On Sat, 04 Oct 2008 14:04:30 -0700
NoOp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> dijo:
> Also see:
> <http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Bibliographic_Software_and_Standards_Information>
> http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=83669
> [OpenOffice fails to accept citations from Citavi]
Citavi does appear interesting. So far there is only a German version,
but an English version is underway. More importantly, it does not work
with OOo. According to Citavi's website:
... Open Office Writer? Such a Picker* is an open goal, but the outcome
is uncertain for technical reasons.
*Evidently the "Picker" is the component that does the "plugin" work.
So at this time it appears I am stuck with OOo's internal bibliography,
Zotero, or I can use Tellico or Alexandria to create the bibliography,
then export to .csv or something to import it into OOo's internal
bibliography.
In spite of my gripes about Zotero and its bugs, I am very impressed
with the slick way you can enter citations and create a references
section for a term paper. Consider, for example, that in APA style you
have a "references" section at the end (no longer called
"bibliography") and the references section must have *all* and *only*
the works cited in the text. So, as you write the text you enter
citations with the plugin. When you get to the end you make a
"References" heading and below it tell the plugin to create the
references (bibliography). The plugin automatically pumps in the full
reference for each work cited in the document. If you later delete a
citation in the text the work is automatically and instantly deleted
from the references section. If you add a citation the reference entry
for it is automatically and instantly added to the references section.
This is just total coolness. Not only is it a great time-saver, but you
eliminate a lot of typos and user errors by entering data obtained from
WorldCat (but see issues below).
In contrast, I entered a couple books manually in the OOo biblio table
and tried to duplicate this, but it is hopeless. That is, unless I
totally misunderstand Insert > Field and mail merge functionality. The
biblio database has the author by first and last names in the same
field and that is what it pumps in for a citation reference. Zotero
keeps the authors' first and last names in separate fields, so you can
get the following for citation and reference entries, respectively:
(Hoffmann, 1991, p. 23)
Hoffmann, C. (1991). An introduction to bilingualism (p. 368). Longman
Sc & Tech.
It even knew that APA style for references is to use just the initial
(s) for the first name(s) of the authors. The actual entry in Zotero
for that work is Hoffmann, Charlotte. In contrast, entering a citation
from OOo's biblio database can only give you "Hoffmann, Charlotte" for
both citation and reference because there is just one field for first
and last name. Plus, biblio requires more steps to merge the data. And
biblio has no automatic lookup on the web like Zotero.
Actually, my only big problems with Zotero is that it fails to grab the
title in title case from WorldCat; also it grabs the publisher as
listed in WorldCat, "Longman Sc & Tech" - wrong; APA requires the full
name, not abbreviated); and the plugin for the bibliography grabs the
field for the total number of pages ("368") which is not supposed to
appear in the references, per APA style. The latter is just a bug which
the developers could probably fix pretty easily. The first two are more
problematic.
I did post about the first two problems this morning on the Zotero
forums, but there has been no response ten hours later.
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/307/locate-with-worldcat/#Comment_18278
I suspect there is not a lot of traffic on the Zotero forums.
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