The challenge of getting Zotero to play nicely with Scrivener remains a problem for me: I love and rely on both programs, why can’t they get along? I’ve experimented with the RTF scan feature but I’m coming to the conclusion that it is more trouble than it is worth: too many references have to be disambiguated by hand and the suspicion that certain references might be improperly designated continues to concern me.
For now, I’m plowing ahead by using the footnote function within Scrivener to construct reasonably clear (albeit technically sloppy) references with an eye to going back over everything once it has been compiled to Word and inserting proper footnotes using the Zotero Word plug in. This is hardly the most elegant solution and I suspect that the weeks that will be consumed cleaning everything up are going to be no picnic. But the idea of junking Scrivener and going back to using Word is an even less appealing prospect.
Equally unappealing is the thought of replacing Zotero with another citation manager. The program keeps getting better and I’ve recently opted for their paid synchronization of attachments, which works quickly and flawlessly.
Do you really think it will take weeks to fix this? You might be in a more citation heavy field, but I suspect (in fact I speak from personal experience) that it would take a (rather boring) day or two to insert the citations in a book-length ms and then a little longer to go through it (but that would be part of the pre-delivery editing). I’m experimenting a bit with just writing in LibreOffice, which I like better than Word in some ways (after tweaking the look and some of the ways it works…) Anyway, it’s a frustrating problem–I have a Bookends license, but thinking over the course of a career, I think of Zotero as a better long-term solution (beginning with its platform independence–I use a Mac now, but who knows what I will use in the future).
Fair enough, I’ll rephrase - Amongst those I am personally aware of, most (at least 90%) seem to use cite-while-you-write plugins.
I agree with AmberV that it’s probably largely a matter of familiarity, and also probably because all of these people use one of the citation managers that have cite-while-you-write as an option (Endnote, Reference Manager, Zotero, Mendeley). Most of them probably don’t know what RTF scan is. I certainly had not heard of it until I started looking into how to use Scrivener for academic writing a few months ago.
You refer to a number of Mac-only reference managers which exclusively use temp citations / RTF scan. I think this situation is largely driven by the fact that Pages does not support 3rd party plugins so many Mac users have had little choice but to get along with this method of citation insertion. As Scrivener begins to attract more Windows users I’d be surprised if the requests for cite-while-you-write functionality does not escalate.
I’ve never really given temp citation keys/RTF scan method a shot because the reference manager I use does not have RTF scan functionality. But it seems to me that cite-while-you-write is beneficial when writing collaboratively: If I reference something using a temporary citation mark and then pass the document to a co-author to comment/edit, they don’t know what papers I am referring to, but if the citation is properly formatted (cite-while-you-write) with associated bibliography, they know exactly what I am referring to.
Since there is no Zotero plugin for Scrivener, its not really a question of getting along. Zotero do not use unique identifiers for their temporary citations and going by discussion on their forum, they don’t seem to want to consider them. This leads to poor performance of their RTF scan.
By contrast other reference managers do use unique identifiers (e.g. Endnote) and achieve excellent results.
That could be part of the continuing popularity of the method, but this method has been in prominence on the Mac since before Pages existed, as this is the only method for anyone using a “marginal” word processor without plug-in support, on any platform. I think the main thing you bring up, that most people use Word and EndNote together is why it is a largely unknown method, despite being the only method that pretty much anyone other than Word users can partake in. So it’s much more widely known outside of the Office realm.
The placeholder code is usually informative, and looks about like a regular citation does. {Author, Title DATE, Pub} or thereabouts (it depends on the manager), and some will insert a small code to help identify it back with the database during scan. So it’s not like a {#ID:2349038} or something that is completely opaque.
Obviously, anything we can do to make that easier, say detection of placeholders so they can be clicked on like links, or something like that would help. We’ll have to see what’s feasible in terms of bandwidth and such.
I have a slightly different view. To judge from your punctuation, you are writing from America where I suspect that MS and EndNote are widely used because colleges and universities provide them, or make it possible to obtain cheap licences. The situation is slightly different in the UK. MS Word is still widespread, but EndNote seems to have much less of a hold (it used to be supported by a fairly small company in Hertfordshire – I don’t know if it still is). The other point is that not all of us are thirty years old . When I started writing on a computer it was an Amstrad PCW, and I used LocoScript (yes, really) then Protext. There was no such thing as a bibliography manager. Then in 1993 I began using a Mac, with Word 5 and EndNote. CWYW had probably never even been imagined then – no computer could possibly have coped with it. So we all got used to using temporary citations. There wasn’t anything else. When CWYW arrived I tried it and hated it (it must have been a good ten years ago, but I don’t remember clearly). It slowed everything to a crawl. In any case, EndNote was driving me mad, so when I found I could ditch it for Bookends (huge sigh of relief) the passing of CWYW went completely unnoticed by me. In fact, I don’t think I would use it if you paid me now – I find it an annoyance, not a help. And it would oblige me to use a bibliography manager that I dislike. But then again, I don’t do collaborative working (though that may have to change soon).
I’m a Bookends user too — I have trialled Sente, both when I was first looking for a bibliography manager and when the latest version came out, but on neither occasion felt comfortable with it, whereas I immediately knew where I was with Bookends — and will look at Zotero with the purpose of being able to advise our postgraduate students in Xiamen who know nothing of bibliography management. I’ve never used Endnote or CWYW. Given the nature of a Scrivener project, I would foresee all sorts of issues with CWYW, which are obviated by the temporary citation system, and RTF scan — either from within NWP, or Mellel, I believe — or using Bookends itself to do it, has never been a problem.
As to working collaboratively with Bookends, Martin, if you are heading that way and your collaborators are using Macs and Bookends, you can put your Bookends database files in a folder on Dropbox — backing up to your HD, of course — and share that folder with your collaborator(s). That way, you’re all using the same bibliography database.
Hi guys,
I’ve tested many ref managers (EndNote, Sente, Bookends, Zotero) and I liked Zotero best:: it’s free, it’s crossplatform, it’s versatile in the kind of info it can munch, yet it has it’s drawbacks when used with scrivener as you have well pointed out through this thread. One limitation that bothers me particularly is that I can’t add “see also” or “ch. #” instead of “p.##” within the inline citation using the rtf-scan syntax. Thus suppose I want to have the following result after the RTF-scan: (Author1, 2008, p. 56; see also Author2, 2010, ch. 3). This is how I do:
I write and use the Zotero syntax: bla bla bla {Author1, YEAR, p#} see also {Auhor2, YEAR}, ch. 3)
I compile the draft as DRAFT.rtf
I scan it with rtf-scan into DRAFT(Scanned).rtf
What I get is: (Author1, 2008, p. 56) see also (Author2, 2010), ch. 3)
In Word I built a simple find&replace macro that replaces all the
) see also (
with
; see also
and similarly
), ch.
with
, ch.
and so on for any other unconventional expression you want to add. I refine the macro when I see the special case I’ve written does not fit.
I understand this is not superelegant as a workaround, but hey, this is what I can do with my technical means being no developer.
As someone who has used Mellel and Bookends for a book-length ms with loads of notes, I can tell you that the palette proves unhelpful if you have several citations in it by the same author and year. I found myself skipping the palette and simply dragging the refs in from Bookends’ own window.
I too am a Scrivener (for windows) and Zotero user. I have invested years of building a bibliographic database into Zotero and am unwilling to give it up for something that works with my equally beloved Scrivener. I’d just love something which took a few steps out of my copy-and-paste-and-reformat-and-tidy-after-compile workflow and which also circumvented their RTF scan method which they admit does not work well.
Here’s what Zotero are saying.
mronkko
Aug 14th 2012
"If scrivener provides a programming interface, a plugin for Zotero will eventually be written by someone. If Scrivener does not provide a programming interface, plugin is not possible. So the ball is on the Scrivener end here. (Same can be said about Pages) " forums.zotero.org/discussion/180 … scrivener/
So how about it Scrivener developers? Takes the onus off you!
When I add a reference using Zotero syntax: {Schäfer, 2007} and further down in the page: {Kelly, 2000} and run the Zotero RTF Scan I get:
In the text: xxxx Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud. and later YYYYYYY Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines.
on the bottom of the page:
Kelly, J. N. D. Early Christian Doctrines. London; New York: Continuum, 2000.
Schäfer, Peter. Jesus in the Talmud. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007.
Why do I not get a citation numbering, i.e. 1) and 2)
These are really questions for the Zotero forums. Scrivener has no control over what Zotero is doing when it does an RTF scan. I don’t use Zotero, so I can’t offer any advice on that, but generally with bibliographic software you really need to compile the whole manuscript in Scrivener, scan the resulting rtf file, then sort out the final formatting in a word processor, which will allow you to decide whether you want footnotes or endnotes, and where to place the bibliography. So sorting out references, etc., is the last stage in the writing process. At least, it works for me!
Hello guys,
did anyone managed to find a practical enoughway to disambiguate citations “same author same year”, when using RTF-Scan syntax in Scrivener?
I’ve been going thru scrivener and zotero fora for the last 4 hours and testing in vain so far.
When I used Endnote and Bookends, I always used the unique ID nr. of the item as part of the temporary citation (e.g. {Smith, 2006 #34182} or some such). I’ve never really used Zotero, so I don’t know if it automatically generates unique IDs (as Endnote does) nor if there is any facility for using them at all. But I would have thought something of the sort was the best way to go.
My post from Zotero forums was quoted here. I have contributed patches to Zotero and am the author of ZoteroQuickLook (addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefo … quicklook/) that interfaces with Zotero and also the Zotero Mac Word plugin.
So here is what an integration would require from the Scrivener side. The Zotero word processor plugins are quite small because most of the logic is located in Zotero itself. Basically the plugins just feature code for reading information about the document and about a field in the current cursor position and code for writing this information. So something similar to Word fields and a way to access them from another process would be required. And of course a button that moves the focus to Zotero and tells it to activate the citation dialog. But all this can be really generic and then a small amount of integration code would suffice to create a Scrivener plugin for Zotero.
I am looking for a replacement for Word on Mac and Zotero compatibility is a deal breaker for me. I would also be ready to do some coding myself to get a nice integration between Zotero and Scrivener.
I would have thought it would be best to approach Keith directly via email or PM rather than through the forums. Then you can have a private discussion about what is possible.
where I suspect that MS and EndNote are widely used because colleges and universities provide them, or make it possible to obtain cheap licences. The situation is slightly different in the UK. MS Word is still widespread, but EndNote seems to have much less of a hold (it used to be supported by a fairly small company in Hertfordshire – I don’t know if it still is). The other point is that not all of us are thirty years old 
