The Better BibTeX Configuration can be found under the regular Zotero preferences pane, tab ‘Better BibTeX’.
The configuration of Better BibTeX is a little baroque compared to the standard Zotero Bib(La)TeX exporters (which only have hidden preferences). The defaults should just work, but here’s an attempt to describe what they do.
Making any change here will drop your entire export cache. This is usually not a problem unless you have a really large library, but you can read about what is involved here.
The following settings are not exposed in the UI, but can be found under Preferences/Advanced/Config editor. Zotero knows these as hidden parameters.
default: <not set>
If you have unicode turned on you can still selectively replace some characters to plain-text commands; any characters entered here will always be replaced by their LaTeX-command counterparts.
default: 5
If you have auto-exports set up, BBT will wait this many seconds before actually kicking off the exports to buffer multiple changes in quick succession setting off an unreasonable number of auto-exports. Minimum is 1 second. Changes to this preference take effect after restarting Zotero.
default: 10
Number of seconds to wait after your system goes idle before kicking off auto-exports.
default: 0
When > 0, BBT will automatically pin the first citation keys it generates for an item after this many seconds.
default: yes
Support for EDTF dates in biblatex
default: 5
How often the Better BibTeX database should be saved to disk. Defaults to once every 5 seconds. Note that your database is always saved when your computer goes idle, or when you exit Zotero.
default: <not set>
a JSON mapping from single character to raw LaTeX, to augment the default mapping; these will be applied when you export as ASCII. DO NOT edit this preferencedirectly, but create a CSV (not semicolons) file named charmap.csv in the zotero data directory under the better-bibtex folder with columns unicode (the source character), text (representation in LaTeX text mode, if any) and math (representation in LaTeX math mode, if any, without dollar signs).
default: <not set>
if you set csquotes to a string of character pairs, each pair will be assumed to be the open and close parts of a pair and will be replaced with a \\enquote{...} construct.
default: config
Can be off, config or always
default: yes
Use BBTs importer instead of Zotero’s importer
default: yes
On import, assign the existing citation key to the item being imported
default: yes
On import, place all bib(la)tex field Zotero doesn’t have an existing field for in the Zotero extra field of the item
default: ignore
What to do when encountering a TeX command the parser does not know about. Please only use values:
ignore: ignore the command entirely * tex: import and mark as TeX code, so on re-export it will be output as-is * text: import without marking it as TeX code, so on re-export it will be treated as regular textdefault: 5
I’ve had reports where Zotero notifies extensions that items have changed, but if BBT then actually retrieves those same items, Zotero complains they “haven’t been saved yet”. Super. This preference sets the number of microseconds BBT should wait after being notified before acting on the changed items.
default: <not set>
Any characters entered here will prefer a math-mode LaTeX-command counterpart over a math-mode, if a math-mode command is available. Only useful when mapUnicode is conservative.
default: <not set>
Any characters entered here will prefer a text-mode LaTeX-command counterpart over a math-mode, if a text-mode command is available. Only useful when mapUnicode is conservative. Characters specified in mapMath take presedence over characters specified in mapText.
default: yes
Name particle handling. Only turn on when requested and we’re talking about it on github.
default: <not set>
Import translators cannot set the date-added and date-modified of the items that are imported, they always get the current time as their date-added. BBT will leave fields it can’t map as tex.[field] in the extra field of the item. If you enter a list of comma-separated field mappings here, like date-added = dateAdded, timestamp=dateModified, BBT will offer a menu option to remove them from the extra field and set the corresponding date of the item to their values, assuming they can be parsed as simple dates (no circa and stuff). The default mappings tex.dateadded=dateadded, tex.datemodified=datemodified are always active.
default: <not set>
You can use a custom postscript per export directory:
postscriptOverride, and set it to a filename like postscript.js 2. In the directory where you intend to export to, create a file called postscript.js (or whatever you set the preference to) and add the postscript you want there 3. Export to that directory.A postscript override will disable caching for that export.
default: <not set>
You can use custom preferences per export directory:
preferencesOverride, and set it to a filename like preferences.json 2. In the directory where you intend to export to, create a file called preferences.json (or whatever you set the preference to), or called [bibfile you are exporting to].json and add the desired preference overrides in the format {"override": "preferences": {"skipFields": "note"}}. You can get your current preferences by exporting to BetterBibTeX JSON and removing everything except config.preferences, and renaming config to override. 3. Export to that directory.A preferences override will disable caching for that export.
default: no
When you set this on, BBT will import bib files leaving any LaTeX commands as-is, and add the #LaTeX tag for raw re-exports.
default: #LaTeX
When an item has this tag, all its fields will be assumed to hold raw LaTeX and will undergo no further transformation. If you set this to *, all items will be assumed to have raw LaTeX.
default: no
When exporting a Bib(La)TeX file, if the attachments are stored anywhere under the directory the bibliography is exported to, use relative paths to those attachments. Caching is disabled when this option is on, so it affects performance.
default: and
Separator between list elements in list-type fields. You will need to add --listsep='|' to your biber calls.
default: and
Separator between author names. You will need to add --namesep='|' to your biber calls.
default: a,ab,aboard,about,above,across,after,against,al,along,amid,among,an,and,anti,around,as,at,before,behind,below,beneath,beside,besides,between,beyond,but,by,d,da,das,de,del,dell,dello,dei,degli,della,dell,delle,dem,den,der,des,despite,die,do,down,du,during,ein,eine,einem,einen,einer,eines,el,en,et,except,for,from,gli,i,il,in,inside,into,is,l,la,las,le,les,like,lo,los,near,nor,of,off,on,onto,or,over,past,per,plus,round,save,since,so,some,sur,than,the,through,to,toward,towards,un,una,unas,under,underneath,une,unlike,uno,unos,until,up,upon,versus,via,von,while,with,within,without,yet,zu,zum
list of words to skip in title when generating citation keys
default: popup
Zotero takes a few seconds to start up, which is sometimes mistakenly attributed to BBT. BBT will tell you what phase the startup process is in (of Zotero and BBT) to prevent support requests for something that I cannot change. Please only use values:
popup: show a popup during startup * progressbar: show a progressbar in the top of the framedefault: <not set>
You can use a custom @string list per export directory:
stringstOverride, and set it to a filename like strings.bib 2. In the directory where you intend to export to, create a file called strings.bib (or whatever you set the preference to) and add the @string declarations you want there 3. Export to that directory.A strings override will disable caching for that export.
default: url,doi,file,ids,eprint,/^verb[a-z]$/,groups,/^citeulike-linkout-[0-9]+$/, /^bdsk-url-[0-9]+$/
list of fields to treat as verbatim during import. If you’re importing e.g. Mendeley-generated BibTeX, which is out of spec in various ways, try removing file from this list before import.
default: no
Both Zotero and BBT expect titles to be in sentence-case, but a lot of sites offer import data that is Title Cased. When exporting these titles to bib(la)tex you’re going to get a lot of extra unwanted braces, because all these Title Cased words will look like proper nouns to BBTs own title-casing mechanism. When this setting is on, you will be warned when you import/save items in Zotero with titles that look like they’re Title Cased, so that you can inspect/correct them.
default: yes
BBT can perform its exports in a separate thread, and should no longer block Zotero’s UI pretty much regardless of how large your library is. It is possible to turn background exports off by setting this value to false in the hidden preferences; you will get the old (blocking) behavior back, but you can’t complain about Zotero being laggy during auto-exports; all Zotero exports are blocking, and it’s a minor miracle I got background exports to work at all.
default: <not set>
Select the style for auto-abbreviation. Only applicable to Juris-M; in Zotero, the style for automatic abbreviation is not configurable.
default: auth.lower + shorttitle(3,3) + year
Set the pattern used to generate citation keys. The format of the keys is documented [here]({{ ref . “citing” }}).