Papers 3 citations working in Scrivener 3?

I contacted Papers Support yesterday asking if there was something wrong on their end (as far as I can see, they are the ones who build the support into Magic Citations to insert citekeys into other apps), and received a less than helpful response that they will fix this in their new version.

Unfortunately their new version will be a paid, recurring subscription product [*] which is really just an unfair proposition for people who don’t want to rent a bibliography manager.

[*]http://blog.readcube.com/post/165237712272/glimpse-into-the-new-readcube-papers-app

Magic citation and Scrivener 2 work together perfectly. I also contacted Papers yesterday and pretty much got the same response. Can I ask what other reference manager software works together with Scrivener 3, in the way that Papers does with Scrivener 2 (i.e., magic citation, not Cmd-Y way)? TIA

From what I understand, the new version of Papers/Readcube will not have magic citations at all and will only work with Word. I had hoped I could finish my thesis in the new Scrivener and the old Papers, but I’ll wait with updating Scrivener until I have found a new reference manager.

It really is disappointing to see Papers all but abandoned since the ReadCube merger. With the lack of updates and no communication from the company, it seems the writing is on the wall for Papers.

I’m now another one looking for a new reference manager with similar citation support to Papers3/Scrivener 2 – any suggestions?

The problem is likely with Papers. I had the same problem with Ulysses when they went through their last upgrade. It seems Magic Citations is so complex, it needs specific information from every app it works with. Upgrades break this connection. In the past the makers of Papers would issue updates so that their app would be still usable. Not the new owners. My guess they will cripple Papers so that people move to their own ReadCube app, which only works with MS Word.
I jumped over to Bookends, which has improved a lot since I last used it in 2013. BTW, another good alternative, Sente, seems to be closing down.

The latest version of bookends has improved its support for importing databases from Papers 3. And for those who want a magic citation interface (I’ve never used it so YMMV), if you use Alfred I curated a set of tools, one of which does a live author search from your database and pastes the citation: github.com/iandol/bookends-tools

That’s awesome. Will try it out right away. Thanks!

This is an issue with Papers3. You can actually make it work (temporarily) with simply adding one line that includes the new app-ID of Scrivener3 into:
/Applications/Papers.app/Contents/SharedSupport/Citations.app/Contents/Resources/AppSupportInformation.plist

There, you have:

		<key>SupportsInsertionOfCitations</key>
		<array>
			<string>com.literatureandlatte.scrivener</string>
			<string>com.literatureandlatte.scrivener2</string>

Simply adding:

will enable it again, but Papers3 will not restart due to this modification being detected…

Sucks really.

Is there any way to make Scrivener report a fake app-ID?

Have you tried to re-codesign the app after the modification?

sudo codesign -f -s /Applications/Papers3.app

Oh wow, that would be cool! However, I do get:

And I still get the error message at Papers3 startup:

I’m no expert in these things but I think Papers actually checks itself against some specific sha hash or something?!?

Ah, this is great. I was looking at doing exactly that (modifying the plist file) this morning - it lasts while Papers is frozen and waiting to be quit. It does indeed seem to be an internal check by Papers - I have already emailed them that adding ‘support’ for Scrivener 3 would only be a matter of adding a single line of code. Perhaps some more emails their way puts some pressure on the case.

Alternatively, the Alfred workflow seems interesting. Thanks for sharing that!

I have just been told that Papers 3 will see an update ‘in the next week or so’. Fingers crossed this will sort us out.

I heard that before! There are a few bugs in annotating and highlighting in Papers that should also be fixed by the long awaited update.

A new version has been released (3.4.12) but the problem persist.

I was so happy to see the update, anticipating it would resolve the issue. But alas. I also noticed it was built on 22 November, so not much could have been done I suppose. It would help if everyone that would like this resolved posts at their forum: http://support.readcube.com/support/discussions/topics/30000000605 and email their helpdesk. It is being read, although you may not get a response.

After the recent Papers update to 3.4.12 (550) which didn’t fix Scrivener 3, I emailed Papers support on the issue I had open with them, detailing the simple .plist fix as well. In reply they tried to sell me their paid Readcube app instead.

I’m not sure they’re actually going to add support for Scrivener 3, or indeed any upcoming Microsoft Word 365 updates (I’m on the Insider Slow ring, the build of which Papers no longer recognises, at least for me…)

I’m a little puzzled they tried to sell you ReadCube as this doesn’t even support Papers - it’s Word only as far as I can tell. Was it the upcoming merged Papers/ReadCube that they were suggesting?

Nope, the links they provided were to their current Readcube Desktop offering, and in the email they said:

Frankly I was shocked and dismayed they suggested it and replied as such. I have hundreds of thousands of words written in Scrivener that I was hoping to export to Word and then generate, but now Papers doesn’t work in either program… (though I guess this is my fault for being on the bleeding edge )

This is so frustrating. I’ve built an entire dissertation using Scrivener with Papers 3 and now Papers 3 is worthless. Is there a work around that gets the citekey function of Papers 3 back in play? I’ve never messed with the code of a software package so go easy on me.

Shouldn’t the easiest way be to go back to Scrivener 2 until the thesis is done?