ZOTERO & MENDELEY PLUGINS - please add the much needed research tools to ease citation based work as in microsoft word

[vishalsignap]

I've shifted from microsoft word to affinity publisher because of its extensive graphics abilities and text editing features. However, features like book document (like in adobe indesign) and citation plugins like ZOTERO & MENDELEY are not supported here,as such adding citations to the text-work becomes a pain here in Publisher.  

Also , indesign supports great facility for scripts(plugins) for easing various tasks, so if that can be added to Publisher ,would have a great edge over other competitors like Microsoft word and Indesign.

 

Bottomline: Affinity Publisher is on the way to become the world's best publishing software but a few weakness like mentioned above needs to be integrated to rival its opponents...

[buffalo1]

I would love to stop using MS word, but am held back by the lack of Zotero/Endnote support. Please Affinity, make this happen.

[David Horsfall]

In response to the comments above, not just ZOTERO & MENDELEY citation. Endnote is one of the best academic referencing tools on the market. So, in addition provide support for endnote. It is for the same reason, I cannot leave MS Word and Indesign. Affinity forum does not support footnotes, multiple indices and and a plugins for references.

If Affinity, I would these platforms in a shot

Best Regards

David

[algo]

I guess that the most reasonable way to implement this, without having to develop a plugin for each of the reference managers, would be to just develop a bibtex parser for Publisher. Bibtex as a format has a long history and is well-defined. Zotero and other's already have the facility to export a library (automatically) to bibtex (.bib). I could help with that. However, I don't know in what kind of language affinity plugins can be written or if there is even a public API you could talk to.

[lemonwriter]

Is there any update on the citation in Publisher? I really need this feature if available. Thank you

[walt.farrell]

5 hours ago, lemonwriter said:

Is there any update on the citation in Publisher? I really need this feature if available. Thank you

There is certainly no plug-in support. However, at the time this thread was started, there was no Book feature, no Footnotes, and no Cross-References. All three exist now, and Footnotes and Cross-References seem relevant to Citations, so perhaps they would help you.

[AffiniTea]

Zotero generate its bibliography only at the end of a document (in case of M$ Word and LibreOffice). It has to be the last section of a manuscript or else it won't work. So, footnotes will not do.

As for cross-references, they are not relevant to citations. A cross-reference connects a word in one location to another one in another location and keeps track of the connection so when the pages shift around and page numbers change, the references stay valid.

I am not sure if Affinity Publisher can ever accommodate Zotero or any other citation system in the current form. They need to rethink the paradigm in which a text-box is treated in Publisher. A text-box is an artifact in Publisher like any other object. It does not automatically extend to the next page if the amount of text in it exceeds its limits. This is principally different from how word-processors behave. In LibreOffice Write, as an example, the text-box is already placed on the blank page. When one inserts text inside of it, the text flows all the way to the bottom border of the text-box and then if there are still more text to accommodate, Writer will created a new page with a new text-box and places the extra text in it. This process continues until all the text that was meant to be inserted is properly placed on the page.

Affinity Publisher does not do it by default. A page in Publisher is actually a canvas, very similar to am Artboard in Affinity Designer. Then the user is supposed to place whatever they want on that canvas. A text-box is one such object. But, unless the user creates a new page and places a new text-box on it, the extra, un-accommodated text on one page will not automatically flow into the next page. Where would it flow into? There is now extra page and no other text-box to flow into. The user creates a new page and links the current, over-flowing text-box to another text-box on the newly-created page inside of a newly created text-box (there might be some rudimentary auto-flow here and there, but nothing like a word-processor).

These behaviours would not allow Zotero to insert a bibliography list at the end of a document. Because Zotero will need to (1) create a new page (which it cannot), (2) place a new text-box on the page (which it cannot), (3) insert the bibliography text inside of it, then when it reached the end of the boundary of the text-box (which it cannot know where it would be) it will need to repeat the same steps until all the bibliographic text is accommodated. All these are in addition to keeping track of the in-text citations placed in various places above the last section of the document. Even that might not be as straight-forward as it is in LibreOffice and Word since all the available text will be fully visible in those tools, but might not be fully visible in Publisher (text-boxes might be in overflow move and part of the text might be hidden).

The solution to this might not be as simple as I might want it to be. I believe a significant modification of the file format in Publisher would be necessary to account for what Zotero needs to do its job. Any such addition or modification will cost them money, which they won't like, and will open a can of worms with bugs, feature requests, updates, etc., which they won't like at all. All in all, my guess is there there would be zero chance, incentive, and plan to take up this challenge.

It is a sad state of affair indeed. It shows that the industry does not care for a lot of practical issues, compatibilities, standards, and common practices. As long as they can copied Adobe InDesign closely enough and the remaining bugs/missing features and not mission critical to the InDesgin users, they they call it a day. Innovation, breakthrough, and new paradigms are out of the scope of these types of commercial products. Of course these are might own speculation and I don't have any insider view of the matter, but Zotero interoperability would definitely not be on the agenda any time soon.

I used Affinity Publisher for one of my books and was happy that I could get away from Adobe InDesign. However, a few years later, I regret the decision due to its incompatibility with Zotero. Now, I am converting everything back to LibreOffice, which in itself is a huge hassle with its many bugs and problems. All in all, the state of affairs is the worst of all worlds: LibreOffice/Word suck in everything except for citation/biblio. management with Zotero, and Affinity Publisher is useless with academic manuscripts unless you want to publish once before your die.

It is conceivable to extend the ability of Publisher by defining a new object, name it a biblio-box if you will, that behaves in a particular way: (1) it can only be added to the end of a document, (2) it automatically expands to the next page if there is not enough room on the current page, (3) it can be controlled by a plug-in made by Zotero et al., (4) any text placed in this box would be read-only/locked and only editable by Zotero, and (5) the user can change the size/placement of the text on the page or delete it, but cannot move it out to other pages elsewhere. As such, it makes the last section of the document behave like how they behave in a word-processor. Several changes/modification need to be made to the regular text-box code too to play nice with in-text citations placed by Zotero in them anywhere in a document. The chances for any of these to happen is effectively zero.

I am not a developer nor am I related to Affinity in any shape or form aside from being an ordinary customer.

[Meliora spero]

Academic support in Publisher is an interesting idea, as I vividly remember my struggles with citation software in Word during my time in academia at university. But it worked. It’s certainly much more challenging to achieve in a DTP program than in a word processor, which has far greater autonomous control over the document’s content – exactly as you’ve described.

It could certainly be a welcome niche for Serif, especially as they now also offer Affinity to students for free, if I recall correctly. However, I doubt the business case if it requires academics to draft their work directly in Publisher. For many, many, many reasons, that is unlikely to happen.

It seems to be an eternal struggle for us academics to continue advancing our knowledge, while simultaneously being mentally worn down by bibliography management.  I miss the university environment, but that part of my life is firmly in the past, and I'm fine with that. 😄