Should zotero be syncing styles?

topplay

Is zotero 1.5 meant to be syncing styles? I kind of assumed it would but have just realised that it is not doing it (for me).

This ties in with trouble I have been experiencing using the word plugin where I would get an 'error communicating with zotero' message when trying to work with one of my documents. The fix was to manually copy a style I had imported onto my work machine (and used when creating the document) onto my home machine.

With this in mind I would like to make these suggestions.

1. Zotero should sync styles in addition to database items.
2. The word processor trouble shooting page should be updated to note that the error can be caused by a missing citation style in the local zotero profile.
3. The 'error communicating with zotero' message should be more explicit. Why not 'error: unable to locate [name of style] citation style' ?

Thank you

noksagt

Is zotero 1.5 meant to be syncing styles?

No.

1. Zotero should sync styles in addition to database items.

I can see this going either way. Styles are much easier to find/install than user-entered data & I might not want the same styles on all machines. "Style subscriptions" are planned in the future & perhaps it'd be a good idea to be able to generate an OPML (or whatever) of the subscribed styles, so that you can easily keep large lists of styles on multiple machines.

3. The 'error communicating with zotero' message should be more explicit. Why not 'error: unable to locate [name of style] citation style' ?

The answer to why not is probably that, right now, many things can be responsible for slow or non-existent communication between the office plugin & Zotero. But you are certainly correct that it'd be nice to have better error reporting between the two.

bdarcus

That's funny; sean said not long ago that 1.5 was syncing styles.

In any case, my opinion is they absolutely should be, and that any nuance added to the equation should come later (though opml won't be a part of it, given how ugly a format it is ;-)).

dstillman

sean said not long ago that 1.5 was syncing styles

I highly doubt Sean said that.

Rather than syncing styles, it might make more sense for Zotero to simply ask to auto-install a style referenced in a document, since, with multi-user editing, this problem won't be limited to styles a user has previously used.

Of course, if we're going to say that the URI does not necessarily equal <link>, the link would also need to be stored in the document, so maybe we should just say rely on the URI. If it's deferenceable, great. If not, auto-installing/updating just won't work.

bdarcus

I highly doubt Sean said that.

A quick search would have found this.

As for id vs. link, we certainly shouldn't feel compelled to follow Atom where we don't need to, or where it may have negative consequences.

dstillman

This thread (as I understand it) is about syncing styles between multiple Zotero clients. That thread was about style updating from the repository. We've never said that styles sync between clients.

bdarcus

What't the practical difference?

dstillman

Auto-updating has to do with keeping the styles you've chosen to install into a Zotero client up-to-date. Syncing has to do with having the same list of available styles on all of your machines. If combined with auto-installation when a document required a style, syncing would mean that, if you opened a document on one machine, the style required by that document would then appear on all your other machines, even if you never used it. And Rick suggests above that one might not want the same list of styles on all machines, even for manually installed styles.

I'm not really arguing one way or another, just clarifying that they're two separate features, and it's not obvious to me that syncing is desirable or worth the effort to implement.

noksagt

EDIT: Dan beat me to the response, so here is an example: I use Zotero on my personal machine (where I write, and so actually use CSL) & also on a common machine (where I use it only to retrieve references). There is a quota on the common machine. I'd rather not have any styles on it (but I suppose they aren't that large & it wouldn't be horrible if I had to). However, when I'm writing an article for a particular journal on my desktop, I would certainly want the latest version of that style. Zotero's current configuration enables exactly what I want.

That being said, I could certainly imagine that it'd be a pain for someone with multiple machines & several CSL files that wanted to make sure all styles were available on all machines.

Other good use cases would be for non-public styles and for styles intentionally left at an older/customized version. Sharing styles could be made to be easier, but I don't know if I'd want everything to be automatic....

bdarcus

OK. But given practical use cases underlying both, I do think this is a problem in need of solution at some point. Just consider the multi-user and/or app cases.

Rintze

Rather than syncing styles, it might make more sense for Zotero to simply ask to auto-install a style referenced in a document

Is it possible to attach the citation style as metadata to the document? That would also work in the case of non-URL-resolvable styles.

bdarcus

Just to be clear: I don't think there's any point in syncing the entire user style store. I'm more talking about the sort of use case that Rintze is mentioning.

I'm most familiar with OpenDocument. In v1.2, it will certainly be possible to store the style metadata, along with all the other metadata, using a standard model (RDF). We'd just need some agreement on how to do this in ways that would work across applications.

I presume something vaguely similar is possible in OOXMl.