Installing Custom Style

amboaksy
Hey all,

So I've adapted the New England Journal of Medicine's citation format to that of the Journal of Forensic Science. I followed all the steps on Zotero's site and ran it through the validation.nu site which said that it was a valid format but now when I've tried to click and drag the citation style to an open browser, I get "Journal of Forensic Science does not appear to be a valid citation style".

Can anyone provide any hints on what I've done wrong?
  • adamsmith
    impossible to tell without seeing the style. Put it up as a public gist on gist.github.com and post the link here and we can take a look - not valid means not valid.
    Usually styles that validate with the validator should be fine, but maybe there's an illegal empty line in the beginning or something along those lines that keeps it from installing.
  • amboaksy
    I think I've uploaded the code on gist. I hope it worked. I'm by no means proficient at this type of thing. I would appreciate any help you can give me on this!

    https://gist.github.com/1362919

    Thanks!
  • adamsmith
    try downloading this
    https://gist.github.com/raw/1362931/bc6215406da4f59450613dc38a93938dc92b1348/journal-of-forensic-science.csl
  • amboaksy
    Thank you so much for fixing this!
  • adamsmith
    The category "forensic science" doesn't exist - that shouldn't have validated for you (it didn't forme). Other than that I only removed an empty line at the end, I doubt that made a difference
  • amboaksy
    Apparently it did because I've been able to install it on my zotero and it works. Thanks again!
  • adamsmith
    actually that could have just been posting an effect of posting it online and downloading it again - weird stuff with file format and line endings could have been going on.
  • cberven
    Total Newbie here. I just read the above and am still at a loss for how to post or use a custom citation style.

    I've modified the American Institute of Physics style so that it is correct for the Materials Research Society. Just changing some text to italics was all that was needed.

    The thing is, I don't know what to do with it now. How can I get it out there to be used at least by me if not others?

    Thanks!
  • adamsmith
    you have seen this?
    http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step
    We try to make these instructions accessible to anyone, so if anything isn't clear, we'd want to improve that.
  • cberven
    Thanks! I'll give it a try. That page eluded me when I was searching for information. I'll be sure to give it a try.
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