Feature Request: Respect line breaks in BibTex 'Generate Bibliography from Item'

andrew.john.lock
I am often working with an existing BibTex file, and wish to add individual references as I am working (for example, collaborative projects, changes to past manuscripts etc.).

The easiest way to do this seems to be 'Generate Bibliography from Item' -> copy to clipboard.

The issue here is that the copied BibTex item doesn't respect line breaks. For example, a standard BibTex entry is formatted as:

@article{Blogs2024,
author = {Blogs, J.},
year = {2024},
month = {01},
title = {On why Zotero is the best reference manager},
journal = {International Journal of Reference Managers},
}

But instead what is copied to the clipboard is:

@article{Blogs2024, author = {Blogs, J.}, year = {2024}, month = {01}, title = {On why Zotero is the best reference manager}, journal = {International Journal of Reference Managers},}

Would it be possible to add the feature so that BibTex references can be copied with line breaks and indents maintained?

P.s. Many thanks for what is already an outstanding reference manager. And I'm one of the users eagerly awaiting a wider release of the Android version for a tablet.
  • andrew.john.lock
    Note: in this forum post it seems the indents in the property lines in the first @article example have disappeared. But it should follow the standard BibTex indentation.
  • dstillman
    The easiest way to do this seems to be 'Generate Bibliography from Item' -> copy to clipboard.
    No, don't do that — that's using a citation style coded to more or less produce BibTeX. That exists for some rare use cases and isn't meant for normal usage.

    You would just want to use Quick Copy set to Zotero's actual BibTeX export format.

    But for an actual BibTeX workflow, you'd really want to use the third-party Better BibTeX plugin. You can use one of its formats via Quick Copy or use one of its other features, such as keeping an external BibTeX file automatically up to date.
  • andrew.john.lock
    OK, thanks. I didn't realise there was the option to Ctrl-shift-C to quick copy to clipboard (dragging is undesirable when working with WSL and Vim etc).

    That's resolved it, thanks!
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