Re: how difficultwould it be to support zotero in org?

[Jean-Marie Gaillourdet <jmg@gaillourdet.net>]

Hi, 

sorry to bring up this old thread, but there rather are rather new developments at Zotero which might interesting to people here. See below.


On 03.09.2010, at 22:12, Scot Becker wrote:

> Another Zotero + org user here.  Right now I do what Christian does: export Zotero to slightly tweaked BibTeX, and insert with RefTeX's amazingly cool reference-insertion interface (another genius piece of work by Carsten).  I can think of two profitable ways to make inserting references from one's Zotero database into org-mode notes better, and one further way that org-mode could be more tightly linked with Zotero.
> 
> 1)  A utility (presumably part firefox plugin) which keeps a BibTeX file in sync with one of Zotero's collections.  That way you don't have to do a full manual export of your Zotero collection every time you add or change something.  RefTeX provides the citation insertion interface.  Something similar this to exists for LyX.  It doesn't sync a whole Z. collection, but creates a .bib file with the items you actually cite in your document.  The author (an Emacs user) even considered generalizing it for use without LyX runing, i.e. for Emacs, but didn't find enough steam (after all, he uses LyX).  (I also know that Mendeley can be made to auto-import from Zotero and to auto-export to BibTeX, but Mendeley's BibTeX export is not flexible.)
> 
Zotero.org announced a new desktop application which will use a public available read/write api to the Zotero service:

> With full read/write access to bibliographic data, attached files like PDFs, 
> and the citation formatting engine, developers will be able to integrate a full
> range of Zotero features into their own web, mobile, and desktop applications,
> and users will be able to take advantage of this functionality at zotero.org. 	

See http://www.zotero.org/blog/zoteros-next-big-step/ for more details.

This should make it possible to use an official api to implement the use case described above.

> 2)  a org-mode-specific plain-text citation mechanism, analogous to BibTeX, but useful for both LaTeX and non-LaTeX exports.  It would presumably have a CSL backend, and work the way that citeproc-hs works for pandoc.  Presumably it could also use a RefTeX-like interface for citation insertion.  
> 
> 3) Easier ways to take reading notes (in org) on items in the Zotero database, with two way linking.  (Thanks already for the tips in this thread.)

Regards,
Jean