Upgrade StorageSuggested Areas of Improvement for OS X LibreOffice-Zotero
For my bibliography needs, I'm currently shifting from an OS X Microsoft Word-BookEnds combination that worked very smoothly to a LibreOffice-Zotero combination, as part of a planned migration to Linux. While I am largely happy with this new combination, I am running into some places where it does not work as well, so I'd like to present these observations as upgrade requests rather than as bug reports per se. If I'm doing anything wrong, corrections welcome. Or if the problems lie in LibreOffice rather than Zotero, I'll be happy to post the suggestion there as well.
The versions involved are: OS X 10.14.6, LibreOffice 6.3.4.2, Zotero 5.0.81, and Java 8 Update 231.
1) If I have a Zotero citation in the text (highlighted with the Field Shadings option) and I copy and paste it to another location, it loses the field information and no longer functions as a Zotero citation.
2) If I have a Zotero citation in the text (highlighted with the Field Shadings option) and I delete the succeeding text up to the edge of the field and then start typing, I find that the new text is now being added inside the field, messing up the citations.
3) If I turn on "Record Track Changes" and then change the contents of a field using the Zotero Add/Edit Citation button, every single citation field is now marked as having been deleted and rewritten. While I realize this is indeed what is happening, for the purposes of tracking changes, it would be much better if this could be masked somehow.
The versions involved are: OS X 10.14.6, LibreOffice 6.3.4.2, Zotero 5.0.81, and Java 8 Update 231.
1) If I have a Zotero citation in the text (highlighted with the Field Shadings option) and I copy and paste it to another location, it loses the field information and no longer functions as a Zotero citation.
2) If I have a Zotero citation in the text (highlighted with the Field Shadings option) and I delete the succeeding text up to the edge of the field and then start typing, I find that the new text is now being added inside the field, messing up the citations.
3) If I turn on "Record Track Changes" and then change the contents of a field using the Zotero Add/Edit Citation button, every single citation field is now marked as having been deleted and rewritten. While I realize this is indeed what is happening, for the purposes of tracking changes, it would be much better if this could be masked somehow.
Edit: I'll also try reaching out to the Document Foundation via their mailing lists and IRC and see if I can get their attention on this since it seems like a trivial fix on their end and we get frequent reports about it. Using the Zotero plugin with Track Changes is, as a general rule, discouraged in both Word and LibreOffice. It might work slightly more gracefully in Word in some instances, but the rule applies to both document editors and due to technical reasons cannot be fixed.
4) If I have a double-spaced paragraph and I then add a citation using the Add/Edit Citation button, the paragraph changes to single-spaced. Presumably other types of formatting can be affected as well.
Regarding the others, I'll post on LibreOffice for 1&2. Can you give me more information about what is going on with #1? For #3, not being able to use change-tracking is a serious issue for academic writing where you're trying to coordinate with co-authors. One approach used by both EndNote and BookEnds, I believe, is to provide the option of temporary placeholders that are not fields (e.g., {#11234 Smith}) that allow for normal change tracking. Once the draft is finished, one then uses a command to change all the placeholders into formatted fields (after turning the change tracking off first). I realize this would take a lot of work but it would significantly improve the utility of Zotero.