Corrupt Citation For RFT/ODF Scan

ala287
Hello everyone,
I would like to recount how I solved a problem, and see if anyone has an idea why this problem happened in the first place and what one can do to prevent it in the future. Here we go:

I recently have been working between scrivener and Zotero using RTF/ODF scan. After scanning a particular document I found that, when I tried to press "set document preferences" in LibreOffice, the whole program stalled irrevocably. Through (an extensive) process of elimination I discovered that the reason it wasn't running was because there was one citation that for some reason made the system stall. Once I removed this citation, I could set document preferences seamlessly. The citation code was the following:
{ | Cauwès, 1878 | | |zu:1892524:INGM6QAH}

Does anyone know what was wrong with this code so that it messed up the whole process? If you do I, and I am sure others would appreciate it. It would be very helpful to know what precisely makes this citation a corrupt one so as to be able to diagnose similar problems in the future.

Thank you very much,
A
  • russcarfagno
    I am also having a problem with RTF scan. I use Scrivener but RTF the file out. Many of my citations are getting missed now. This is one example -

    Canales, Tejeda-Delgado, & Slate, {2008} found the scales to be reliable......

    So there is the author list and year but RTF scan skips this entry. This is one in a long list of an 88 page paper. Any ideas appreciated.
  • adamsmith
    Honestly, RTF scan isn't terribly well maintained currently and I doubt it's going to be a priority until 5.1 is released (at that point, Zotero will support proper citekeys which will allow a much more robust solution to the whole thing). The things I'd try is to remove the comma after "Slate" and to cite this as "Canales et al. {2008}" but if neither of those help, I think you'll just have to fix it manually.
  • russcarfagno
    Adam, thanks. I have been using RTF scan for 4 years at this point and am just about 100 pages into a dissertation. Not sure what other direction to take. I use Scrivener for writing and RTF scan was the easiest form of integration. Not sure if the new local version 5 of Zotero which I just installed has any better integration into Scrivener. I appreciate the comments and will look for some options.
  • adamsmith
    The ODF scan referenced above is a bit more cumbersome to set up but works more reliably and precisely, so that's the main alternative -- we developed it principally because we didn't find RTF scan reliable enough for serious writing.
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