Rich Text in Titles

2
  • Is anyone else finding Ritnze's google doc filled with wingdings?
  • right-click and save as...
    if you left click and follow the link google does something funny.
  • Has a way to insert Ritnze's macros into the Zoterorefresh macro been discovered yet?
  • any news if this will indeed come in 2.1? Personally, I can live with having to re-itlaicise all genera and species in my bibs, but it sure would be nice to have!
  • edited September 18, 2010
    The HTML-like tags for italics etc. are recognized by the CSL processor in the 2.1 beta. In the user interface, you'll need to type the tags in by hand, and Zotero will not ignore the tag markup for on-screen sorting (as far as I know). But the basic functionality should work. The 2.1 beta will also do flip-flopping where necessary, both for markup (setting an "italic" species name to roman when the title is in italics), and for quotation marks (from double to single, when quotes are nested).

    This all works splendidly on the drawing board. Now that 2.1 beta is out, we'll find out how the feature copes with real-world formatting requirements ...
  • edited May 17, 2011
    In Zotero 2.1.6 the HTML-like tags are fantastic.

    I have noticed, however, that the word-processor integration seems to be lagging behind the processor in dealing with this. A book item with <i> tags is processed in the "Zotero Reference Text pane" but not in either Word or OpenOffice.

    For example... in the Title field,

    Freedom of the Will<i>. In </i>The Works of Jonathan Edwards

    Is displayed in the "Zotero Reference Text pane" as:

    Freedom of the Will. In The Works of Jonathan Edwards

    But in Word (3.1) and OpenOffice (3.5a1) it is displayed as:

    Freedom of the Will. In The Works of Jonathan Edwards

    Is anyone else experiencing this?
  • Not an answer to your question, but why are you including italics in that title? That looks like a book chapter to me, but that you're entering both item and book title in the same title field?
  • I almost included an explanation for that. I discovered this when looking for a workaround for individually titled volumes in a set (while we wait for hierarchical items), so I used the example that was close at hand. But the oddness of the example should not distract from the technical question, right? I suppose you could argue that real-world cases in which you would want to reverse the italics in a title are rare (and I can't think of a good example), but I was just wondering about the discrepancy between the test pane and word processor output.
  • no - real world examples of reversing italics aren't rare at all - any time a book title includes a foreign language word or another book title, for example - and this should absolutely work, but since some users don't use the book section item type correctly I think bdarcus wanted to make sure that you're not misunderstanding something (which you're not - lack of volume titles is indeed an issue, though hopefully one we can resolve before hierarchical item types).
    So with that cleared, back to the real issue - this has come up at least once before, I think, but I'm not sure with what results... anyone can test this in a branch xpi to see if recent updates have happened to fix this?
  • edited July 2, 2011
    Are italics for species names in titles supposed to work in Zotero 2.1.8?

    I'm importing from Springerlink - which is failing using the DOI importer so I'm using Springlerlink's "export citation" as BibTex feature to export the citation and open it in cb2Bib, copying to clipboard - then use Zotero 2.1.8's "Import from Clipboard".

    The BibTex for the title is this:

    title = {River Red Gum (& lt;i& gt;Eucalyptus camaldulensis& lt;/i& gt; Dehnh.)},

    (I insertered a space in & lt; etc so this forum software didnt convert it)


    In Zotero I've tried leaving the title with tags that look like & lt;i& gt; or manually editing them to <i> </i>...

    In each case the tags are displayed literally in zotero and in MS Word - ie I see the tags not the italics.

    I found a few items in this forum from 2008,2007 but got the impression from dowens's post above that this should work.
    Where am I going wrong? How do you get an italicized species name in a title? with 2.1.8?
  • Yes, this works in general. Hard to say where you are going wrong. Two possible sources: The data or something in Word.
    To see if the data is the problem, manually create a new item and write in the tags (in unicode - i.e. <i> and </i>.
    To see if Word is the problem, see how it looks in the test pane:
    chrome://zotero/content/tools/csledit.xul
  • edited July 2, 2011
    Thanks adam, I think this is solved.

    - hand entering a new ref works OK and looks good in word with italics displayed.
    - editing the BibTex to change & lt;i& gt; to <i> worked also - the difference this time is I blew away the bibliography and inserted again.
    - chrome://zotero/content/tools/csledit.xul didnt show any italics at all (markup not displayed either)

    ..and last but not least ....

    Instead of exporting BibTex from Springerlink I found I could export as ProCite and Zotero jumped into action and imported the citation itself with the markup correct as <i></i> - no need for me to be messing with BibTex at all now!
  • excellent. FYI someone is working on a fix for the Springer translator, but there are some bumps on the way.
  • That markup in the incoming is just wrong. Springer should be notified-- there's no reason that BibTeX should use HTML character entities in that way.
  • edited December 8, 2011
    Is it possible to have the Zotero Info Pane italicize <i>words</i> once out of editing (ie, once we hit enter and are no longer editing the field)? That is, show the markup codes when editing a field, but have them visualized/implemented when out of editing?
  • I think that should be possible, but no one has really looked into it yet.
  • Is there some way to petition development? It would make my library look much tidier and give me confidence that I'm not screwing things up.
  • Well, you are petitioning development by posting here; the core developers (Dan Stillman, Simon Kornblith) read pretty much every post. I'm not sure how hard this would be, but it sure doesn't seem like it should be too bad.
  • Well, the real fix would be to get rid of the visible markup—which works because the citation processor supports it, not Zotero itself—and just use a stripped down rich-text interface for titles. People shouldn't have to enter HTML themselves.

    That will probably happen eventually, but there are no immediate plans to work on it.
  • edited December 9, 2011
    Dan:
    Well, the real fix would be to get rid of the visible markup—which works because the citation processor supports it, not Zotero itself—and just use a stripped down rich-text interface for titles. People shouldn't have to enter HTML themselves.
    That's not the only, or even necessarily the best, solution. You could also allow a simple text-based markup, and then do as reimerth suggests. This is how Google+ works, for example, and has the great advantage that it doesn't add yet more clutter to an already cramped UI.
  • Or perhaps allow shortcuts (like ctrl/command-b for bold) to be used when text is selected in the title field.
  • Bruce: There wouldn't be any added clutter. It would use keyboard shortcuts, as Rintze says, which are more discoverable and user-friendly than markup.

    If there are things other than bold and italics that would need to be in there, markup might make more sense, but I don't see any advantage to markup otherwise.
  • edited December 9, 2011
    I guess there's superscript/subscript... But we could also extend the context menu for this if we needed to. Bold/italics via shortcuts, and bold/italics/super/sub in the context menu.
  • There is more variation in shortcuts for superscript/subscript, but I don't see why we couldn't adopt the shortcuts from another program. E.g.

    http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/make-text-superscript-or-subscript-HP005189455.aspx

    Superscript: Press CTRL+SHIFT+=
    Subscript: Press CTRL+=

    http://www.apple.com/support/pages/shortcuts/

    Make text superscript Control-Command-plus sign (+)
    Make text subscript Control-Command-minus sign (-)

    That leaves just "small caps".
  • The MS Word shortcut for small caps is CTRL+SHIFT+K.
  • edited December 12, 2011
    MS word shortcuts are locale-specific. Very annoying since I have English version on one computer and Swedish on another.
  • Well, Zotero will probably settle on one set of shortcuts and stick with it for all locales, at least at first.
  • Yes please settle on one set of shortcuts
  • It would use keyboard shortcuts, as Rintze says, which are more discoverable and user-friendly than markup.
    I think this may be a YMMV situation. I find markup easier to remember than funky keyboard shortcuts.
  • edited December 12, 2011
    I find markup easier to remember than funky keyboard shortcuts.
    I don't think you're the standard case here. And Ctrl/Cmd-I is hardly funky—it's pretty much universal in rich-text editors.

    And as I noted above, we can also put these in a context menu when text is selected.
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