Author-date style with more than 26 references per author per year?

anark

I've been asked to use an author-date citation style, so I've looked at APA and Harvard. Both styles sort references chronologically, assigning the publication year followed by an alphabetic letter as a unique identifier. This works fine if there are 26 references per author per year or fewer, as there's a unique letter available for every reference within any given year. However, with 27 references or more, once the 'z' has been assigned, this system falls down and Zotero gets confused.

Is there a solution to this problem other than not using an author-date style in the first place?

Rintze

Do you know how this issue is generally solved? I don't recall seeing this being discussed in any of the style guides I've read. Should the counting be continued like (a,b,c,...,y,z,aa,ab,ac,...)?

mark

I think aa, ab, ac is indeed the most sensible solution.

Rintze

I just took a look at the code, and I think this already should be happening:

https://www.zotero.org/trac/browser/extension/branches/1.0/chrome/content/zotero/xpcom/cite.js?rev=3896#L2648

Maybe the code is buggy?

anark

I've just double-checked using APA, Harvard and Chicago (Author-Date format): it consistently reverts to plain a after z (vital stats: Zotero 1.0.7 · Firefox 3.0.4 · OpenOffice.org 2.4 · Ubuntu 8.04).

Should I file a bug report, then?

Rintze

You can check whether an error report is generated by Zotero (step 2 of Basic instructions):

http://www.zotero.org/support/reporting_bugs

anark

There are three pending error reports; two instances of this:

[JavaScript Error: "this.docShell is null" {file: "chrome://global/content/bindings/browser.xml" line: 0}]

and then another JavaScript error that claims my previous post to this forum was "not well-formed".

I don't think these error reports have anything to do with the non-unique citation identifiers.

I'd expect the faulty behaviour to be reproducible in any bibliography that has 27 or more entries for any given author in any given year, so, as per point 3 of the basic instructions on reporting bugs, may I consider my bug report filed with this thread?

Rintze

may I consider my bug report filed with this thread?

I was able reproduce the problem, and I've created a ticket:

https://www.zotero.org/trac/ticket/1265

anark

Okay -- thanks!

Rintze

Although I'm rather a novice when it comes to programming in Javascript, I think I was able to fixed the issue, and that fix has now been implemented (https://www.zotero.org/trac/changeset/3904). Apparently, Zotero 1.0.8 is slated to be released in the next few days, and will include this fix.

In my tests, the counting doesn't have a practical limit anymore (a is followed by b, b by c, z by aa, az by ba, zz by aaa, azz by baa, etc.). Let us know how it works!

anark

Excellent. Thank you!