Zotero fails to export entire quoted selection

mickn66
I hope I am doing this wrong and have not discovered some kind of bug! Here is what happens:

I surf to an interesting website, say a Yahoo news page. I select some of the text on that page, right click and chose "Create Zotero Item and Note from Selection." I can then see that the item and note were in fact created, and the entire selection has been put in the note. I see in the middle column there is a new item representing what I just added, with two subitems, one being the Note with the selected text and the other, I think, is a snap shop of the website (the icon seems to have a camera on it so I’m assuming this).

Now, if I drag the note from the middle column (dragging the note icon actually) into a Word document (or a text box within Firefox) it only inserts the first few words of the note into the document (10-15 words I’d guess). I was hoping when I dragged over the note the entire selected text, IE the entire note, would be inserted into the document. Why is it only doing the first bit of the note?

Thank you
  • Tjowens
    The drag and drop function is trying to make a citation out of your note. So Zotero is taking the title created from the first line of the text and trying to generate a bibliographic reference for it.

    There have been a few suggestions to change the drag and drop behavior for notes. Unless there are some situations where people want to cite notes it might make sense to make the behavior for dragging and dropping notes to always export the content of the note. If there is enough interest in this we can make a ticket for it.
  • erazlogo
    edited May 30, 2008
    Unless there are some situations where people want to cite notes it might make sense to make the behavior for dragging and dropping notes to always export the content of the note. If there is enough interest in this we can make a ticket for it.
    Count me as very interested.
  • dellantonio
    I would also be very interested in this. The more straightforward ways there are to export the full text of notes (ideally with some reference back to the "parent") into a prose document, the happier I'd be.
  • dstillman
    Is there any reason to include notes and attachments "citations" in bibliographies at all? If not, we should change it to ignore those in bibliographies and copy full note content if only notes are selected/dragged.
  • erazlogo
    edited May 30, 2008
    Is there any reason to include notes and attachments "citations" in bibliographies at all?
    No reason. The only exception: annotations in an annotated bibliography--but even then, once the ticket for annotated bibliographies is implemented, users would drag the parent item with annotated bibliography style selected, not the annotation itself.
    If not, we should change it to ignore those in bibliographies and copy full note content if only notes are selected/dragged.
    That would be great! See also a related forum request.
  • dstillman
    This is now implemented in the latest dev build. Quick Copy now outputs full content of notes in bibliography mode if only copying notes; otherwise, it excludes notes from the generated bibliography.
  • arggem
    Great! (if I understand you).

    Does it automatically insert a citation when it copies as per my related request?

    Since for whatever reason that note (be it a quotation, comment or whatever) is making into my document, I need to cite it. OK, maybe not if it's one of my own comments, but it's easier to delete a citation than to add it.
  • dstillman
    Does it automatically insert a citation when it copies as per my related request?
    No, but you can at least now easily make two quick drags to copy both.
  • arggem
    hmmm. Really? Isn't the drag of the item itself going to give me a full bibliographic type entry? I want just the inline citation.

    Or am I missing some cool feature already implemented! :)
  • dstillman
    hmmm. Really? Isn't the drag of the item itself going to give me a full bibliographic type entry? I want just the inline citation.
    Oh, my mistake. Dragging of inline citations isn't yet supported, but there is a shortcut key for it (using the 'a' key by default).
  • arggem
    NO WAY!!!! 2220 visits to this forum and I just NOW find this out??? Sheesh.

    OK. I still want dragging of inline citations, but I'm happier now...especially when the dev build hits prime time!

    Thanks Dan!!!
  • arggem
    Changes in 1.0.5 (June 11, 2008)
    Functionality changed or added:

    * Output full content of notes in bibliography-mode Quick Copy if only copying notes; otherwise, exclude notes from generated bibliography

    YEA!!!

    Now, I don't want to seem ungrateful...but...the note comes across as one paragraph, even if I have the note broken into several paragraphs. Anyway to keep the extra lines intact?

    Also, related to the short cut for inline citations Yes, the shortcut inserts what appears to be an inline citation, but it's not "official." That is, it doesn't get generated into the bibliography. It still has to be inserted via the icon.

    Some people are never happy, are we? :(

    Anyhow, THANKS for adding note drag and drop so quickly!
  • dstillman
    Now, I don't want to seem ungrateful...but...the note comes across as one paragraph, even if I have the note broken into several paragraphs. Anyway to keep the extra lines intact?
    Where are you dragging? In plain text mode or HTML mode?

    Plain text should work fine. If in HTML mode, the white-space will only display properly in Firefox 3, Safari 3, maybe IE7 but probably just IE8, and other recent browsers.
    Also, related to the short cut for inline citations Yes, the shortcut inserts what appears to be an inline citation, but it's not "official." That is, it doesn't get generated into the bibliography. It still has to be inserted via the icon.
    I'm not sure if there's any way to generate a field via dragging. If not, the only way we could accomplish something like this would be to have the plugin scan the document for citations and automatically convert them (after dealing with any disambiguation issues) into fields. Something like that might happen eventually (for ease of writing and compatibility with editing in unsupported word processors), but it's not without its challenges.
  • arggem
    1. I'm dragging into Word 2003. In the preferences page/export, it doesn't matter if "Copy as HTML" is checked or not. Is that what you mean?

    2. Oh, OK. Well, keep it on the back burner, if you would. It would make my writing easier (and I need all the help I can get! :) )

    If dragging or the shortcut insert can't create a field directly, could the citation window some how open automatically to the reference in question?

    Anyhow, THANKS FOR A GREAT PROGRAM! And thanks for listening to finicky users. I mean, I want to get my money's worth out this thing....wait...it's free...nevermind.
  • dstillman
    edited June 12, 2008
    1. I'm dragging into Word 2003. In the preferences page/export, it doesn't matter if "Copy as HTML" is checked or not.
    OK, yeah, that's a bug. It only happens on Windows. Zotero was including a text/html version of the note content when copying to the clipboard (not to be confused with the HTML code as plain text), which was unnecessary (since notes aren't currently rich-text) and caused the newlines to be lost on Windows (since Word and OO don't support white-space: pre-wrap). This is now fixed in the latest dev build.

    As a workaround, you could drag to WordPad, which doesn't use the HTML content from the clipboard.
    If dragging or the shortcut insert can't create a field directly, could the citation window some how open automatically to the reference in question?
    I don't think there's even any way for Zotero to know what application received the text, so it'd have to be a plugin action, and if the plugin knew what reference was dragged, it might as well just convert it to a field. So I think the auto-field-conversion is the feature that would get implemented.
  • arggem
    Yea!!!

    Note drag and drop functionality...um...functions in 1.0.6!!!

    (Now, about that auto-field-conversion thing ;) )

    Great work Team Z!
  • jonbean
    How do I export my notes to Word or something else? It only exports the bib citation and the first line (my note headline) but not the rest of my notes. That has me rushing back to Endnote. Zotero is great for grabbing citations but how do I export all the notes for a collection to a Word/RTF file??
  • dstillman
    jonbean: You can just select them in Zotero and drag them into Word. Just make sure that you select only notes and that you have a bibliography format selected in the Export pane of the Zotero prefs, not an export format. Also, the dragged notes won't auto-update like citations entered via the Word plugin, since you're basically just copying text.

    In 1.5, dragged notes will contain HTML markup, which is a bug. We'll try to fix that for Beta 3.
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