Context menu access from text to Zotero plugin commands in Word

onedayonenoodle · June 9, 2014

I'm quite sure that someone must have posted the same thing, but my poor search couldn't find it. Or it could have been implemented for other environments than mine already.

Anyway, let me start. I think it would be nice if Zotero work plugin supports context menu access. For example, when I want to edit a citation in text, I have to go up to the menu bar of my Mac and then follow AppleScript icon and click the menu "Edit Citation...". It would be much nicer, you the same "Edit Citation..." appears on right-clicking a citation in text.

Maybe it would require hacking deeper layers of Microsoft Word to achieve this. Just a thought.

adamsmith · June 9, 2014

I have no insight on the right-click option, but you're aware that you have keyboard shortcuts readily available on Word for Mac, right?
(And they're easy to set up for other word processors: https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_shortcuts )

I'm going to venture a guess and say that the number of people who use the commands so much that they're bothered by having to click them but not enough to learn the two most common keyboard shortcuts is pretty small.

onedayonenoodle · June 10, 2014

Cheers. Yeah, I can see ^⌥E and others. Easy to forget them, though. Your guess may be right, but right click may be more intuitive and accessible, giving you sense of better integration, perhaps. You could show the shortcut keys on the context menu as well as a reminder (to someone like me, basically!).

bwiernik · June 10, 2014

The code for adding items to the context menu is pretty simple. It's a side project I'm intending to do this summer when I have 4-5 hours to spare to write and test it.

For reference, a c# implementation: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11816358/ms-word-add-in-right-click-handler

onedayonenoodle · June 10, 2014

That sounds cool! And the code looks pretty straightforward indeed.

zoowalk · June 13, 2014

I was just wondering the same, and came across this forum entry:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macoffice2011-macword/context-menu-right-click-menu/cda3bbbb-f7dd-45b4-951f-b211c56bdd86?page=2

I haven't yet been able to adopt it to Zotero but it should be possible.