Upgrade StorageFront End to assist in Creating Output Styles
The current process that seems available for creating new output styles for Zotero seems to me to be difficult for the average (non programmer) user.
I would love a simple front-end/utility developed that would enable a sort of "paint on screen using available fields and other characters" method of generating output styles.. It would make the product so much more user friendly as there are so many styles out there used by so many research organizations and the current provided ones don't cover them and generating a new one is or seems so difficult.
(unless I have missed a feature that is already there and lost in my reading somewhere)
Event the ability to say import an say "Endnote output style" and adding it to the current available styles would be useful as there are hundreds of Styles already in the Endnote system (which I used in the past).. Hmm mind you that may have copyright issues!!
ps.. Love Zotero. and currently get by with the Chicago styles provided but they do not quite fit the standard at the university where I do my research. I and my fellows just live with it. ;-)
S.
I would love a simple front-end/utility developed that would enable a sort of "paint on screen using available fields and other characters" method of generating output styles.. It would make the product so much more user friendly as there are so many styles out there used by so many research organizations and the current provided ones don't cover them and generating a new one is or seems so difficult.
(unless I have missed a feature that is already there and lost in my reading somewhere)
Event the ability to say import an say "Endnote output style" and adding it to the current available styles would be useful as there are hundreds of Styles already in the Endnote system (which I used in the past).. Hmm mind you that may have copyright issues!!
ps.. Love Zotero. and currently get by with the Chicago styles provided but they do not quite fit the standard at the university where I do my research. I and my fellows just live with it. ;-)
S.
chrome://zotero/content/tools/csledit.xul
Improvements to CSL editors are certainly planned.
A bit OT to your specific inquiry, but others may have interest: I have a simple python script to calculate the edit distance between the examples of the 100 or so core styles in the repository & a hand-hacked html file. This makes it easy to find the closest matching style & you can use that as a template to make your new style.
It is good that you wish to create styles. Please check them into SVN if you make good progress.
The online system of course does not cover my subject area - which is Music/Musicology. ;-)
When I get time will check it all out.. At the moment I am surviving with the Chicago Full Biblio version supplied...
S.
The categories are also somewhat ad hoc, but are the only styles currently enumerated in CSL. Would "humanities" do for now? Whether or not it does, that shouldn't stop you from making new styles. You can always edit the metadata if a new "musicology" category is added in the future.
Here are a few undocumented gotchas... The <title> field has to be updated, which is obvious enough in hindsight. The <id> field seemed at first unnecessary. The chrome tool formats correctly without it, and Zotero will output the bibliography correctly. However, the style doesn't appear when trying to import a citation using the OpenOffice toolbar. I just pointed the <id> to the csl file on my computer and it works fine. If the style becomes official then I should change it somehow to the Zotero URL. I have no idea how, in fact. The csledit tool doesn't allow resaving. Is there something like firefox's about:config for Zotero?
Last... now I'm left with two new styles of the same name. I see them both when dumping the database with sqlite3 but I don't know what to do about it. Does Zotero provide a way to axe old styles?
thanks.