ZotHero — Generate Zotero citations in Alfred

[deanishe]

38 minutes ago, MichaelL said:

I use Scrivener... it should use rtf, isn't it?

 

The workflow puts citations in plaintext, HTML and RTF formats on the clipboard. It's up to the application you're pasting into to choose the appropriate one.

 

What kind of document are you pasting into? I believe both Scrivener and Ulysses support Markdown. If you're pasting into a Markdown document, then it is absolutely correct that & is pasted instead of &.

 

Which citation style are you using?

Edited April 20, 2020 by deanishe

[deanishe]

 

32 minutes ago, MichaelL said:

what soul I do differently to still use shift cmd+v?

 

I can't tell you that because ⇧⌘V is not a system shortcut. What that does depends on the application that's responding to that shortcut.

[nasteffe]

I tried to use the Copycite key with Better-Bibtex functionality by setting the COPY_CITEKEY_MOD workflow environment variable to -. But when I copied the citation, it remained in the default format. Am I using it improperly?

[deanishe]

That feature hasn't been released yet.

[nasteffe]

Ah, I see. My apologies for jumping the gun. Just excited to give it a shot. 

[Jongno]

The keyboard maestro shortcut did not seem to solve pasting as plain text. It keeps pasting as: zotero://select/items/1_9EHZUHXX . Is there another way to just paste a plain reference?

 

Thanks so much for making this awesome workflow!

[deanishe]

14 hours ago, Jongno said:

The keyboard maestro shortcut did not seem to solve pasting as plain text. It keeps pasting as: zotero://select/items/1_9EHZUHXX . Is there another way to just paste a plain reference?

 

Yeah, you’re kinda doing it wrong. The default action is to open the citation in Zotero, so if you hit ⌘C on a result, it copies the Zotero URL to the clipboard.

You need to use ⌘↩ or ⌥↩ to copy a citation-style or bibliography-style reference respectively to the clipboard. Then you can use the Keyboard Maestro trick to paste the citation without formatting.

 

You may also need to first set a default citation style, which you can do via the workflow’s settings (keyword zotconf) or by pressing ^↩ on a search result to show all citation styles, and then ^↩ again to set a specific style as the default.

 

[Jongno]

Thank you for your speedy reply. I apologize for my oversight. Thanks for the help!

[jpm]

On 4/26/2020 at 7:04 AM, deanishe said:

That feature hasn't been released yet.

Has this feature been implemented yet?

[deanishe]

7 hours ago, jpm said:

Has this feature been implemented yet?

 

Yes, but not well…

[jpm]

10 hours ago, deanishe said:

 

Yes, but not well…

Could you clarify something for me about it (I've been trying it unsuccessfully). When modifying COPY_CITEKEY_MOD in the Workflow Environment Variables, how do I enter cmd, alt, fn, and so on, into the Value section? Is there a key combination that will enter the value I want, do I just type the value in, is some special formatting required?

 

Thanks!

[deanishe]

3 minutes ago, jpm said:

just type the value in

 

[jpm]

Thank you! I tried that before unsuccessfully, but this time it worked immediately.

[Dellu]

How can I paste in Bibtex or Pandoc style?

[lutefish]

I want to thank deanishe for his ONGOING support of an Alfred workflow for Zotero, -a tool he doesn't use at all-.

 

He redeveloped an abandoned Alfred/Zotero workflow 4 years ago to make ZotHero. His generosity to the academic Alfred community is astonishing. I encourage everyone to buy him a beer

[albf]

Thanks for the workflow. I was wondering if anyone could help me with a problem. I cannot find any references inserted in Zotero after installing the workflow. I've restarted Zotero and deleted the workflow to install again. Did not work. Any help please?

[raphaelhuleux]

Hello! Thanks for a great workflow. The last version of Zotero allows us to directly read a pdf in the app. Would it be possible to open a file directly in Zotero using ZotHero? 

[lutefish]

I fear the Python2 underpinnings of ZotHero may be the end of this. It's not @deanishe's responsibility, but rather an inherited framework - again, I want to stress how grateful the community should be for his labors.

 

I spent a few hours trying to sort out the various errors after updating MacOS to 12.3 (and the removal of Python2), but I'm really not a programmer - all of the unicode handling seems to be wrong now, and lots of the modules imported have been renamed/updated. 

 

I'm sad - ZotHero is my fundamental, favorite Alfred workflow, but it's clearly a pretty niche audience. If there was enough interest, we might have options, but I have no sense of how many actually use, or rely, on the workflow. 

[vitor]

@lutefish See the Updated Third-Party Python 2 Workflows GitHub page. It explains the situation, links to instructions on regaining access to Python 2 and includes a fixed version of the Zothero Workflow.

Edited March 16, 2022 by vitor

[lutefish]

Thanks for that. I had already installed Python 2 and added the “fixed” version of the ZotHero workflow, which worked for a while, but after the most recent Mac OS update, the workflow now longer worked. After an hour of messing about, I gave up. I’m a bit bitter, I think, as I had to deal with a project at work that was killed because it relied on Python 2, back when it was EOL in 2020. Ultimately, I decided I wasn’t comfortable with Python 2 on my laptop, and the technical hassle outweighed the benefits. In the process, I did discover Raycast, an Alfred competitor, which has a working Zotero workflow. 

[vitor]

1 minute ago, lutefish said:

which worked for a while, but after the most recent Mac OS update, the workflow now longer worked.

 

That should be fixed if you download it again, as it got an update today.

[damagekko]

Hey,

 

Long time user here. Had to sign up just to comment this. After installing python 2 with the guide and downloading the fixed workflow, Zothero still doesn't work.

 

I'm able to do most of the stuff but not copying a citation and pasting it, which is kinda essential for this workflow. 

 

@vitor

 

This is the error I'm getting:

12:17:17 core.py:197 INFO     [core] searching for "hi" ...
12:17:17 index.py:245 INFO     [index] 25 result(s) for u'hi'
12:17:18 core.py:197 INFO     [core] searching for "hir" ...
12:17:18 index.py:245 INFO     [index] 1 result(s) for u'hir'
12:17:18 core.py:197 INFO     [core] searching for "hirs" ...
12:17:18 index.py:245 INFO     [index] 1 result(s) for u'hirs'
12:17:19 workflow.py:2080 ERROR    No module named AppKit
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./lib/workflow/workflow.py", line 2073, in run
    func(self)
  File "./zh", line 702, in main
    args['--paste'])
  File "./zh", line 339, in do_copy
    import pasteboard as pb
  File "./lib/pasteboard.py", line 14, in <module>
    from AppKit import NSPasteboard
ImportError: No module named AppKit

 

[vitor]

Welcome @damagekko,

 

The error means that particular action requires the Objective-C bridge. There’s a very small subset of Python 2 Workflows who do. At the moment it’s not viable to support those because the required Python packages fail (for me?) to build under Apple Silicon. If you’re on Intel, you may be able to do so ("${HOME}/.pyenv/versions/2.7.18/bin/python2.7" -m pip install PACKAGE_NAME) but the build failure makes it impossible for me to support it.

[damagekko]

On 3/23/2022 at 3:05 PM, vitor said:

Welcome @damagekko,

 

The error means that particular action requires the Objective-C bridge. There’s a very small subset of Python 2 Workflows who do. At the moment it’s not viable to support those because the required Python packages fail (for me?) to build under Apple Silicon. If you’re on Intel, you may be able to do so ("${HOME}/.pyenv/versions/2.7.18/bin/python2.7" -m pip install PACKAGE_NAME) but the build failure makes it impossible for me to support it.

 

Well, thanks anyway. I wonder if this is ever going to be fixed? It's a shame this is my most used workflow 🙁

[Damoeire]

Hey all,

Just updated to MacOS 12.3.1 and Zothero stopped working. Logged in here to see it's a known problem and one that looks like it isn't an easy fix.

 

I want to support what @lutefish said regarding @deanishe's amazing work for a workflow he doesn't even use, and how much time it has saved me and so many other people over the years. It's certainly time to buy him another beer or 3. 

 

I won't be getting into installing Python 2 I don't think, I'm not doing as much academic work as I used to. Anyway, if this is the last of ZotHero then I'm a little sad!

 

Cheers @deanishe  and thanks for all the fish.