rtfscan: already formatted doc to rtfscan and back again?

jameshowison

I'm working on revisions of a paper back from a journal. The citations were all done with Zotero using the Mac Word 2008 integration. I'd like to upload the document to Google Docs for my co-authors to work on their parts, but I don't want to have to re-do all the citations when we're done again.

I know that rtfscan should work with rtf exported from Google Docs. But how do I take a current document with Zotero bookmarks (actually fields) and have them output in one of the formats (e.g. {Author, Year}) that rtfscan will be able to consume?

It seems that this calls for a custom style, same as though one were dragging from Zotero into a rtf text editor, but I can't find one (searched for rtf on the styles page). Does anyone have one available for import?

If I had that I could select it in the document preferences. As we make changes we can add new cites in the {Author, Year} format.

I have, however, made some edits to the in-text citations (such as adding e.g. or converting to Author (Year), I'm not so concerned about retaining those, but if I change the citation style and refresh with the rtfscan friendly style, hopefully that will work for those too?

Thanks,
James

dstillman

http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/8603/copypaste-of-inline-format-recognized-by-rtf-scan/

dstillman

Edited citations won't be updated on refresh.

jameshowison

Thanks Dan, sorry about the double post, I'm not used to forums, I don't know whether people only read one or see everything.

Ah, so the edited citations are a problem, and there's no way to 'reset' them, right? (Other than re-adding them completely)

And I understood from the other thread that I need to find/build a custom style to get the rtfscan recognizable output, correct?

Thanks,
James

komrade

It's very simple to change a style to do this.
There are some step-by-step instructions here:
http://www.zotero.org/support/csl_simple_edits

You just need to find the <citation> section - probably about 3/4 of the way down - and where it says <layout prefix="(" suffix=")"> change the ( and ) to { and }

Follow the other instructions (especially changing the style name) and you are done.

adamsmith

while komrade is right that this is easy, I think it'd be a good idea to have such a style in the repository.
I've created a very simple style that creates author date citations in {} and put's {bibliography} where the bibliography is inserted.
Go here
http://gist.github.com/206391
download using the Raw link on the top right and install by dragging the file to an open FF window.

Please report back how it works!

komrade

Not sure this is exactly your solution though... The RTF scan simply makes formatted Citations and a Bibliography from the RTF document.
Sadly, it does not recreate a "live" Zotero-linked document that you can then easily edit further. ( I wish it did!)
But it may be a partial solution for you in the mean time.
(EDIT: just inform your colleagues that in order to work with you, they should switch to Zotero! (which they should also do for many other reasons!))

bodelange

@adamsmith: Thanks, I'd just come to the same solution this weekend (after a day of fiddling around with this tool that's new to me but very promising indeed).

@komrade: The idea is that I can share not only my document (google docs) but also my library of references (with zotero) with my colleagues. Using the style created by adam everyone can then just drop their refs inline in the text. When the document is ready to have its bibliography made, I'd download the google doc as rtf and use zotero's rtf-scan function to build the bibliography in that document. Brilliant. Leaving the original doc online I can always go back to add or delete refs.

Minor question: How to get rid of the extra "return" before and after the {author, date} that is inserted when you drag a reference into a google doc? That's useful in a true bibliography, but not in this mock-up. Could someone point me to the complete source and options for the .csl styles? And/or give me a hint?

Thanks,

Bo

adamsmith

you can look at the code of installed styles here:
chrome://zotero/content/tools/csledit.xul

documentation is here:
http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/csl_syntax_summary

not sure about the return, shouldn't happen I think, have you tried holding shift while draging? That will insert the in-text citation rather than the bibliography ciation of an item.

bodelange

Thanks adam. Did not realise I could do a shift-drag. That solves my problem. There's so much information out there, I had not found this yet (nor the link to the csl syntax in the developers area). Looking forward to using Zotero more.

Bo