It's possible with a little jerry-rigging, but how the jerry-rig is put together is platform dependent. What OS are you using?

It's also sort-of-possible in other applications (sans any of the benefits of ODF scan mentioned by @fbennett), using BBTs CAYW (which would provide the floating part), but triggering the floating picker from a hotkey (and pasting the results into the foreground app if that's what you want) requires platform-dependent setup; some existing user-provided options to do this are listed on the CAYW page, but it's not enable-and-done like shown in the bookends video.

@emilianoeheyns, I need your guidance to complete the workflow to finally have a floating window to insert citations in applications other than Word.

I have managed to do the set up as described by @fbennett (installed and setup Zotero ODF Scan). But I cannot figure out what to do with BBTs CAYW to have the floating window.

Would you be able to guide me? I do not have a background in programming and have only basic knowledge in how to use my Mac. I would really appreciate it.

Cheers! :)

Wow! Thank you @emilianoeheyns for your prompt reply! :) Much appreciated.

I will go through the links you provided. I will let you know how I go.

Cheers! :)

@emilianoeheyns @fbennett

One last issue. I have installed and setup everything to have the "floating window" to select and cite in an application other than Word. However, when a citation is selected, the citation ID is input in Japanese. For example:

{｜Brewer,1991｜｜｜ず：276004：4EAB2LZW｝

For a citation that should appear as:

(Brewer, 1991)

I am unsure what I should do now and who to contact about this.

Your further guidance would be greatly appreciated.

I am using MacOS 10.4 Mojave with Japanese language selected. I have the Japanese ATOK as the Input Manager Editor.

I hope that the parsing works with the Japanes ID instead of ZU -- otherwise @fbennett may be able to advise or you can just do search and replace.

ず does say "zu", looks like ATOK is kicking in. This happens with the FEP set to English input? Not likely to happen with other languages, so if the Mac absolutely insists on converting that string, we could just recognize it. That would be ugly on ugly, but if all else fails.

Oh, wait. It's giving you zenkaku characters for all of the punctuation in there as well---the vertical-bar field separators and the colon. If there isn't a way of forestalling the ATOK front end from corrupting the text inserts, this will prove frustrating.

Yes, {|Brewer,1991|||zu:276004:4EAB2LZW} is correct, ATOK and BBT might interact somehow, but I think the culprit is pretty clearly ATOK since BBT works fine on systems without ATOK and as Emiliano says above, writes the right thing to the clipboard.

To get (Brewer, 1991) set format=formatted-citation and set the Default Output Style in the Export tab of Zotero to "American Psychological Association"--but note the limitation that Emiliano points out: these citations are not recognized by Zotero in any way, so you won't be able to create a bibliography based on such-cited items.

If your browser outputs the correct marker, it's definately ATOK. There is one other avenue but I don't have the requisite Mac knowledge to make it work; the current applescript takes the text output and "types" it into the frontmost app; you can change the URL to http://127.0.0.1:23119/better-bibtex/cayw?format=scannable-cite&clipboard=true and BBT will put it on the clipboard (replacing what was there!), so the applescript could paste instead of type. It seems likely to me that that would not activate ATOK (since nothing is being "typed"), but I don't know for sure, and I don't know applescript, so I don't know how to make it actually work, or what the downsides are to using paste vs type.

That's the thing - the applescript will have to be changed to make use of the content that's now on the clipboard, but I don't know what those changes would look like, just that it's possible.

What could be happening is that the vertical bar | and perhaps also the {} characters are reserved characters for ATOK, either internally or and intended feature for interacting with some application or other (because nobody ever uses the | character for anything, right?).

It's a long shot, but you might take a look through the ATOK configuration menus and see if there is a related setting.

I am just wondering if there is any way around this.

To explain more what I originally requested, let me describe the type of workflow I envisage in steps. Explaining this may bring other ways/methods to mind.

--------------------------
Scenario 1
START
Step One:
I have open on my Mac a rich/plain text note taking application, like Agenda for example. I am writing up an idea. I remember reading a paper on "identity" which I would like to cite.

Step Two:
I call up the floating citation window (similar to that as used in the Bookends application).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYVBsbjwZP8&feature=youtu.be

And I search for "identity" and come up with the reference:

"Brewer, Marilynn B. (1991), The Social Self: On Being the Same and Different at the Same Time. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17(5): 475–482."

Step Three:
I then choose this reference to then have "(Brewer 1991)" entered where I have the cursor. (Or "(Brewer, 1991)" or "(Brewer et al 1991)" or "(Brewer 1991; Stone 2000)" and so on).

Step Four:
I have finished writing this note after citing other papers using Step Two and Three. I export the note to MS Word.

Step Five:
I use Zotero to complete the Bibliography.

END

--------------------------
Scenario 2:
START
Step One:
I have open on my Mac a rich/text plain text note taking application. I am going to write a summary of the paper in my Zotero library about a paper on "identity".

Step Two:
I call up the floating citation window (similar to that as used in the Bookends application). I search for "identity" and come up with the reference.

Brewer, Marilynn B. (1991), The Social Self: On Being the Same and Different at the Same Time. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17(5): 475–482.

Step Three:
I choose this citation in full so that the entire reference is pasted into my note.

END
--------------------------

Does this give a better understanding of what I originally really wanted?

If the Better BibTex plug-in is NOT used, I can get around the problems I am having with ATOK.

I am using Mac OS 10.4 Mojave.

I am hoping there is a way. I have my heart set on using Zotero. It works in line with the way I think. :)

(To pile on, I still think it might be the { | } markup (to coin a phrase) that triggers ATOK conversion in a paste.)

Can you try with a vertical bar in there? This has all made me a bit curious.