Upgrading special styles

kschindler2009

With the help of a few people on the Zotero forum, I updated the Chicago style xml file to comply with my company's citation style. I just upgraded to 2.0 and that style is no longer available. When I tried to install it again, I was told that it's not a valid format and it wouldn't install. How would I make it happen?

On the subject of special styles, would someone mind telling me how to create a bibliography from my version of Chicago style?

Thank you very much in advance!

adamsmith

that all depends on your style - if it's not valid that means there is a problem with it that should be fixed. You can paste it to gist.github.com if you want people to take a look.

If it has a bibliography section, you can insert a bibliography by clicking "create bibliography" - but if you modified the "
wrong" Chicago (i.e. "without bibliography") that won't do anything.

kschindler2009

You're right, I'm an idiot. I had the wrong one saved, and once I found the one you corrected for me, that part worked.

I tried going into the Chicago style with bibliography style and adding the bibliography section to my style, and the code seemed to work (at least, it looked the same in my Firefox window as one that did work), but when I try to insert bibliography it says that "Zotero experienced an error updating your document." This is what I added (the first and last lines were already there):

</citation>
<bibliography>
<option name="hanging-indent" value="true"/>
<option name="et-al-min" value="11"/>
<option name="et-al-use-first" value="7"/>
<option name="subsequent-author-substitute" value="---"/>
<option name="entry-spacing" value="0"/>
<sort>
<key macro="sort-key"/>
<key variable="issued"/>
</sort>
<layout suffix=".">
-<group delimiter=". ">
<text macro="contributors"/>
<text macro="title"/>
<text macro="description"/>
<text macro="secondary-contributors"/>
<group delimiter=", ">
<text macro="container-title"/>
<text macro="container-contributors"/>
<text macro="locators-chapter"/>
</group>
</group>
<text macro="locators"/>
<text macro="collection-title" prefix=". "/>
<text macro="issue"/>
<text macro="locators-newspaper" prefix=", "/>
<text macro="locators-journal"/>
<text macro="access" prefix=". "/>
</layout>
</bibliography>
</style>

Is there something else I need, or does this look wrong?

adamsmith

the names of the macros probably don't correspond to the ones in your style -
So when Zotero calls "text-macro="locators-chapter"
but there is no such macro defined above
it throws the computer equivalent of a little hissy fit (aka the error message you see).
Can't tell without seeing the whole style, but you can check that for yourself.
does that make sense?

kschindler2009

I just posted it on gisthub as Special Chicago Style for Zotero (after looking through it and seeing something that might be right, might be wrong, can't say) - would you mind taking a look?

fbennett

Can you post the link?

kschindler2009

Sorry, it's here:
http://gist.github.com/333991

adamsmith

what you want to do is paste this in a text editor and then search for every one of the macros used.
To start, there is no macro "sort-key" (which you use in the <sort> section of the bibliography.

fbennett

There are a couple of fatal syntax errors in there as well. Here's a validation report that turns them up:

http://gist.github.com/334040

kschindler2009

AdamSmith: But what am I going to do when I find the ones that aren't there? Would it be easier to put the part about only the titles of webpages being in quotes and titles of everything else italic into the Chicago Style with the bibliography?

It's this:
<macro name="title-note">
<choose>
<if variable="title" match="none">
<text variable="genre"/>
</if>
<else-if type="book">
<text variable="title" font-style="italic"/>
</else-if>
<else-if type="webpage">
<text variable="title" quotes="true"/>
</else-if>
<else>
<text variable="title" font-style="italic"/>
</else>
</choose>
</macro>

FBennett: I see them, but I don't know what that means. The critical text left out at line 391 wasn't me - I just copied that part from the Zotero style. 421 I typed in, but it's also copied from another Zotero style. How do I know what's wrong with it and how to fix it?

adamsmith

kschindler - almost certainly yes to your first question - much easier to fix the style with bibliography than clean up the other one which is a lot of work.

fbennett

There is a CSL syntax summary on the Zotero site that covers the basics (the page seems to be down at the moment, but that link should get you there when it comes back up).

At 391, there is a choose-if-else block with a missing "if" part. The logic of it doesn't make sense without that, so you'll need to get the rest of it from the original style, and adapt it if necessary.

At 421, there is a leading hyphen before the open angle bracket (technically known as "cruft"). If you delete the hyphen, that error will go away.

A validator doesn't pick up missing macros, unfortunately. If you're not comfortable working through the style and figuring out what the various macros do (so that you get predictable results in the bibliography), it might be better to backtrack, as you suggest, and look for a style that has a bibliography, and adapt that incrementally to suit your needs.

kschindler2009

This seems to be working well in the test pane, but how do I make the bibliography keep the same title formatting as the footnotes? Here's the bibliography code that's given (and I just inserted the above code to replace the "title-note" section of the citations):

<bibliography>
<option name="hanging-indent" value="true"/>
<option name="et-al-min" value="11"/>
<option name="et-al-use-first" value="7"/>
<option name="subsequent-author-substitute" value="———"/>
<option name="entry-spacing" value="0"/>
<sort>
<key macro="sort-key"/>
<key variable="issued"/>
</sort>
<layout suffix=".">
<group delimiter=". ">
<text macro="contributors"/>
<text macro="title"/>
<text macro="description"/>
<text macro="secondary-contributors"/>
<group delimiter=", ">
<text macro="container-title"/>
<text macro="container-contributors"/>
<text macro="locators-chapter"/>
</group>
</group>
<text macro="locators"/>
<text macro="collection-title" prefix=". "/>
<text macro="issue"/>
<text macro="locators-newspaper" prefix=", "/>
<text macro="locators-journal"/>
<text macro="access" prefix=". "/>
</layout>
</bibliography>

kschindler2009

Also, we use the full citation in every footnote, even if it's been noted before. I think that was why I didn't use the format with bibliography in the first place. Is it enough to just take out the ibid section in the style, or do I need to do something else?

I'm looking at Chicago full note with bibliography, by the way.