unfolding "abstract" in general, ISO 690 as example

Ulrich Windl · March 5, 2014

In multi-line input fields you can add a line break by pressing Enter. These line breaks are reserved in RDS export, like here:
---
<dcterms:abstract>Including Case Studies in: UNIX, VAX, CP/M, MVS, VM
With Concurrent Programming in Ada®</dcterms:abstract>
---
Unfortunately when abstract is used in citation, the line break is converted to nothing (zero-width space, so to say).

In ISO 690 the abstract is added directly after the LCC ("Signatur" (tag of a library) in German). For example (citation and bibliography for a different book):
---
iso690-author-date-en:(Goldberg, Robson 1989)

GOLDBERG, Adele and ROBSON, David, 1989, Smalltalk-80. 1. ParcPlace Systems. ISBN 0-201-13688-0.
202/ST 260 S635The Language
---
This makes it look somewhat ugly. Did I misunderstand the use of a field?

adamsmith · March 5, 2014

Line breaks are indeed removed from fields, including abstract, in citations. That's a bug, but I believe one that's not trivial to fix, which is why it's been around for quite a while.

I don't see the call number in the ISO style, so if that's in the abstract field, that's the problem you're seeing. If that's in another field, the abstract should start on a new line, though. Unfortunately the functions used in CSL to do that don't work reliably for all ways of generating a bibliography. This will work correctly with the Word/LO plugin as well as the RTF version of the bibliography.

Ulrich Windl · March 6, 2014

Regarding the fix: I don't see the problem in either converting the line break to a space or to something that Zotero can handle.

Actually the example I provided was copied and pasted from an LO document (it seesm I cannot really upload a binary file in gist).

adamsmith · March 6, 2014

Regarding the fix: I don't see the problem in either converting the line break to a space or to something that Zotero can handle.

I'm sure a patch to citeproc-js would be welcome, though it would actually have to handle line breaks. Just replacing them with a space is not a solution. Zotero properly passes linebreaks on properly as \n in CSL JSON.