The citation key displays Chinese pinyin instead of Chinese character

[ehehela]

Here, an alternative citation key generation scheme is recommended for Chinese bibliography: using Chinese pinyin of authors rather Chinese character which is non-ASCII.

For example:
WanZheng2016 or WanZ2016 is preffered rather than the default 万征2016.

@Article{万征2016,
author = {万征 and 姚仰平 and 孟达},
journal = {力学学报},
title = {复杂加载下混凝土的弹塑性本构模型},
year = {2016},
issn = {0459-1879},
month = jun,
number = {05},
pages = {1159--1171},
volume = {48},
}

[clzls]

I want to mention that any dumb auto converter solution is not reliable, since Hanzi is used in many Asian countries and territories, in many variants. For example, Hanzi 【出来】 maybe chu lai in Chinese, or de ki in Japanese, or xuý lãi in Vietnamese, cheok rae in Korean.

In my workflow, calibre is using a dumb converter, converting my Chinese items into ugly "ASCII equivalents" which it believes to be so. Sometimes in Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese), sometimes Japanese...

So I suggest that let user decide which romanization to be used.

[koppor]

Implementation note: Use https://github.com/houbb/pinyin. I found it via https://search.maven.org/search?q=pinyin4j - and it seems to be the most maintained one. If that does not work, try https://github.com/belerweb/pinyin4j.

I checked https://sourceforge.net/p/pinyin4j/news/ and think, the library needs to be configured to (in bold)

• uppercase or lowercase
• v or u (not sure about this one)
• with tone numbers or without tone

[clzls]

I would again state that it may not be a good idea to do so naively in main program, since one cannot distinguish Chinese among other CJK languages easily without natives or AI, and will definitely BREAK other users' experience, especially Japanese users which uses Hanzi (Kanji in Japanese) too but totally different romanization.
Hanzi is not only the character of Chinese, but also the character of all CJK languages across Asia, just like Latin characters we are using now. It is a complicated system. Low priority of this issue is suggested.
Localization checks are not reliable, since multiple languages should be allowed in a single library.
(I have seen this in calibre and I don't want to see this happen here breaking all my bibliography...)

[koppor]

BibTeX allows for using the field "language" to indicate the language of the entry. Maybe, one could use that as input for the citation key generator.

@clzls I assume you are on UTF8 and use the non-ASCII characters also for your citation keys?

The issue is complicated with many different user "profiles". Maybe we need a preference?

[ehehela]

The implementation is complicated since we need to accommodate users with different languages while ensuring a smooth user experience for those accustomed to the current system.

Maybe we could offer users the option to enable this function (default off). Other preconditions are also needed such as ensuring that romanization only occurs when a valid "language" field is specified (as mentioned by kropper).

Perhaps we can extend romanization support not only to Chinese language but also other languages (Korean, Japanese, etc.).
Allow different "language" fields to use distinct romanization schemes. Therefore, a consistent interface with customization options would be beneficial, allowing users to decide which "language" fields to romanize.

Alternatively, a semi-automatic approach could suffice. We could introduce new options in the right-click menu (see figure below). We could also use “check integrity” to collect those entries with non-ASCII citation keys into one group, followed by “cleanup entries” for this group (see figure below). Thus, this method can also make it convenient for people who are in need.