it has begun changing the number of authors

moveni
Hey

I'm new to Zotero and have been pleased so far, but now it sudenly began changing the number of authors when citing in the text and it does not even do it cosistently. Sometimes it has two authors, sometimes three or four. It also sometimes adds first names. I saw that some problems were connected to the library, but my library is very small and the authors are only there once and no authors with similar names.

I'm using the American Sociological Association.
  • adamsmith
    This is still almost certainly something in your library - Zotero, being a computer program, doesn't do random things.
    On first names, see here:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/given_name_disambiguation
    apart from bad data in Zotero, this is absolutely the only reason why first names would ever show up in ASA style.

    As for the number of authors - ASA is currently coded to show up to 3 authors for the first citation of an item, and up to two authors for subsequent citations. (this could be wrong - ASA hasn't been checked for a while - if so please provide documentation and we'll fix it)
    Four authors would not usually happen, but the style with add names to disambiguate between citations, which is what I suspect is going on if you indeed have four authors.
  • moveni
    Thanks so much for the quick and helpful response. I'm slowly beginning to understand the program.

    It seems to have corrected itself now, but it was showing more than three authors for one of my citations, which was what was really anoying me. Not sure how that came about.

    On a different note. Like others on the forum I would prefer that it did show first letters from first names, when there is several authors with same last name, especially when there is several authors on the different books and therefore no confusion on what book the reference is for, but I'm no expert on the rules for the different styles.

    Thanks again for the good work. The program is excellent and better than the one my uni is paying for...
  • adamsmith
    On a different note. Like others on the forum I would prefer that it did show first letters from first names, when there is several authors with same last name, especially when there is several authors on the different books and therefore no confusion on what book the reference is for, but I'm no expert on the rules for the different styles.
    yes, I agree. We have changed the default setting on this and in future versions of Zotero (likely 3.1 upwards), unless otherwise specified in the style, initials/first names will only be added where they're strictly necessary to disambiguate between two otherwise identical works (i.e. same author last name, no other authors, same year)
  • SevenEleven
    I use a style from before the update to version 3, which i modified to my needs. In my library i have several books and parts of books of two authors with the same surnames. but my in text citation (author-date) shows only the surnames. If i change the entries to "one field" it shows both, (full) given names and surnames.
    Can this be fixed in the style?
    Thanks for your help

    Seven
  • adamsmith
    SevenEleven - please provide an example of what you would the citations to look like. Most likely you want disambiguate-add-givenname="true" but I'm not totally clear about your question.
  • SevenEleven
    A good example might be the following: There are two married Scientist, Jan and Aleida Assmann, who wrote a lot of articles and books, both together and each by themselves.
    The concrete example is an article they wrote together (and which i entered as part of book). The citation looks like this: (Assmann, Assmann 1994: S. 114). But i want to use the initials of the given name to disambiguate the to authors.
    i already set the disambiguate-add-givenname to "true", but nothing changes...
    Should i post the hole style?
  • adamsmith
    yes, post the style, but not on the forum - a public gist at gist.github.com will do, as will pastebin.com (neither requires registration).
  • SevenEleven
    ok, here you go:
    git://gist.github.com/1933331.git (i never did this before and hope the link works).
    thank you for your instant reply!
  • SevenEleven
    i think, the link doesn't work like this.
    here another trial:
    https://gist.github.com/1933331
  • fbennett
    Your code is a mix of CSL 0.8 and CSL 1.0 syntax, so it will definitely break in various ways.

    Validate the style, and work through the errors until it is valid against the CSL 1.0 schema.
  • SevenEleven
    Thanks a lot for your help!
    Unfortunately i have to admit, that i'm a complete new bee to xml and my programming-skills are close to zero.
    I followed the instructions given in the link above and got these warnings and errors:

    Warning: Being lax about non-RNC Content-Type: text/plain
    https://raw.github.com/citation-style-language/schema/v1.0/csl.rnc
    Warning: Being lax about non-RNC Content-Type: text/plain
    https://raw.github.com/citation-style-language/schema/v1.0/csl-terms.rnc
    Warning: Being lax about non-RNC Content-Type: text/plain
    https://raw.github.com/citation-style-language/schema/v1.0/csl-types.rnc
    Warning: Being lax about non-RNC Content-Type: text/plain
    https://raw.github.com/citation-style-language/schema/v1.0/csl-variables.rnc
    Warning: Being lax about non-RNC Content-Type: text/plain
    https://raw.github.com/citation-style-language/schema/v1.0/csl-categories.rnc
    Warning: Being lax about non-XML Content-Type: text/html
    https://gist.github.com/1933331
    Error: Unknown unnamespaced element html not allowed.
    From line 1, column 16; to line 2, column 6
    TYPE html>↩<html>↩ <he
    Fatal Error: reference to undeclared general entity mdash
    At line 7, column 31
    1933331 — Gist↩

    But i'm not even sure if i followed the instructions in the right way (or maybe even misunderstood them), nor do i know how to handle the errors...
    I'm sorry for my ignorance :-S
    Could you help me once again?
  • adamsmith
    You need to use the "raw" link to your style - here are the validation results.

    http://validator.nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fraw%2F1933331%2Fe1900798d3936fc72a750b2de7b31d3c86b1e7d3%2Fgistfile1.txt&schema=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fcitation-style-language%2Fschema%2Fraw%2Fv1.0%2Fcsl.rnc&laxtype=yes

    Mostly your style seems to be old csl - see the upgrade notes here:
    http://citationstyles.org/downloads/upgrade-notes.html#updating-csl-0-8-styles

    There are only three small errors that you need to fix first:
    http://validator.nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fraw%2F1933331%2Fe1900798d3936fc72a750b2de7b31d3c86b1e7d3%2Fgistfile1.txt&schema=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fcitation-style-language%2Fschema%2Fraw%2Fv0.8.1%2Fcsl.rnc&laxtype=yes

    remove the strip-periods="true" and remove the localization at the top.
  • SevenEleven
    hey,
    Thanks a lot for your help again!
    I think removing the localization won't be a problem.
    The strip-periods="true" is a "hack" suggested by yourself (http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/21756/ebd-ebda-and-zotero-update-301/#Item_5)
    So is there any other way to fix the problem described in the linked discussion above?
  • adamsmith
    You can put it back in after converting the style to csl 1.0. Same for the "locale".
  • SevenEleven
    ok, during the upgrade to cal 1.0 i eliminating several parsing-errors, now there is still one left:

    /var/tmp/FOO8Q22eP:96: parser error : Input is not proper UTF-8, indicate encoding !
    Bytes: 0x84 0x22 0x20 0x73
    <text variable="title" prefix="„" suffix="“"/>
    ^
    unable to parse /var/tmp/FOO8Q22eP


    I found the line in the code, but don't know what to change
  • SevenEleven
    I just realized, in my post the arrow showing the exact position of the error moved.
    It actually pointed somewhere at the quotation mark and the white space after the word "title".
    (just in case it matters)
  • adamsmith
    hard to say - I'd just delete that line a re-write it. The most likely culprit are the smart quotes - easy to use non-utf8 compliant versions of them. Just using
    quotes="true" instead should work better anyway.
  • SevenEleven
    Well, i hardly understand what you write. :-S
    But by trial and error i found out, that the error was most likely evoked by the quotation marks indeed.
    so i looked up some webpage with all the utf-8 characters and their encodings listed and replaced the quotes by their codes: "c284" instead of "„" and "22" instead of "“".
    Now i got SOME output. I haven't tried it yet (have to put back "locale" and strip-periods="true" first) but i will give report when its done...
    Thanks a lot so far! :-)
  • adamsmith
    edited March 1, 2012
    those codes aren't right
    use
    <text variable="title" quotes="true"/>

    If you really want to hard-code quotation marks, use
    & #8222 ; and & #8222 ; respectively, without the space after the & and before the semicolon.
  • DWL-SDCA
    @seveneleven What text editor are you using to write your code? It should have a setting that automatically uses the correct characters for quotation marks (double and single). If you are using a word processor to write or edit scripts / code you should use a text editor. Do a Bing or Google search to find one for your operating system.
  • SevenEleven
    ok, i used quotes="true" now.

    BUT: the "hack" you provided doesn't work anymore.
    Now the ibid-with-locator-citation looks like that: (Ebda.:S. 199) (right would be: (Ebd.: S. 199).
    And the ibid-citation like this: (Ebdaa.) (right would be: (Ebda.)
    I tried to delete and to add the strip-period-command in various combinations, but with no luck.
    Another problem: the test-pane doesn't work anymore. I don't get any preview at the bottom (with any style).
  • adamsmith
    you're adding the a twice. You want this:
    <locale xml:lang="de">
    <terms>
    <term name="ibid">ebd.</term>
    </terms>
    </locale>

    As for the test pane - make sure you have an item selected in Zotero and click refresh. If tha tdoesn't work. Restart Firefox/Zotero.
  • SevenEleven
    Uaaaaa!
    As you wrote those lines i already found that out myself :-D
    Now i have NO strip-periods-command in the code and

    <term name="ibid">ebd.</term> BUT (important!): without the full stop after ebd.:
    <term name="ibid">ebd</term>

    Everything seems to work like it should so far. To test the quotes i inserted a Bibliography and they work too! Amen!
    Please don't update Zotero until July 1st :-D :-D :-D (By this date i have to be finished with my final exams).
  • adamsmith
    your style is now valid - even with Zotero updates it should (and almost certainly will) stay the same.
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