AMS MathSciNet translator doesn't recognize some valid pages

I was looking at a paper on MathSciNet, but Zotero doesn't recognize the URL:

http://www.ams.org/mathscinet-getitem?mr=2423350

This is because the regular expression in the translator doesn't recognize it. I suggest changing the "target" line to

"target":"^https?://www\\.ams\\.org[^/]*/mathscinet(/search/(?:publications\\.html|publdoc\\.html))|(-getitem\\?mr=)"

The regex could be made a bit more precise; more information on the exact syntax of those "getitem" URLs is at: http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/help/getitem.html

Also, while working on this, I made a backup of the translator file and called it "AMS MathSciNet.backup", thinking that Zotero would ignore any files without a .js extension -- but it doesn't, and while trying to figure things out, I accidentally submitted an automatic bug report, which should be ignored. Perhaps it would be a good idea to have Zotero only look for .js files in the translators directory?
  • edited July 16, 2009
    I'm still new to Zotero, but when I hover my mouse over the "paper" icon when viewing your first link (the bibtex record), it says it recognizes the paper because it finds a DOI. The second link is unrecognized because Zotero right now doesn't have a translator for Zentralblatt.

    I know basically zip about Javascript, but looking at the MathSciNet translator, it looks pretty simple: it recognizes a page, and when you ask Zotero to save it, I think Zotero just downloads and parses the BibTeX version -- so it should be easy to adapt the MSN translator to a Zbl one.

    BTW, saving the above paper using the DOI didn't work for me, but apparently it has just been fixed: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/7751/add-item-by-identifier-doi-broken/

    One workaround for Zbl is to look at the BibTeX page (like your first link), select and copy the entry, and then in Zotero, click the gear icon and do "import from clipboard". (A very simple, but awesome feature IMHO.) That worked for me.
  • Is anything going to be done about this? The first issue is a one-line change to a source file that easy to test. It should be very quick to get this into the official translator.
  • This is very disappointing. I have identified a problem, found its cause, and described how to solve it -- and get absolutely no response from the developers. I thought Zotero was very promising, and prefer to use open-source tools, but if this is indicative of the community here, perhaps I've made a mistake with Zotero.

    This is doubly frustrating since there are larger problems with Zotero, namely with the BibTeX export. If this extremely simple fix can't get put in, it's surely a waste of time to report more complicated issues related to import and export.
  • things in the forum sometimes get lost - just look at how much traffic there is -
    my sense is that this is especially true for translator issues - my guess would be that this is because of the way responsibilities are shared among core developers, but I don't know.
    probably posting this to the dev list is a better idea.
    http://groups.google.com/group/zotero-dev
    you'll also see an ongoing discussion about bibtex export there, if you want to get involved in that.
  • I've posted on your behalf to zotero-dev. Sorry about things getting lost in the shuffle. I hope this one makes it through to clients this time.
  • edited June 6, 2010
    This was lost in the shuffle again, but I've just committed the changes and it should hit clients quite soon. See https://www.zotero.org/trac/changeset/6105
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