Same person as contributor and editor

Clive Cheesman

I suspect that this may well have been addressed before, but if so I can't find it. When one is entering items into a library manually (and I do a lot of this) the drop-down prompt lists that appear for certain fields - particularly 'author'/'editor' (etc) and 'publication' - are extremely useful and time-saving.

However when the item is a chapter or essay in an edited collection (i.e., in Zotero terms, a 'book section') and the author is also one of the editors of the volume, a minor but annoying hitch occurs: once you've entered the name of the author s/he no longer appears in the drop-down prompt list when you try to enter her/him again as editor.

It appears Zotero does not accept the idea of the same person being involved in the creation of an item in two different roles. This is one of several things that make me wonder whether 'book section' was really intended to be used for individual contributions to collections pulled together by an editor or editors. It seems more appropriate for a chapter or section in a book with one author, or with authorship shared throughout by a group of authors; the option to change 'author' to 'editor' being there because it's common to all published formats in Zotero.

An example of the sort of item I'm referring to:

François Menant, “L’anthroponymie du monde rural,” in L’anthroponymie: document de l'histoire sociale des mondes méditerranéens. Actes du colloque international organisé par l'École française de Rome avec le concours du GDR 955 du CNRS “Genèse médiévale de l”anthroponymie moderne’ (Rome, 6-8 octobre 1994), ed. Monique Bourin, Jean Martin, and François Menant, Collection de l’École française de Rome 226 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1996), 349-63.

(Incidentally: any reason why exporting as a bibliography has messed up the quotes in /“Genèse médiévale de l”anthroponymie moderne’/ ? They're fine in the Zotero item.)

Gracile

once you've entered the name of the author s/he no longer appears in the drop-down prompt list when you try to enter her/him again as editor.

It appears Zotero does not accept the idea of the same person being involved in the creation of an item in two different roles.

You can add it manually but, indeed, in the drop-down list you cannot select him/her. A minor oversight I think.

Incidentally: any reason why exporting as a bibliography has messed up the quotes in /“Genèse médiévale de l”anthroponymie moderne’/ ? They're fine in the Zotero item.)

It's either a processor bug or a mistake on your part. The new CSL processor replaces quotation marks according to the locale.
What did you write exactly in zotero (I mean what kind of quotations marks: «» “” ' "")?

Clive Cheesman

Thanks for the response. Regarding the absence from the drop-down list I'm glad you don't think I'm missing something. Is 'oversight' the right term for it, though? Since the prompt lists usually offer everything you have ever entered in that field (including erroneous or partial entries you have since deleted or corrected - itself an inconvenience) it seems like a positive decision NOT to offer the name of a creator that has already appeared for the same item. It is actually quite annoying when you're entering large numbers of items manually, especially when the names have accents. They're already in the system but you are not being offered them.

Regarding the messed-up quote marks, it should be (and, in Zotero, is) /'Genèse médiévale de l'anthroponymie moderne'/. In the process of creating a bibliography the opening quotation mark and the apostrophe within the title were doubled and paired as opening and closing quotation marks, while the genuine closing quotation mark at te end was left single.

Gracile

Is 'oversight' the right term for it, though?

I said "oversight" because I suppose that this was not a positive decision. The positive decision was not to offer the name of a creator that has already appeared for the same item. This is appropriate when creator role is the same. However, a side-effect is to exclude the drop-down list even when the creator role is different.

Regarding the messed-up quote marks, it should be (and, in Zotero, is) /'Genèse médiévale de l'anthroponymie moderne'/. In the process of creating a bibliography the opening quotation mark and the apostrophe within the title were doubled and paired as opening and closing quotation marks, while the genuine closing quotation mark at te end was left single.

The problem here is that the processor cannot distinguish the apostrophe and the closing quotation-mark. Thus, it converts the apostrophe to a closing quotation mark. The best thing you can do is to change the apostrophe or the quotation marks.
[That won't change anything but what's your citation style? Which language version of zotero are you using?]

Gracile

Use a curly apostrophe (’) rather than a straight one (').

This is somewhat strange to have different kind of apostrophes in one title (red):
L’anthroponymie: document de l'histoire sociale des mondes méditerranéens. Actes du colloque international organisé par l'École française de Rome avec le concours du GDR 955 du CNRS 'Genèse médiévale de l'anthroponymie moderne' (Rome, 6-8 octobre 1994)

Clive Cheesman

Yes, I agree - but that's what happens when you copy and paste from elsewhere. A lot of what I am bringing into Zotero comes from an Excel spreadsheet I was using as an ad hoc bibliography. Possibly I had cut and pasted into it from some earlier source. (The three stage route to Zotero by way of a text file, EndNote and another text file introduces the need for so much other tinkering around that it's easier to enter manually - even with minor annoyances such as this.)

As for citation style, I haven't settled on one - still deciding. None of the ones on offer are perfect. My main use so far is not in generating bibliographies, though I shall no doubt be doing so.

Zotero Language: English, as far as I know. However a great many (possibly a majority) of the items in my library are in other European languages. "Non-standard characters" (as they are somewhat dismissively referred to in computerland) are a bit of a chore. As for Greek... though I was delighted to find Zotero recognizes it.

Gracile

Ok.
I think you'll need to manually edit item when they've an apostrophe inside quotation marks. That shouldn't be so common yet.

However a great many (possibly a majority) of the items in my library are in other European languages. "Non-standard characters" (as they are somewhat dismissively referred to in computerland) are a bit of a chore. As for Greek... though I was delighted to find Zotero recognizes it.

I'm French, I use these characters. That's certainly be harder without appropriate keyboard... But zotero is really good at languages!

dstillman

I said "oversight" because I suppose that this was not a positive decision. The positive decision was not to offer the name of a creator that has already appeared for the same item.

Right.

Ticket created to show all creators for different creator types.

Clive Cheesman

@ Dan: many thanks for creating the ticket.

@ Gracile: thanks for the advice. It is indeed excellent that Zotero offers interface in such a wide range of languages (though there's no en-UK, just en-US). But there still seems some way to go for ease of entering titles in languages other than the one you have adopted as your interface language - let alone lots of different ones. A small example: at least one of the biography styles capitalizes all words in the title, save those English words it recognizes as prepositions; in other languages, however, it simply capitalizes everything. A program that was _really_ good at languages would sort this out, I imagine. But I'm not really complaining - it's easy to work around.

adamsmith

yeah, title casing in languages other than English is a nightmare - it's easy to remove from any given citation style though, which is usually a good idea for bibliographies using many foreign titles. Specifically, the rules for French title casing are so complicated that it's unlikely to be possible to program them.
A Zotero version with much improved multi-lingual abilities is in the works:
http://gsl-nagoya-u.net/http/pub/zotero-multilingual-overview.html

I don't quite understand the problem with non-standard characters, though. I work with German and Spanish and just switch the keyboard settings for input. Using auto import, sometimes umlauts, tildes, and accents don't import correctly, but that's not a Zotero issue, but a data issue.

Clive Cheesman

I know, I should just use different keyboards; I do with Greek, at any rate when writing a reasonable amount of text in one go. That way there's half a chance I might remember where some of the keys are by the end. Entering short pieces of text like titles, names etc, and chopping and changing between several input languages, I'd never remember where everything is. It'd be great if Zotero could do the keystroke things like CTRL + ', e = é.

That's great news about the next version.

adamsmith

this depends on your system and keyboard settings - Word has separate shortcuts, but that's just one of those Windows things...
On a mac I believe that works already with the option key, on linux (as you'd expect) all types of things can be configured, on Windows, the easiest way to do seems to be to switch to a US-International keyboard:
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codeint.html