Classical sources numbers and pages

m.nardello

Hi, I'm trying to find a way to cite classical sources in which the number of the text to be quoted should appear after the title, while the pages of the book in which it's published should be at the end of the quote, like this

Augustine, The City of God, XV, 15, 2, in M. Robin (ed.), Augustine writings, NewEditor, New York 2020, 128-129.

I guess if it's possibile to enter both the number of the text and its pages in the Locator separated by a slash (like this: XV, 15, 2/128-129), and to modify the style sheet so that the first part is printed after the title and the second at the end of the citation. Is it possible in CSL 1.0.1 to manipulate the content of a field before printing it?

Thanks.

adamsmith

Is it possible in CSL 1.0.1 to manipulate the content of a field before printing it?

No, sorry.
I do hope for better support for classical sources in future CSL iterations, but I doubt we're going to support this particular scenario -- having locators split up in two places would be a complete novelty for CSL behavior and require substantial changes; we'd need a massively common use case to justify that.

maier.de

While there is indeed no way to get this with CSL 1.0.1 proper you might want to have a look at Juris-M and its extended CSL-M grammar (both by @fbennett). Some of these features might be of interest for your use case.

1. CSL-M knows an item type "classic".
2. Juris-M comes with an abbreviation filter plugin that can be used to use arbitrary abbreviations for particular texts.
3. CSL-M has extensions that help with formatting reprints, translations, etc., namely cs:alternative and the support for parallel cites.

I have not tried this yet, but recalling a conversation with @fbennett (https://github.com/Juris-M/citeproc-js/issues/113#issuecomment-505430616), I think parallel cites might help you here.

The process could look like this:
1. You will need two items:
- Augustine, City of God (perhaps with item type classic)
- M. Robin (ed.), Augustine writings, NewEditor, New York 2020
2. Use the related tab to establish a relationship between those items
3. Cite both items in a footnote, add the pages to the second cited item and the "book, chapter, section" style citation to the first item.
4. In the style file you can tweak how the items are rendered. Perhaps, Frank could give you some hints here.

(It's possible to use CSL-M also with Zotero, but some of the more advanced features might rely on Juris-M.)