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

[Matt Price]

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).

Both Erik and Jambunathan have raised questions which I'm not al lthat competent to answer, but doing my best (and sorry for the lack of quotation markup, not sure how to paste-as-quote in gmail):

1. Zotero supports many citation stlyes. So Org/Zotero integration could
  choose one citation style that is widely agreeable for one-off
  colloboration needs.

If that's easier, then sure. Since the Openoffice plugin allows you to reformat citations easily, then if the import result in active zotero fields that zotero can work with, it shouldn't be hard for the user to change the citation format easily.

> 2. I don't know if importing Zotero stylenames verbatim in to org-odt's
>   style file would "pollute" it - thereby preventing org-odt from
>   getting in to Emacs proper.

I think what really matters is getting the zotero id's into the ODT in a way that allows Zotero to see them later on.  Then the user can reformat in whatever manner she needs to. 

>   I am not competent to judge what the copyright and license terms of
>   the stylenames used by zotero plugin are. I am seeing that zotero
>   itself is AGPL so I believe it is Free as in "Free Software".

I think so -- shouldn't be a license problem w/ emacs.

> 3. Even if zotero's ODT style cannot be used by the ODT exporter due
>   (2), I can cook up Org's own stlyenames for various citation fields
>   and allow the user to remap Org* stlyenames to say Zotero* stlynames.
>
> I see Org already has some(?) support for bibtex. Can anyone comment on
> bibtex vs zotero? They seem to serve same purpose - citation
> management. Can bibtex be used instead of zotero.

For me that wouldn't work, becaue bibtex isn't widely used by humanities scholars and social scientists. Zotero is, right now, by far the best tool for us.  Also bibtex has, or at least used to have, significant limitations on styles that make (made?) it unsuitable for humanities scholars.  

I wish I could provide an example org-mode file with zotero references in it -- 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.

thanks everyone,
Matt

zotero-demo-file.odt
Description: application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text