Citation Cards

Scrivener Wish List
1

One wishlist item I would appreciate is what I call Citation Cards.

These would be a sort of merging of Comments, Footnotes and Annotations.

[] Like Comments they would not show in the main text but rather be visible in the right sidebar.[/]
[] Like Footnotes they would leave a small indicator in the main text that there is a reference.[/]
[] Like Annotations they would display as an “off-sides” text box in programs like Word.[/*]

Perhaps they could display in Scrivener similar to the synopsis index cards but make them look something like an old fashioned library catalog card ?

Citation Cards ought to also be capable of optionally supporting some kind of KEYWORD==>VALUE template system to facilitate data entry of key fields (title, url, date, page, etc) required for various styles (MLA, APA, CMS, etc) of academic citations.

  • Also like Footnotes there ought to be an option to have the data on these cards compiled into Word/RTF as an endnotes/sources-cited/bibliography page. The user could then edit this page for the appropriate formatting. Citations would not replace Footnotes as the latter often have much more information than just citations. Citations and Footnotes could however possibly be coordinated by some kind of Scrivener link.
2

Citations is a very weak area of Scrivener. I’ve “wished” in the past that features be introduced. For the moment I use BibDesk (on Mac) to handle the citations and then drag and drop the references in a document at the end of the Binder.

Is a problem. It does not solve the citation issue because that is complex because different journals, different publishers have different rules. Is the author to resolve that “indicator” according to Harvard, ACM, AMA, or the multitude of other conventions that publishers insist upon.

When I have reference heavy projects I resort to drafting in Scrivener putting in LaTeX citation marks then File > Compile the final revision to LaTex and then process the paper or book using LaTex and bibtex to format both the references and the citations according the publisher’s house rules. But that way I get a submission in the desire style, even if I have to tweak the LaTeX file generated which I do anyway to make sure that page breaks happen where I want them.

3

I don’t really understand the problem with citations in Scrivener (perhaps because I don’t use such software myself). I was under the impression from most users that it is fairly straightforward to use Endnote, Bookends and such with Scrivener. Then, when you export your manuscript, you process the citations in your chosen bibliography software. I’m not sure what else Scrivener can do in this area, without introducing its own citations manager, which is really out of scope and would be a massive drain on resources when you consider that there are whole teams dedicated to maintaining software with just this as its primary feature.

4

KB: I whole-heartedy agree that Scrivener should not include a built-in citation manager per se, the sheer number and variety of citation styles would make it insane for L&L to even try. However a citation assist feature is what I am hoping for.

Allow me to explain my usage and see if that helps it make sense what I need/want, as well as perhaps what other people would want/need.

SUGGESTION: a special sticky Wish List thread could be started asking for other folks to outline their work flows with regards to Scrivener & citations and from that list a better picture could emerge.

I am a sophomore undergrad student which among other things means that I am taking a range of general education requirement classes in multiple disciplines, each of which uses a preferred citation style: Psychology classes use APA, History classes use CMS, and English classes use MLA. Personally I use citation assistance software because trying to keep all those citation formats in my head would be insane when I really need to focus on the substance of the material using the citations.

The citation software I use is StyleEase (I purchased all three versions since I have to use all three styles). SE is a Word add-on that is like a fill-in-the-blanks wizard on steroids. I go to the point in the paper where I need a citation, click on the SE menu and select the type of reference material (book, journal, web, etc) I am citing. A wizard pops up and with a minimal number of keystrokes and voila! I have a perfectly formatted citation with footnotes and/or a bibliography page. To date I have written about 30 papers and not once have I had an instructor downgrade me on my citations (though one did try but when we looked in the style manual she admitted she was wrong).

To see a very quick video that shows SE in action click this link:
http://www.styleease.com/flash/FlashCiteTraditionalRefs.html.

Now SE is not magic and it has flaws. To avoid certain problems I wait until I am done writing the final version of my paper before I activate SE. Instead I use my own personal pseudo-cite placeholder tags like [[brown, p. 22-23]] or [[reference.etc/article]]. ( Sorry, [[wikipedia]] has corrupted me. :laughing: ) When I am ready to insert my citations I activate SE and do a find for “[[” and then add my reference data (SE has a database that allows me to reuse existing references with just a couple of mouse clicks).

When I discovered Scrivener a couple of weeks ago it was a perfect match for my paper writing workflow. I could clearly see myself using it to write/reorganize/etc and I dreamed of replacing my [[placeholder]] tags with more detailed Comments/Footnotes/Annotations. But as I explored the software I found it would not work as I hoped…

[]Comments export to Word as a separate file and so I would have to continue to use [[placeholder]] tags. Other than excerpted quotes there is little added advantage to using Comments and there is a slight risk of using the wrong Comment for a given citation since they are not visually linked.[/]

[]Footnotes compete with the StyleEase software when it is also trying to add footnotes. Plus I have to delete all the Scrivener generated footnotes manually. Very messy and kludgy.[/]

[]Annotations in Word are ideal as they can easily be seen off-sides when using StyleEase, but the problem with Annotations is they clutter up the main text in Scrivener and break the reading flow.[/]

Thus my wishlist item merging the three into a new feature.

As far as what the new Citation Cards would contain, let the users decide that. Give them a templating feature and let them decide what blanks they want to fill in. Some may just use freeform while others might want the basics like title, date, page, etc…

For example a citation card might have a simple template as follows:

FFTEXT1:
AUTHOR: Lastname, Firstname     <-- default/hint text
TITLE:
LOCATION:
PUBLISHER:
DATE: YYYY     <-- default/hint text
ISBN: 
FFTEXT2:

and look like this: library-catalog-cards-EDITED.png
Note that the first line in the card would become the inline text in the exported RTF. Ideally the user would type some kind of a reference tag, highlight the tag, then press something like CTRL+SHIFT+R (for Reference if that key-combo is available) to create the card with the highlighted text becoming the card name. This would support those writers who use software like Magic Citations/Papers2/BibText/etc.

If a writer uses the same card name again, a new card with a link to the first card would be created. In the event of a nearly identical citation such as everything being the same except page numbers, a free form field would be available after the link to indicate the differences.

All template field names start on position 1 of a line and end with the first colon character encountered and any text after that would be used to pre-populate the field even if it contained colons. All template field records end with a carriage return/line feed. Any template field that starts with FFTEXT would have no title/keyword. Duplicate field names are ok. This is not a DBMS system, just citation notes.

Hopefully the user could travel from field to field using the tab (shift tab for backwards movement) key.

Based on certain export settings the data from the card would end up in Word with the redbox used slightly differently. The following list of settings would be set to NO by default…

  1. COMPRESS EMPTY FIELDS = YES/NO
    Omits all unused fields including empty freeform text fields. Caution: fields with pre-populated default text would not be considered empty.

  2. COMPRESS FIELDS # XX <a series of checkboxes, one per field> = YES/NO
    This would always omit the selected fields from export even if not empty. Useful for suppressing freeform text fields.

  3. COMPRESS KEYWORD TITLES = YES/NO
    Omits all KEYWORD: titles, only VALUES are exported.

  4. COMPRESS KEYWORDS DELIMITER = ?
    This last option would strip all line feeds (CR/LF) between keyword fields during export and replace them with a single character (examples might be SPACE, TAB, SEMICOLON, etc). The resulting export would have one line for all keyword fields. The freeform text fields would be unaffected by this option.

Well that is about it for my idea. I hope it helps you understand the issue better. Sorry I was so long but hey, you know us writers we love words!