change case automatically

govind
Some journals export their citation info in uppercase, so I end up with a mix of uppercase and lowercase in the title and author fields. It would be quite useful to have a toggle switch in the right pane that could change uppercase titles (and perhaps author names) to sentence case. Currently I have to copy-paste over to Word to do this. Could this be done inside Zotero?
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  • MSchneider
    Discovered Zotero yesterday and would like to congratulate its developers for their great work.
    Before heading off into productive work, a few issues need to be resolved among them the case change posted a few months ago:
    When importing from Web of Science, Journal names are in UPPERCASE and this translates into the bibliography in Word. Is there any way to change cases either when importing references into Zotero or when generating the bibliography?
    Thanks for any hints or for considering this in the further development.

    Manuel
  • noksagt
    In Zotero, you can right-click on a field & select 'transform text'
  • asplundj
    edited March 14, 2008
    wow that's great. I wish it worked for authors too

    Also I would like the first letter to be upper case.
  • MSchneider
    noksagt -- Great tip, thank you.

    Would it be possible to define this for a field in all records, e.g. Title Case for the publication field in all journal articles, and imports are automatically converted?

    Guess this goes into the chapter 'Custom item types and fields, as well as the ability to show/hide default entries' in the planned list and if case conversion is not yet planned, it would be a great add.
  • vuadensr
    I also would like the first letter to be uppercase.
    It would be great if it's the default "format".
  • mmoole
    Hello,

    it would be nice if "transform text" would also work on authors fields and other fields.... - it does not on my machine, win xp, portable firefox, zotero 1.5-sync3.6

    greetings
    mmoole
  • ahoward
    Well, that feature has expanded somewhat organically. It was originally just titles, then it became any type of title, like publications. I suppose there's no especially good reason for it not to work on authors. I'm not sure I see the utility for other fields. It might be easy to implement universally or it might not. If there's overwhelming support for one argument or the other, I can create a ticket, though I'd like to hear Stillman weigh in on the feasibility of the latter option, first.
  • mark
    I would also be happy if it worked on authors.
  • RintzeRintze
    edited January 27, 2009
    I too encountered some journals where the authors save in all-capitals. Right now I just retyped the names. I like the idea of transforming, but without a way to select multiple author-fields that route is going to be a bit laborious as well. Would it make sense to transform all contributors at the same time by default? The metadata is usually obtained in a single place/format, so all contributor-fields are likely to be similarly formatted anyway. Or could there be offered two options in the Transform menu, e.g. "Transform text for current field" and "Transform Text for fields of this type"?
  • philgons
    I love this feature. Great idea and great implementation. (Yes, adding it to the author field would be nice.) One minor bug (I think) that I noticed is when the title includes quotation marks.

    This:

    THE DYNAMIC “STRUCTURE” OF ISAIAH 40-66: AN ANALYSIS OF ORGANIZATION BASED ON TRANSITIONS IN THE SERVANT AND OTHER ORIENTING MOTIFS

    becomes this:

    The Dynamic “structure” of Isaiah 40–66 an Analysis of Organization Based on Transitions in the Servant and Other Orienting Motifs

    instead of this:

    The Dynamic “Structure” of Isaiah 40–66 an Analysis of Organization Based on Transitions in the Servant and Other Orienting Motifs

    For some reason it is not capitalizing the word in quotation marks. Not a huge problem, but I wanted to report it in case it's an easy fix.

    Thanks.
  • Carina
    Yeah, I know it has been said a lot of times now, but for highlighting how much easier life could be: It would be great, if the text transformation to lower case letters would not touch a title's very first letter.
    It would also be great, if you would not have to transorm each title seperately, but could just decide whether you wanted to use english capitalization or all lowercase letters when inserting a bibliography into word.

    Thanks (not just for listening but also for providing such a great tool)
  • RintzeRintze
    It would be great, if the text transformation to lower case letters would not touch a title's very first letter.
    Agreed. I would very much like to see Sentence case added to the text-transformation options.
  • Lalo
    edited March 7, 2009
    "I would very much like to see Sentence case added to the text-transformation options. "

    Agreed also.
  • dstillman
    There's a ticket for sentence case.
  • philgons
    What about the issue in title case when the title includes quotation marks? Is this a known bug?
  • philgons
    There's also an issue when the title ends in a question mark. The subtitle should begin with a capital letter, but the title case text transformer incorrectly makes it lowercase if it is a word like an.

    So a title like this:

    A "Trinitarian" Theology of Religions? An Augustinian Assessment of Several Recent Proposals

    is instead turned into this:

    A "trinitarian" Theology of Religions? an Augustinian Assessment of Several Recent Proposals
  • philgons
    There's also a bug when the title includes parentheses. Zotero always makes the following word lower case. I'd love to see all three of these (i.e., words following quotations marks, question marks, and apostrophes) corrected.
  • philgons
    A fourth issue occurs with the middle initial A.

    The Trinity, the One, and the Many: An Analysis of Joseph a. Bracken's Philosophical Process Theology from a Traditional Trinitarian Theistic Perspective with a Response
  • stepcoen
    What do you do with units in title??

    "A new 750 nm solid state laser"

    I would like to protect the unit "nm" (nanometer) from being Capitalized when switching to Title Case.
  • kmarr
    With regards to subtitles, how should Zotero be able to differentiate between titles where the question mark introduces the subtitle, and where it does not? Similarly, the middle initial A requires either intelligence or a rather good algorithm...
  • philgons
    I can't think of a book title with an internal question mark that does not come between the title and subtitle (or when it wouldn't require a capital letter to follow), but I guess in theory it might be possible. My opinion would be to go with the far more common of the two scenarios.

    The middle initial with A should be simple: if it has a period, it should be capitalized.
  • suddy
    I'm new to Zotero and have just discovered the text transformation which is great. At my uni they are quite specific about always using title case but 3/4 of my references have come through in lowercase. Is there a way to bulk convert to title case or even better, do it automatically?

    Great product!
  • komrade
    I can't see why you would ever want uppercase authors (or titles for that matter).

    PLEASE could this be changed (for 2.1?) to convert to title case on import.
    (especially for authors)
  • blazek
    The case of the authors names should be an option of the CLS style. Similarly for the title and subtitle. I love Zotero for what it does, but this lack of capitalization control in the CLS file is an abomination. The case of author names and titles IS a part of the style.
  • adamsmith
    I think you're misunderstanding -
    CSL can change the case of titles and authors.

    There are some limits - e.g. it currently cannot apply a different rule to first names - i.e. you can get SMITH, ADAM or Smith, Adam but not SMITH, Adam (as some styles require).
    Similarly for titles, csl can convert titles to title case. Sentence case conversion is possible, but - almost necessarily flawed, as proper nouns cannot be recognized.
    I believe transforming all caps authors/titles on import has actually been addressed.
    So I'm not exactly sure what your problem is.

    Also, remember there are actual people behind Zotero so it's really uncalled for to throw around words like "abomination" - be nice.
  • blazek
    My apologies for using the word abomination. From the above comments I've got the understanding that the conversions are impossible in the CSL file. That would bee very bad, in my opinion. Thank you for letting me that I was wrong. And hence my apology.

    The sad part is that at least some of the CSL files do not seem to do the conversions. Well, that is why I found the thread in the first place. This reinforced my suspicion. BTW: The names still need to be converted by hand --- the text conversion menu does not seem to be there.

    I am glad that the situation is better than I feared, and apologize again for the strong words.
  • adamsmith
    could you specify which csl styles?
  • blazek
    I ran zotero://zotero/content/tools/cslpreview.xul with one book and one article that have messed-up cases in author names, title, and the journal title (see Delineator/control/Regression). And all the default styles leave the last names and title exactly as it is in the library. I use Zotero 2.0.2 with FireFox 3.6.3 / Mac OS X 10.6.3. I come to Zotero from BibTeX / BibDesk.

    Am I missing some important point?

    Thanks, best regards
    Rudy

    For example:

    American Medical Association
    1. SEBER G, Lee A. Linear Regression analysis. New York: Wiley; 1977.
    2. Li BN, DONG MC, Vai MI. On an automatic Delineator for arterial blood pressure waveforms. Biomedical Signal Processing and control. 2010;5(1):76-81.

    Harvard Reference format 1 (Author-Date)
    Li, B.N., DONG, M.C. & Vai, M.I., 2010. On an automatic Delineator for arterial blood pressure waveforms. Biomedical Signal Processing and control, 5(1), 76-81.
    SEBER, G. & Lee, A., 1977. Linear Regression analysis, New York: Wiley.

    IEEE
    [1] G. SEBER and A. Lee, Linear Regression analysis, New York: Wiley, 1977.
    [2] B.N. Li, M.C. DONG, and M.I. Vai, “On an automatic Delineator for arterial blood pressure waveforms,” Biomedical Signal Processing and control, vol. 5, Jan. 2010, pp. 76-81.
  • adamsmith
    author transformation simply isn't done - there are possible downsides - e.g. problems displaying "von", "van" etc. and I thought most imports by now do things correct.
    but if you want to modify this yourself you'll need to add text-case="title" to the respective lines in the code.
    http://www.zotero.org/support/csl_simple_edits

    For the titles - see my comment above - it'd be easy to transform these into title case, but these styles call for sentence case - something that cannot feasibly be done - so we leave titles as they are. If you have a feasible alternative proposal I'm sure people would be interested.
  • blazek
    Thanks, Adam. I understand and appreciate the explanation and syntax tip. The problem I encountered was for an item that I added via the biomet.oxfordjournals.org web site. Author names are capitalized there, which is unfortunate. If there was "Transform Text" menu for author names, then it would be much easier for such cases. Or is the translator supposed to do this?

    Example:
    http://biomet.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/58/3/525

    Thanks
    Rudy
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