Zotero

[Fueller]

Mellel has Bookends for Bibliography. Bookends is very powerful, but I can't handle it very well myself and is English only. Would there be a way to use Zotero within Mellel?

[Icelander]

Before I answer your question, it would be helpful for us to know
1) what reference style you are using when documenting your sources? What’s the name of it?
2) What’s your field of study
3) What problems you are having with Bookends?
4) And how do you get your data into Bookends? Manually? Or automatically via an online service, such as a university library, etc. ?

[Fueller]

My question to the forum was what you think about Zotero as an alternative to Bookends, especially for German Mellel users. Bookends; Sente; Zotero as the three choices. Should have formulated my question better. Maybe there’s no need for this, then that’s fine too.

[Icelander]

I understood your question. Here is the reason why I asked for more information:
The criterion for choosing a reference manager depends on several preconditions which should be clarified before a final decision is made.

The reference style is important because it determines how deep the user has to delve into the internals of the program to achieve best results. The field of study is also of importance; different fields require different reference styles. How to get the data automatically into the program is equally important, especially, if you need much German stuff, you will not want to use the default online services Bookends provides, like The Library of Congress, for example.
What reference manager a person uses also depends on how ambitious that person is and how much things should be automized. It’s perfectly possible to use Zotero with Mellel if one enters citations and the bibliography manually per copy and paste or drag and drop. Some people won’t find anything wrong with doing that. Others will want a program that does this automatically.

Wenn du eine vernünftige Antwort bekommen willst, musst du dich schon in unsere Lage versetzen. Wie sollen wir denn wissen, wie du arbeitest und was du folglich brauchst? Einfach irgendwelche abstrakten Bewertungen abzugeben, ohne die Kriterien für die Bewertung zu benennen, ist unseriös. Ich bin dafür, Nägel mit Köpfen zu machen.

[Fueller]

I do only have a small set of Data for Bibliography which is formatted like this:

Segantini, Gottardo: Giovanni Segantini. Mit 16 mehrfarbigen und 48 einfarbigen Tafeln und 99 Bildern im Text, Rascher Verlag, Zürich 1949 (1).

The Author „Segantini, Gottardo“ is in petite caps (kleine Kapitälchen), which I then format accordingly in the document. I will now create a simple sqlite-Database for that, for my simple needs and do a copy/paste. My question above as to whether Zotero could possibly be part of an Mellel installation and weather it is accepted as such is still an open question.

[Icelander]

Let’s begin with the question that seems to interest you most

whether Zotero could possibly be part of an Mellel installation

If you are referring to an add-on or a plug-in that could be installed with Mellel, then this has been repeatedly asked for in the past. The developer has remained unresponsive, so it’s save to say, it will never happen. He has done a fantastic job in integrating Bookends, so I can understand that.

…weather it is accepted as such is still an open question

I don’t understand the question. Accepted by whom? The users?

Segantini, Gottardo: Giovanni Segantini. Mit 16 mehrfarbigen und 48 einfarbigen Tafeln und 99 Bildern im Text, Rascher Verlag, Zürich 1949 (1).

This looks pretty much like DIN 1505 formatting, with three minor differences though. The DIN 1505 has a comma after the publisher, and only mentions the edition if another version than the first one is used. All other reference styles I know also never include the 1st edition. In DIN 1505 the city appears before the publisher, but you can have this, of course, whatever way you like. The main thing is, this is a pretty straightforward style and it can easily be created in Bookends. If you need help with that, let me know.

The Author „Segantini, Gottardo“ is in petite caps (kleine Kapitälchen), which I then format accordingly in the document.

If I understand you correctly, you are assigning the attribute Small Caps (kleine Kapitälchen) to the author’s name in your Mellel document. You shouldn’t be doing that. Bookends can automatically take care of that for you.



Enable “Styled Text” in Bookends’ preferences

I will now create a simple sqlite-Database for that, for my simple needs and do a copy/paste.

What is a sqlite-Database? Or did you mean a split-Database? If so, why do you split it?

I notice you haven’t even once mentioned the word “scanning”. So are you not using the scanning-feature at all? Just copying and pasting citations and creating bibliography that way? If so, then you could just as well use Zotero which has much nicer interface than Bookends. It has also a RTF-Scan and ODF-Scan, but it only works with a very limited number of applications (MS Word, LibreOffice, GoogleDocs). It doesn’t work with applications like Mellel or Nisus. I’m not going more into that now, unless somebody happens to be interested in this particular issue.

If you still have an open question, then don't hesitate to ask.