incomplete and bad export from BibLaTex

Ulrich Windl
While the bibtex format is extensible regarding fields (AFAIK), zotero (4.0.17 standalone) does not export all fields. Furthermore, it does so without warning, so after export/import some fields are lost. An example is the "LCC" field ("Signatur" in German).
Also serious is a bug that BibLaTex export created the language field twice, causing a bad "lang:English" in the language field after import.

Here is an example export:
@book{coplien_advanced_1992,
edition = {1},
title = {Advanced C++},
rights = {Copyright � 1992 by {AT\&T} Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated},
isbn = {0-201-54855-0},
abstract = {Programming Styles and Idioms},
language = {Englisch},
pagetotal = {520},
publisher = {Addison-Wesley Publishing Company},
author = {Coplien, James O.},
date = {1992},
language = {{lang:Englisch}}
}
  • adamsmith
    edited February 24, 2014
    I can't replicate the BibLaTeX export problem. Make sure you're using the official version of the BibLaTeX export translator—several add-ons install alternative versions, some of which may be outdated/buggy. There was an issue with the language field in a past but that was fixed December 2013. Biblatex will now only export to langid, so the fact that you're getting language almost certainly means you're not using the default translator.

    Zotero only exports standard bibtex fields (according to our best judgement of what is "standard"). We're not going to start exporting to fields that have no meaning in most bibtex styles, even if they may(!) not break them. BibTeX is neither suitable nor intended for roundtrip export/import. The only (mostly) loss-less format for that is Zotero RDF.
  • Ulrich Windl
    I am using zotero standalone on Windows (4.0.17). I guess the problems you described should not be there. See also https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/34974/improve-import-from-file/#Item_1 where I had problems using Zotero RDF to export/import. What format do you recommend that allows you to import a file to a folder without loosing entries. Zotero RDF seems to import at the original location.
  • aurimas
    Zotero RDF seems to import at the original location.
    As I mentioned in that thread, it's not really original location. But either way, what's the problem with moving the items from the imported location to where you want them to be? All import translators act the same way, so there's no way to avoid it.

    Note (a bit technical): the second issue described here may be relevant to this discussion. Essentially, all items that you are importing will be restored to their collections _and_ placed in the import collection directly along with any items that did not belong to a subcollection on export, so in that sense, exporting-importing is not lossless.
  • adamsmith
    but I'm also still wondering about the use-case for this. What are you actually trying to do?
    Note that import/export is not the way to back up:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data#backing_up_your_zotero_library
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