Zotero citations to Quarto file & .bib file in source mode (VS Code / Positron)

[mvuorre]

Hi all, moving this discussion here as suggested. Quoting from there:

It is easy to insert citations from Zotero to the current Quarto document & the associated .bib file in visual editing mode (Positron / VS Code).

What are the current best practices for inserting citations to both the Quarto file and the associated .bib file in source mode? I don't think there is a way to do this currently, but it would be a fantastic addition.

My understanding is that this might require a VS Code extension. When I search for extensions in Positron, the only result is https://github.com/mblode/vscode-zotero. However that only inserts the citation into the Quarto file.

I had a quick look at results in VS Code (there are more) but they also seem to only write the citation into the Quarto file, and thus require manually dealing with the .bib file.

I forked the "VS Code Citation Picker for Zotero" extension to add this functionality (and use VS Code native picker UI, which is faster) here: https://github.com/mvuorre/vscode-zotero/releases/tag/v0.2.0. (Here is a short blog post explaining it. It seems the original repo is not maintained so updates unlikely there.) But I'd hate to be reinventing the wheel.

Is anyone aware of (better) alternatives? If not I might go through the hassle of figuring out how to make this available in the Positron extension search dialog (any tips on how to do that?), since it currently requires manually installing the .vsix file. Perhaps something like this could be baked into the VS Code extension or Positron itself?

[juliasilge]

We have a related request in #143, I believe.

I definitely see what you're saying about how it would make sense to have this functionality baked into the Quarto VS Code extension, but if you are interested in trying out how to get this to work, what you would want to do is make a separate extension to experiment with the functionality. For folks to use this in Positron, you would need to publish it to OpenVSX. I'll point you to these resources:

• https://positron.posit.co/extension-development.html
• https://github.com/posit-dev/positron-extension-template
• https://code.visualstudio.com/api/get-started/your-first-extension

Let us know if you have questions as you get started!

[mvuorre]

Thank you (and sorry for missing the relevant issue). I've got the .vsix file available at https://github.com/mvuorre/vscode-zotero/releases/tag/v0.2.0 (works well in both VS Code and Positron). I'll look at your links and figure out how to submit to OpenVSX to make it easier to install. (If I may self-advertise, it might be useful enough to suggest in the docs once it is on the registry?)

[juliasilge]

We also have discussion on this topic in posit-dev/positron#3936 as well FYI! These would be good places to drop some info to get early users to try it out.