SoftMaker Office: cannot modify citations

rutyggi

In LibreOffice Writer, when I insert a Zotero citation I can manually modify it. For example, I can remove the parentheses around the citation.

In SoftMaker Office I cannot do that. I can remove the entire citation, but I cannot modify the text of the citation.

SoftMaker is telling me that I have to change citation style using Zotero. But I want to modify a single citation in that particular document.

Are they right?

rutyggi

They sent me the following screenshot:

https://ibb.co/5hQkPss

dstillman

We have nothing to do with the SoftMaker integration, and we can't provide support for any usage of it.

adomasven

@raffaem Although I did test their integration and provided feedback on it when they initially released it, including noting that citations should be editable in-text. You can edit the citation with the classic citation dialog, although we are planning to remove that feature because it's a source of bugs and with proper Zotero word processor integrations you can edit citations in-text, so it's just duplicating functionality.

rutyggi

@adomasven The "classic citation dialog" is the one of the screenshot in my second post?

@dstillman Can you check the screenshot in my second post? It shows Zotero software, not Softmaker

dstillman

Yes, but you're asking about integration that we didn't write ourselves. Only they can provide support for it. If something doesn't work the same way it works in Word or LibreOffice, there's nothing we can do about that.

rutyggi

@dstillman You can express your opinion on what would be the correct way to integrate it.

For instance if you are going to remove the "classic citation dialog", I can link them to this topic to spur them to implement proper in-text citation editing?

dstillman

The developer knows how and where to ask us questions.

dstillman

In any case, you should almost never be modifying citations manually, no matter what tool you're using — what they're telling you is good advice regardless. I'm not sure what you mean by "removing parentheses", but if you can't get what you want by customizing citations properly (e.g., by using "Suppress Author"), then yes, you would want to modify the citation style. But for that you should start a new thread and explain exactly what you're trying to do in terms of the citation style.

adomasven

@raffaem I am the main developer of the word processor plugin and we have provided them feedback specifically regarding citation editing in-text. The discussion was had on ourzotero-dev mailing list. I guess they decided to not follow the feedback or haven't found the time yet.

Dan above is correct in that you should generally not be modifying Zotero inserted citations except for certain edge cases. Otherwise, yes, the classic citation dialog is the one in the screenshot and where you can modify your citations for the time being.

You can link the developer to this thread and post on their support forums where they seem to be quite active in responding to user feedback.