√ [MLZ] text-case="title" for a title with all caps

wonblee

It seems that the attribute text-case="title" does not work if the title is stored in all caps. I didn't mean to store the title in all capitals, but that's what was grabbed by the translator.

fbennett

Isn't it best to fix that in the database?

wonblee

I was hoping that I didn't have to "fix" anything. If only citeproc-js can disregard the case in a title or container-title and blindly apply the text-case attribute... (If it can capitalize a field stored in all lower-case, wouldn't it be just as easy for it to "title"-ize a field stored in all upper-case too?)

fbennett

Fixing this in the database is not terribly burdensome. There is a right-click menu option on the title field that will convert the field content to sentence case (or title case, which is supported, but not recommended for database storage).

Fixing the data in the database is also the right thing to do. The citation processor is non-interactive, it just takes the input data and imposes whatever transform is requested in the style. The only way to check whether things came out correctly is to check every citation in the document for accuracy. That's a good practice, of course, but we try to limit processor transforms to things that we know with some degree of certainty will come out correctly.

An all-caps title could be an acronym like "UNDP" or "OECD". It could be a title that is intentionally set in all-caps and customarily cited in that form. It's a bit risky to down-case things; relying on reasonably clean input data is more reliable, and likely to give you a better experience in the long run.

wonblee

I see. It makes sense. Thanks.