Zotero - exporting Unicode and LaTeX constructs to BibTex

Zotero is a great reference manager, especially if you’re using Firefox. Its BibTeX export is invaluable for LaTeX / LyX users. However, it has a couple of sticking points whose solutions are not well documented. These issues can be especially annoying for researchers working in exact sciences (math, physics, etc.)

Problem 1: Article info contains special Unicode characters (such as é). As BibTeX doesn’t support Unicode, LaTeX compilation fails.

Solution:

1. Zotero Preferences -> Export -> check Display character encoding option on export
2. Whenever you export your database, pick a non-Unicode character encoding such as ISO-8859-1

Zotero will now convert the Unicode characters to their native LaTeX equivalents (for example, é will be converted into \’{e}).

Note: You could also solve this on the LaTeX side by using Biblatex and biber. However, I wasn’t able to make them work under LyX.

Problem 2:Article info contains Latex constructs (e.g. $O_{3}$). Zotero escapes these and so they appear verbatim in the reference (e.g. $O_{3}$ instead of O₃)

Solution:

1. Locate your Zotero data directory and open translators\BibTeX.js with your favorite text editor
2. Change the following:

    var alwaysMap = {
    "|":"{\\textbar}",
    "<":"{\\textless}",
    ">":"{\\textgreater}",
    "~":"{\\textasciitilde}",
    "^":"{\\textasciicircum}",
    "\\":"{\\textbackslash}"
   };  

   to the following:

    var alwaysMap = {
    "|":"{\\textbar}",
    "<":"{\\textless}",
    ">":"{\\textgreater}" //,
   // "~":"{\\textasciitilde}",
   // "^":"{\\textasciicircum}"
   // "\\":"{\\textbackslash}"
   }; 

3. Change the following: 

    value = value.replace(/[|\<\>\~\^\\]/g, mapEscape).replace(/([\#\$\%\&\_])/g, "\\$1");  

   to the following:

    value = value.replace(/[|\<\>]/g, mapEscape).replace(/([\#\%\&])/g, "\\$1");  

4. Save the file.

Escaping of ~, ^, \,$,_ is now disabled, preserving your LaTeX constructs.

References and further reading

http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/5324/bibtex-and-greek-characters/

http://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/zotero-dev/U9fGc1f3TO8

http://gist.github.com/956623

http://www.rtwilson.com/academic/autozotbib