ibid capitalized

courtneyfriesen

Is there a way to avoid the capitalized "Ibid." when it follows a prefix and is therefore not at the start of a sentence: e.g.:

It appears:

1. On this, see Ibid., 25.

It should appear:

1. On this, see ibid., 25.

thanks.

fbennett

Thanks for pointing this out. It will need to be fixed in the processor. I'll take a look.

fbennett

This has been fixed in a fresh release of the citeproc-js CSL processor. The fix will feed through in due course to any Zotero releases that adopt the new version (1.0.247).

odin

Just being curious, about when is “in due course”? I’m asking because this feature is much needed, I end up manually editing about three fourths of my “ibid.” notes, and not getting my ibidems confused was one of the main reasons why I started to use a citation manager.

dstillman

It's available in 3.0b3.

http://www.zotero.org/support/3.0_changelog#changes_in_30b3_december_21_2011

"Updated citeproc-js to 1.0.250"

odin

Then, I’m afraid, it doesn’t work. When I insert two subsequent citations of them same piece, then Zotero 3.0b3.1 SA/NeoOffice on Mac OS X cites them as:

31. Phaedo
32. See Ibid.

It’s not urgent, but it would be nice if you could have a look on this.

adamsmith

@Frank - what exactly is the new logic? Maybe we'd have to fix this in the styles, too. (e.g. - does yourlogic override capitalize-first? etc.)

fbennett

The example given by Odin should have worked correctly. If anything in a cite, including a prefix, is rendered before a term, the term will be printed as it appears in the locale. If nothing is rendered before the term, the initial character will be capitalized by default.

@adamsmith: That's probably the source of the trouble indeed. The logic will be trumped by a text-case attribute, so the style should not apply one to the ibid term, and it should be provided in all-lowercase form by the locale.

(There are some small bugs in this, involving full-stop punctuation, that will soon be fixed. I've been starting to write a bit myself lately [at last!], in a footnote style that makes heavy use of prefix/suffix elements, so it's getting some exercise locally as well.)

odin

Thanks, again, for looking so promplty into the issue. Just to be on the safe side I had a look on my locale settings, which are "en_US" but were overriden by the OS to, probably, "de_AT"; I turned off the OS override, but the problem persists.

fbennett

Which style are you using?

odin

Chicago, Note/Full Note with Bibliography.

adamsmith

just so I don't break anything, let me repeat what I'm understanding:
If ibid is used in a style without any text-case settings it will be capitalized when it occurs by itself and put in lowercase when it's part of a prefix - correct?

fbennett

whe it's part of a prefix

When it is preceded by a prefix, yes.

adamsmith

actually - I'm not sure how to handle this atm - if we change this on the repo now, we'll get inconsistent behavior in Zotero 2.1.10 - I'd be inclined to change the styles when Zotero 3.0 comes out of beta which should be soon.
Thouhts?

odin

Say, could you point me to where I can download the updated Chicago styles? My current project is due soon and I’d appreciate if I wouldn’t have to check every ”See ibid.” (all of which are now manually edited).
Thanks a lot.

fbennett

@odin: this thread isn't about updates to the styles, but a bug in the processor that has been fixed, as far as I know. If you have another issue, start another thread.

adamsmith

actually Frank - see above: For your fix to work, we need to update styles which apply the text-case attribute to ibid.
Odin: I'll try to do that asap and post here, they're not up yet.

fbennett

Oops, sorry.

adamsmith

All the relevant Chicago styles - and a bunch of others - should now be updated accordingly. Update by re-installing from the repostory at zotero.org/styles

odin

Thanks a lot, works like a charm.

tillheilmann

When using the CSL style Chicago Manual of Style (full note) from 10/25/2012 with Zotero 3.0.11.1 and Word:mac 2011 14.2.5 the ibid term is still capitalized in references containing a prefix. What am I doing wrong here? (I am implementing a custom style and cannot get it to work properly, so I thought I would check an "official" tested style.)

odin

Does your prefix by any chance end in a period, e.g.., "Cf." or "Vgl."? Zotero treats that as end of sentence and thus capitalises the next letter.

If that’s the case, there was a discussion about this elsewhere, which came to the conclusion that fixing this would be difficult to get right and would venture too far into “final edit territory“. But a simple-ish search and replace pattern should fix this.

tillheilmann

Yes, of course, "Vgl.". Thanks for the hint!

tillheilmann

I will let this go in a moment but I wonder: Is a prefix not necessarily *not* a sentence of it's own? And shouldn't terms following a prefix therefore *never* be capitalized? After all, if what comes right before a reference is a complete sentence of it's own then it shouldn't be implemented as a prefix to the reference. Am I missing something here?

odin

That’s my intuition as well, but apparently the developers intuit differently ;-).

tillheilmann

Any chance we might change their mind? I guess *never* capitalizing the ibid term when there is a prefix *except* when the style says otherwise produces correct output more often than not, thereby reducing the need for final editing.

odin

Well, wait and see ;). They’ll probably respond to this thread.

At any rate the original discussion I mentioned can be found at: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/22024/303-sachicage-note-capitalises-ibid-after-cf-but-not-after-see

fbennett

I'm certainly open to persuasion, but I don't really have a sense of what people commonly put into the affix fields. In my own writing I often put full sentences in there, but that's just me. Sebastian (adamsmith) may be able to say something about use patterns (and everyone with a view is welcome to pitch in on this).

adamsmith

We strongly encourage people to write whole footnotes using prefix and suffix field, so there are definitely many users writing whole sentences into the prefix field. What I wonder, though, is if there is ever a scenario where those sentences are followed by ibid.? That would strike me as very rare and probably bad style in the first place.
So I'd tend to say lowercase ibid after all prefixes, but I'm also not sure on this.

tillheilmann

May I ask why you want people to put whole sentences into the prefix and suffix fields of references? I don't want to get religious here but to me a reference is just that: a "pointer" to a source, not a statement. In (at least some parts of) the humanities, footnotes several sentences long, maybe even containing quotations, and ending with a "cf."/"vgl." reference are not unusual. It would be very cumbersome to put all of that into the prefix field of a Zotero reference.

adamsmith

Mainly because that way Zotero is able to correctly handle things like punctuation (e.g. with several references in one footnote with commentary in between) and reversing quotation marks in footnotes.