CSL: how to omit subsequent-author in bibliography?

Working on a few anthropological styles, I think I may have run into a limitation of CSL (or at least Zotero's implementation of it) - but I want to check here first whether others perhaps have already found a solution.

This is the AAA-style, and there are lots of closely related styles, one of which is SAA (for which Rintze reported a related problem).

The point is that technically speaking in the bibliography there is no 'subsequent-author-substitute' in these styles; instead, authors are only mentioned once, and a list of all their publications follows, with the dates indented and aligned.

Setting 'subsequent-author-substitute' to a space (the first line of code below) is an ugly solution which doesn't work right at least in the Zotero implementation (an empty span is still generated in a HTML citation, for example). Setting it to nothing (the second line below) currently has the effect of canceling the option, although one might except that this would trigger the desired effect.

<option name="subsequent-author-substitute" value=" "/>
<option name="subsequent-author-substitute" value=""/>


This may be a bona fide CSL limitation: the wording of the 'subsequent-author-substitute' option suggests that the case of simply leaving out the author on subsequent bibliography entries was not considered.

I'm raising the issue on this forum first because I may just be missing something. There are, however, no styles in Zotero 1.0.7 currently that use a similar effect.
  • While this feature was never intended for this precise use case, I think Zotero should be outputting your desired result. So it should be more-or-less doable with CSL as is.

    For background, earlier versions of CSL had a grouping feature that allowed for grouping by author name. This was to explicitly support this use case. But grouping dropped out in recent versions, and I kind of need some commitment from implementers like Zotero to implement it before adding it back.
  • edited November 18, 2008
    The grouping feature sounds like the most sensible approach. There are quite a few citation styles out there using this, and it doesn't feel like good semantic practice to hijack an option called 'subsequent-author-substitute' for what essentially is 'subsequent-author-omit' or something like that.

    There is a followup issue to this: the dates need to be indented and fields following the dates left-aligned. It is not obvious how to do this in CSL currently. Here's roughly what it should look like (in presentational HTML):




    Nettle, Daniel
     1999aIs the Rate of Linguistic Change Constant? Lingua: International Review of General Linguistics 108, no. 2: 119-36.
     1999bIs the Rate of Linguistic Change Constant? Lingua: International Review of General Linguistics 108, no. 2: 119-36.
     2000Is the Rate of Linguistic Change Constant? Lingua: International Review of General Linguistics 108, no. 2: 119-36.
    This seems to require using something like a display="inline-block" feature along with a set width for the date field. I cannot find anything like that in the CSL spec (though interestingly if I use display="inline-block", csledit.xul does pass it on to the DOM). More structurally, what the layout means is that the author is set apart from date+rest. It would be nice if the CSL code reflected that somehow. The grouping feature you mention could play that role it seems.

    A minor issue is the indentation of the date+rest line. You can currently simulate that using prefix=" " (i.e. prefixing whitespace) for the date field but that, again, is an ugly solution structurally. Is there a way to indent lines other than the hanging-indent option for the whole bibliography?
  • edited November 20, 2008
    Bumping this for the Zotero devs - there is a whole set of styles like this for which Zotero currently cannot properly generate bibliographies.

    As Bruce says he'd need "some commitment from implementers like Zotero to implement it before adding it back", can we get some feedback on this?

    Oh and by the way, the corresponding EndNote style "Amer Anthropologist", imported from my legal copy of EndNote X, also doesn't work. It does omit the author for subsequent works by the same author (though an extra whitespace suggests that it actually substitutes it with whitespace), but doesn't get the indentation of the fields following the date right (long fields flush to the left margin). Using EndNote to format the bibliography leads to the same layout problem, suggesting that the .ENS format cannot really deal with this style either. I do hope CSL will be able to do a better job than ENS.
  • @mark: from my end, this is a tricky issue. I'm really not sure how to solve it in CSL, but I'm open to suggestions (and I'm really busy, so it's not like I've had tons of time to think about this).
  • Does it help if I would create sort of a proof of concept in semantically sound XHTML+CSS?
  • Output is one thing, and that might helpful for implementers like Zotero. But the CSL syntax is another issue, and we just need some sensible way to describe this.
  • I am very interested in this too. Here is some information on the relevant EndNote styles (from my legal copy).

    When you first generate a bibliography with EndNote, using a style like American Antiquity, it seems to produce a poor format for the second + citation of an author (as noted by Mark above). However, if I copy the format of the 2nd line of a correct entry (e.g., the first entry by an author) and paste it into this poorly formatted reference, it looks fine.

    That is, all of the tabs and indents seem to be in the right place, but the tab stops and hanging indents are set wrong in the word processor (i.e., Word for EndNote).

    If it could get to this level in Zotaro I'd be really happy. If CSL could do better, it would be great.

    Note: I am unable to import the EndNote American Antiquity or American Anthropologist styles; they generate errors when I try to import them. This bug is reported in this forum (and I reported it in the sync preview forum too).

    Michael Barton
  • @cmbarton: Replying to this regarding indenting of blocks and such, where you noted the need for this kind of final output:

    line1->author(s) ...
    line2->@@@more authors if there are a lot of authors
    line3->@@@date rest of citation ...
    line4->@@@@@@more citation ...

    I want to look at this structurally; e.g. how to markup this up in clean HTML, or using word-processor styles.

    From the latter perspective, what I see is:

    1. a paragraph with a style; let's call it "bib-author-heading"

    2. a paragraph with a style with a right indent; let's call it "bib-secondary-author-heading"

    3. a paragraph with a style with a right indent and a hanging indent; let's call it "bib-reference-info"

    So one thing I'll point out is that CSL has the group element, which allows one to add a "name" to it. In theory, you could have a group named, say, "bib-author-heading", and Zotero could use that to tag paragraphs and characters with styles, such that a word-processor template would handle the display.

    E.g. it's not totally clear that this is the job of Zotero or CSL to confiugure (nor is it clear that it's not; it's a point of legitimate debate).

    So I suggest perhaps asking Zotero (via a Trac ticket) to implement this; it's a low-cost way to achieve what you all want in terms of output.
  • Commenting on 2 items in 2 posts:

    Bibliography style:

    Following various discussions I think what we need is 2 blocks.

    1) The first is an author block with a hanging indent so that if the number of authors exceeds a single line, it wraps to one or more subsequent, indented lines. This block needs to be omitted if it exactly repeats the author block of the previous bibliography entry.

    2) The second is the bib-reference-info block you mention above. The left margin of this block (or paragraph style) should be aligned with the hanging indent of the author block. All lines after the first should be hanging indented.
  • Second post, question about where to post what:

    While I'm not new to open source projects (I'm a dev on a project), I'm still trying to get clear where to post on styles for Zotero. Following the instructions on the Zotero site, I posted a style request in the Zotero forums. I also checked the forums for existing discussions on this style and did followups on existing threads. I can do a Trac ticket (I supposedly have permission to post there now). However, it seems to relate primarily to bugs and feature enhancements in the Zotero program (style tickets seem related to bugs, not to requesting a style). So I'm also not sure what I should post about this current issue on Trac.

    If the tools already exist in CSL to create this style, then someone simply needs to work with those tools to do it. I can ask at the appropriate place--here (as noted in the web site) or in Trac if that is in fact a better place to request it. I appreciate the comments and advice you've posted to date, bdarcus.

    Much of the discussion I've been reading suggests that CSL is missing a couple of features/tools to create this style. Since you (I guess the lead CSL dev) have been kind enough to follow and comment on multiple posts with this, I'd like to ask the following:

    1) Do you think that this style can be done with existing CSL tools (e.g., including the new inline block)? If so, then the folks requesting this style (me included) need to stop asking for changes to CSL and get more creative with the existing tools.

    2) If additional enhancements to CSL are still needed, should they be requested here or as a Zotero Trac ticket?

    Thanks for your time and input
  • edited February 10, 2009
    @cmbarton: am saying that I believe CSL now more-or-less has the support you need, but that Zotero needs minor updating to support it. I just added the two different tickets, and commented on another existing one.

    And yes, your read on the style makes sense; I couldn't tell from the description how the wrapping of authors happens.
  • Thanks much. This is good news.
  • Anyone know if this has been resolved? I still don't see any Anthropology styles (especially AAA) in the repository, and it's a continual request from our students & faculty.
  • I haven't been reading up on the precise changes in CSL 1.0, but I believe this is possible in csl 1.0, which has been implemented in the 2.1 beta version of Zotero.
    (I believe this is the respective passage in the upgrade notes:
    http://citationstyles.org/downloads/upgrade-notes.html#layout-control-with-the-display-attribute )

    Now someone still has to code the AAA style...
  • Sounds promising -- hopefully this will finally resolve this long-standing request. Thanks for the update.
Sign In or Register to comment.