Upgrade StorageOption: Showing english variable/fields in translated versions
Working with the german version of Firefox/Zotero I have often the problem, that I rely on english documentation even for CSL editing and often can't match the translated german variable/field description. Allthough I have found the translation file under https://raw.github.com/citation-style-language/locales/master/locales-de-DE.xml it would be very useful for power users a option to add in some way the original-english-decription to the fields in the GUI (maybe mouseover or in brackets behind the translated word).
https://www.zotero.org/trac/browser/extension/trunk/chrome/locale/en-US/zotero/zotero.properties?rev=5550#L240
https://www.zotero.org/trac/browser/extension/trunk/chrome/locale/de-DE/zotero/zotero.properties?rev=5550#L198
But testing I had the problem that
<text variable="callNumber" prefix=". Sig.: "/>did not give a result for me. In german the field is described as "Signatur".Edit:
Got it to work with:
<text variable="call-number" prefix=". Sig.: "/>Why the code for "itemType" (Eintragsart in german) is coming back in english:
<text variable="type" prefix=". [" suffix="]"/>Examples: [article-journal]. [book]. [manuscript].https://www.zotero.org/trac/browser/extension/trunk/chrome/locale/de-DE/zotero/zotero.properties?rev=5550#L198 entries for this output: itemTypes.journalArticle=Zeitschriftenartikel, itemTypes.book=Buch, itemTypes.manuscript=Manuskript
Is there a possibility to translate this output?
So no, you can't translate it.
http://citationstyles.org/downloads/specification.html#appendix-ii-types
with
https://www.zotero.org/trac/browser/extension/trunk/chrome/locale/de-DE/zotero/zotero.properties?rev=5550#L198
and here
http://gsl-nagoya-u.net/http/pub/csl-fields/index.html
I found out that Zotero 2.1 and CSL 1.0 types are not very consistent. While otherwise everything seems going the right way, this scares me a bit. If someone does not know this, he actually can not output in CSL (or not output in the desired way) some of the Zotero fields.
Here a table of comparison maybe for someone who searches for this:
http://pastehtml.com/view/b4is27x8e.html
Especially I don't like the assigment of E-Mail, instantMessage and letter to personal_communication. audioRecording = song is also not so good I think. Is all this caused by compatibility issues (CAL 0.x)?
Also, csl is used in three major reference management products (and several smaller ones), so it needs to be extra careful in changing anything.
The reason not to be "scared" would be that people coding CSL styles usually have the relevant information (and it's linked to from the documentation), so the actual styles should get this right.
As for the issues you mention: e-mail and IMs are personal communication, I don't have a problem with that. Arguably they might need some extra fields - see the thread at the top of the forum for that.
Song --> Audio Recording is a more complex issue. In some cases this is clearly the right category, in others, where you're interested in the lyrics etc., it's probably not, so that's more of a judgment call.
My actual conclusion is: as non-english Zotero user and "seldom-CSL-coder" mind that you have to follow and understand a 3-way variable system:
1. entering the fields in Zotero (non english item type description)
2. "Back-translation" from non english to Zotero Metadata Item Types
3. Mapping to the CSL Item Types (CSL Metadata Field Index)
To the Zotero/CSL people: please try to document/linking this better and for future releases to complete/optimize the mapping of fields. Thank you ;-)