How to turn an url into a clickable url

86ul
edited July 9, 2022
Hello fellow users,

I'm using the flathub version of Zotero 6.0.9, and I have a question about the url of an item.

When I refer to an item with an url, then these url's in both the footnote and bibliography stay in plain text. However, I would like to have these url's turned into a clickable url. This seems strange for a physical document, but having an hyperlink in a digital document seem not so strange to me at all.

Any reader with a digital device can then just click on the clickable hyperlink, and see/read the item itself too.

In case this is not yet an option, then i would like to request this feature.

Thanks,
  • adamsmith
    Not possible with Zotero.
    In Word you can get URLs recognized as such by running AutoFormat, but the equivalent (running AutoCorrect Text on a section with a URL) does not appear to work in LibreOffice, or at least I can't get it to.
  • DWL-SDCA
    edited July 9, 2022
    In LibreOffice [Mac]

    Menu Tools → AutoCorrect Options... → Options tab →
    --- URL Recognition

    [This should change the default paragraph style.]

    For already-existing text you may need to select all (paragraph) and

    Menu Format → AutoCorrect → Apply

    edit if the url contains unencoded "reserved" characters such as #, %, etc. and ?, you may need to select the entire URL string and convert manually. I haven't tried this lately but I think that more recent LO versions can will better handle these. Especially the "?". I recall being impressed that LO would recognize the reserved characters and while displaying them in the document make the (behind-the-scenes) link with the characters properly encoded.

    -- I'm using a tablet right now and am away from a computer with MacOS.
  • adamsmith
    Yeah, that is what I tried unsuccessfully
  • DWL-SDCA
    @adamsmith

    Back at my desktop and this works for me (Mac : LO 7.1.3.2). Is autocorrect while typing ticked in your settings?
  • adamsmith
    Yes and it works if I add a space after the URL, but does nothing when I just click apply
  • DWL-SDCA
    edited July 9, 2022
    And it handles links with multiple reserved characters just fine:

    https://www.safetylit.org/citations/index.php?fuseaction=citations.viewdetails&citationIds[]=citjournalarticle_721064_9

    CMD-click to follow the link on my Mac using LO.
  • 86ul
    edited July 10, 2022
    @adamsmith, it seems that this is precisely my point: LO recognise the url _after_ adding a space. Is there a way to have the url automatically without adding the space? Aka, is this a Zotero thing or a LO thing to solve?
  • DWL-SDCA
    Without answering your question directly, the space seems important (if not necessary) for LO to recognize where the URL string ends when there are characters beyond the top level domain -- with TLDs being added frequently and of different lengths; even this might be a problem.

    @adamsmith
    I'd be pleased if it was possible to have Zotero add something to the end of the URL to make LO recognize it. There are brilliant minds among the developers and volunteers who build Zotero. I wonder if this is doable?
Sign In or Register to comment.