BibTex-Import: Strange conversion of "F"

bowman
Hi all,

i have a really strange character-import problem from Bibtex (gegerated by Bookends/Mac) to Zotero. The import basically works great (after UF-8 and CR/LF conversion), just the letter F is changed to °F (an "F" with a preceeding small circle like the Celsius-degree symbol). I have tried different encodings (UTF-8, Iso-Latin 1 etc.) but the problem remains, even on my virtual machine with windows. The Bibtex file looks ok, i don't have any more idea what to try next. Unfortunately, Bibtex seems to be the only import option, because my version of Bookends only supports export in Bibtex or Endnote 6-8 (witch causes Zotero to complain about a missing translator).

Has anybody an idea what to do? I'd really like to use Zotero, but don't have the time to change over 400 "F" by hand... ;-)
  • dstillman
    You might want to try the Reset Translators and Scrapers button in the Advanced pane of the Zotero prefs, since that will give you the latest version of the BibTeX translator (which isn't being distributed via the online repository in 1.0 versions of Zotero). You should close Firefox and make a backup copy of your SQLite database first.

    If you're still seeing the problem after that, you can send a copy of the BibTeX file to support@zot....org, and we can take a look at it.
  • bowman
    Hi Dan,

    thanks for your really fast response! :-) I've tried to reset the Translators and imported the BibTeX-File again, but the problem remains. I'll send the File to you (and really hope you will find a solution, because Zotero seems to be the platform- and wordprocessor-independend bibliograpy tool i've been searching for years - great work!

    :-)
  • siliconbug
    I have the same exact problem -- it's really °freakin weird. I'll send my bibtex file to the above email as well. Doesn't seem to matter -- title word, author, all capital F's are haunted by the little circle.

    On a completely separate note, the removal of dashes is pretty annoying too. I've made sure all of my translators are updated.
  • dstillman
    Ticket created, thanks.

    The character mapping table we're using to convert BibTeX's ASCII representations of extended characters to Unicode is a bit overzealous.
  • siliconbug
    The ticket says this has been fixed, but how do I get the fixed version? I tried updating/resetting the translator as described above with no luck. Thanks.
  • bowman
    Same here. I tried to replace "scrapers.sql" with the version of this file from the ticket/changeset, but the problem remains. Are there any other files to replace?
  • dstillman
    Install Zotero 1.0.3 from the front page, go to the Advanced pane of the Zotero preferences, and hit Reset Translators and Styles.

    That should fix the problem.

    (The BibTeX translator is too large to update via the repository in Zotero 1.0/Firefox 2.)
  • bowman
    Great - it works! Thank you so much - thesis in NeoOffice, i'm coming... 8-)
  • phyto
    The same problem occurs with "ff" (like in the word "effect") which is converted to a strange double-f character.

    Is there a trick to convert at once all "°F" back to regular "F" (and "ff" to "ff") in zotero references that were generated before resetting translators and styles ? I have too many of them in my references to do it by hand :(

    Thanks!
  • dstillman
    I've fixed the problem with ligatures in the latest dev branch, but, like before, it won't be available via Reset Translators and Styles until 1.0.4 is out. Alternatively, you can grab scrapers.sql from the 1.0 branch in SVN, copy the BibTeX translator to a separate file, and import that into the Zotero DB (with Firefox closed) using the SQLite command-line client.

    There's no easy way to do batch replace at the moment, but this will likely be possible in the future. If you're feeling particularly adventurous you could dump your entire SQLite database to a file using the command-line client (using the .out and .dump commands), do find-and-replace on it in a text editor, and import it into a clean DB.
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