Reverse number bibliography?

dtwrublewski

Hello,

I am trying to create a bibliography in this order:

3. Citation, 2017
2. Citation, 2010
1. Citation, 1997

The style I am using (based on Cell) currently outputs:
1. Citation, 2017
2. Citation, 2010
3. Citation, 1997

It seems like this question has already been asked:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/99189
But, I cannot find anything in Zotero or in CSL documentation as to how to do this. Apologies if this has already been answered somewhere - I am a CSL newbie and learning to do this for a faculty member.

Much thanks for any assistance,

Donna

adamsmith

I'm afraid this still isn't possible

dtwrublewski

Oh no! :(
OK - I will make do. This would be a great thing to incorporate!

Thanks for your reply and for considering,
Donna

fbennett

It might be possible. Give this a try:

https://github.com/citation-style-language/test-suite/blob/master/processor-tests/humans/sort_BibliographyCitationNumberDescendingViaMacro.txt

The trick seems to be wrapping citation-number in a macro, then using that as the sort key.

dtwrublewski

Thanks! That doesn't seem to be working, but I think I may need to edit a few other things first. I'll keep trying - that definitely sounds like it *should* work! Thank you!

fbennett

If you get stuck, free to paste your code to https://gist.github.com, and post the saved URL back here. Happy to take a look.

dtwrublewski

Thanks for your help! It seems that switching between "ascending" and "descending" changes the list by date, but not by number.

Here's my code, apologies in advance for the sloppiness - I think I implemented your suggestion properly - apologies if I made a mistake!

https://gist.github.com/dtwrub/1ea15dc9ea1fd8abd412917289ecab4c

fbennett

Try moving the citation-number macro call to the last position in the bibliography sort block, and setting the other keys also to sort="descending".

fbennett

Actually you don't want descending on the other elements do you, sorry. Just moving the citation-number macro to last position should do it.

dtwrublewski

:O :O : !!! That worked! Actually, I nuked everything else and added a date sort, as I don't need it sorted by anything else. This did exactly what I needed:

I added your code:

<macro name="citation-number">
<text variable="citation-number"/>
</macro>

and then changed the sort:

<bibliography>
<sort>
<key macro="issued" sort="ascending"/>
<key macro="citation-number" sort="descending"/>
</sort>
...

</bibliography>

And it's perfect! I was unaware that the *order* of the keys in the sort block made a difference... my newbie is showing :)

Thank you SOOOO MUCH for your help - this is going to help a number of people I work with!!!

Have a great weekend!!

fbennett

Great! If you wrap your samples in <code></code> tags, it will become visible.

dtwrublewski

Thank you!!! I just did that - I hope it's viewable now? (I looked at the source code for this page to see how you did it :P )

Thank you again!! :) :) :)

fbennett

And yes, sorting behavior can be a mind-bender. It looks like call-via-macro is a hack I coded into the processor years ago in more adventurous days, on the off chance that it would one day prove useful. Glad to find it's seeing service!

dtwrublewski

YES! Thank you so much!!! :)

fbennett

For posterity, and by way of documentation, what's happening there is that calling citation-number via macro has no effect on the sort, but only changes the order in which numbers are applied to the entries.

dtwrublewski

Right - which is why that needs to be last, and whatever sort you really want needs to be applied first - in my case, year of publication?

fbennett

Yep, that's it exactly.

dtwrublewski

Excellent - got it! Thank you again so much!!

fbennett

@dtwrublewski: There will be a change in the way citation-number works as a sort key from processor release 1.1.242. When used as a primary key in cs:bibliography with sort="descending", whether as a variable or via a macro, citation-number will reverse the order of citations, with the highest citation-number at the top of the listing. When used as a secondary key in cs:bibliography with sort="descending" whether called as a variable or as a macro, citation-number will reverse the numbering of citations without affecting a stable primary sort.

I don't think this will alter the results from the structures covered in this thread: the only change is to eliminate the strange and wonderful difference between macro and variable calls to citation-number in cs:key. But just in case.