but due to technical limitations they are do not provide perfect safety.
- For non-Zotero users the active Zotero citations will appear as links leading to URLs like https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?abc123
- There is currently no official support for compatibility between Google Docs and Word/LibreOffice. If you download the document from Google Docs and open it with Word, in place of active citations you will have in-text links that do not lead anywhere. The Google Docs plugin uses these links to identify citations within the document. A workflow for converting docs between different word processors is coming soon.
- The plugin needs both Zotero and the Zotero Connector to work. Currently there are no plans for citing support with Zotero Connector or Zotero only.
- A stable Connector update for Chrome and Safari with the plugin support is coming after some initial Firefox beta testing too. The Google Docs plugin itself will remain experimental and disabled by default for a while, until we are happy with its stability and have figured out how to troubleshoot and provide support for citing issues
This discussion has been closed.
1. Awesome
2. Still seeing some problems. Empty document, trying to insert a citation (tried various styles). Everything goes well up to the citation picker. When I select a citation and press enter I get
Zotero experienced an error updating your document. [Exception... "Unexpected error" nsresult: "0x8000ffff (NS_ERROR_UNEXPECTED)" location: "JS frame :: chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/connector/httpIntegrationClient.js :: Zotero.HTTPIntegrationClient.Field.prototype.setText :: line 176" data: no]
will try without add-ons later. New profile won't happen until tonight.
I won't have access to a computer until the morning, but I could actually really use gdocs for throwaway pieces for work with colleagues who insist on word files, so I'm keen on getting this fixed.
CAYW is affected, but it seems fixable. Who calls initDoc? Is that called by Zotero? Should I call it in createDocument?
Now that I may actually use Zotero with something else than bibtex, where should I ask about "Author (year)" support for citations?
@emilianoeheyns Collaborative editing works, but concurrent citation editing may produce unexpected results.
Zotero experienced an error updating your document. Error: Failed to insert field. Could not find the placeholder link. {"noteType":0,"code":"{}","text":"{Updating}","id":"UsSQPN"}
Debug ID: 1251657904
When I have text selected and I choose add/edit citation, I also get an error:
Zotero experienced an error updating your document.
responseJSON.response.result is undefined
(debug ID 372109881)
Can somebody please explain this a bit more? We now use Frank's and Sebastian's rtf/odf scan solution, and while it's not perfect (esepcially for GDocs with tables or text boxes), at least it has never created any 'version control' issues. So what type of 'unexpected results' are these? And are these bugs that will be fixed, or 'structural' problems?
I do think that a more elegant solution to Google Docs integration is a smart move. Also in 'competitive' terms (Mendeley - and the entire secondary school 'market' segment). But the real-time collaborative aspect really would have to be perfect...
I think that's a fairly easy to avoid scenario as things go. Adomas specifies possible effects in the first post: