Re: [O] zotero plain, org-odt, and citations in general

[Erik Hetzner]

At Wed, 9 Nov 2011 10:28:21 -0500,
Matt Price wrote:
> 
> attached is a sample odt file with Zotero citations included. It's very
> simple, actually, because I think the key to making something like this
> work would be to offload as much work as possible to zotero itself -- Erik,
> correct me if I'm wrong (quite likely).

Hi,

Thanks for the sample ODT file.

I would like to clarify a few issues that have been raised:

zotero-plain consists of 2 very separate parts: emacs/zotero
integration and docutils/zotero integration (zot4rst). zot4rst is far
more advanced.

zot4rst provides extensions for docutils that allow a user to include
zotero citations in reStructuredText documents. For example:

  :xcite:address@hidden, p. 30]` says blah.

When the user employs the zrst2{pdf,odt,...} tools, docutils connects
to a running Firefox instance (using jsbride & a custom zot4rst
Firefox plugin) and uses Zotero to format citations & bibliographies
(in this case, for @item1, p. 30). When generating an ODT file, this
does *not* use the standard OpenOffice/Zotero integration, but rather
uses Zotero to generate HTML citations, transforms the HTML citations
into docutils internal format, and then uses the rst2odt code to
transform that into an ODT document. So while it might be possible to
include the necessary information that make the standard
OpenOffice/Zotero plugin work, it would probably be difficult.

The Emacs/Zotero integration is far less advanced. It uses MozRepl,
which is flaky, and includes code to insert & update & follow links, &
generate citations into org docs. Here is an example link:

  [[zotero://select//0_83KCW6AU][Rediker, Marcus. The Slave Ship: A Human 
History. Viking Adult, 2007.]]

This link can be automatically inserted, and can be followed using C-c
C-o, which selects the item in Zotero.

This is *all* the org-mode integration does at present. This serves my
needs (note-taking) and I probably won’t do any enhancements (patches
are welcome!) Keep in mind that citations are tricky: if you want to
transform org citations into publishable documents you want to be able
to handle footnote & in-text citations (it depends on the style) and
bibliographies. Have a look at the python zot4rst code to get an idea
of what is required. If people want org -> odt transformations, it is
going to be difficult.

I hope that helps!

best, Erik

PS: 

> erik, I'm having trouble making contact with mozrepl from emacs.
> given recent developments in Zotero, it would probably be better to have
> zotero.el speak directly to the Zotero server instead of working through
> firefox -- do you agree, Erik? But I imagine that is a significant
> undertaking.

There really is no Zotero server at the moment. The API at zotero.org
does not support bibliography generation, and the internal server that
Zotero provides locally is not documented.

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