transform text for Author field?

stephengourlay
'Transform text' is a great tool on the publication field. Some databases provide author names in capitals - so can you please add the 'translate text' tool to other fields in addition to publication.
Thanks.
  • DWL-SDCA
    edited January 31, 2012
    In another thread it was suggested that converting author names to mixed case is best done automatically upon import.

    Nonetheless, a big +1 from me for this suggestion.

    I find that sites with faulty RIS downloads also seem to have a high prevalence of author uppercase-itis. Importing these RIS files from the clipboard requires tedious editing and increases the risk of typing errors. Further, When the authors' names contain decorated characters, changing fron upper case to lower case is impossible with my keyboard character set. I get around this by converting the case in a good text editor ((TextMate on my Mac) before I copy the file to the clipboard to import into Zotero.
  • adamsmith
    What DWL says - I'm all for having text-transform for authors, but please do report where the faulty (i.e. all caps) authordata comes from. We'd like to fix this on import.
  • dstillman
    can you please add the 'translate text' tool to other fields in addition to publication
    Yes, we'll add this to names. (It's a somewhat common request.)
  • DWL-SDCA
    edited January 31, 2012
    My most recent problem with all-caps names is with several of the ScopeMed journals -- ones that don't have doi numbers. I asked for several changes to be made to their ris export and they made them (lastname,firstname for authors, include the abstract, include the issn, TY JOUR instead of JFULL, etc.) they are working on the MIME type for the ris download. They say, however, that the author name in all caps is a decision of the individual journal editors. ScopeMed has been amazingly cooperative.

    adamsmith has done a great job with getting the translators to convert names to mixed case. Mostly, my problem arises from ris imports -- particularly those from the clipboard. Having the clipboard imports convert author names to mixed case would be a big help.

    Aside: How do I reveal the MIME type of a file I am about to download or that has been downloaded to my machine? I'd like to be able to specifically request that publishers switch from their current (named) content type setting to application/x-Research-Info-Systems. When I used Windows I had a text editor that allowed me to reveal the file headers (including character encoding). I can't seem to do that on my Mac with TextMate or TextWrangler.
  • dstillman
    edited January 31, 2012
    The MIME type is part of the HTTP response, not the file itself.

    I use LiveHTTPHeaders. More output than you need, but not too hard once you know what to look for.

    (Case doesn't matter for MIME types, so "application/x-research-info-systems" is generally a better way to type it.)

    Edit: And yes, see the list Rintze links to below. Zotero will accept any of those.
  • RintzeRintze
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/9801/how-can-i-set-it-to-automatically-import-ris-instead-of-saving-file-and-importing-later/?Focus=46232#Comment_46232
  • adamsmith
    I can look into a ScopeMed translator - their RIS is very easy to get to.

    I use the HttpFox extension for Firefox to listen in on http traffic - that includes mime types/content types (their RIS is currently application/forcedownload). More importantly for me it also gives me post data which we use for many database translators.
    I'm sure there are other, more low-tech ways to do this, though.
  • stephengourlay
    Thanks. I don't recall which site did this for me. I noticed it when tidying up entries. I'll report in future if I find any.
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