It partially works for the best legal styles, but doesn't work at all for some others like the bluebook one I unfortunately have to use for this journal.
By partially works, I mean that the Ibid works for the name of the text, but not for the number. It gives (A) "Ibid., art. 2" and then "Ibid., art. 2" instead of (B) "Ibid., art. 2" and "Ibid." (as it would for any other locator with the same number).
I realise that this is not a massive problem and is probably unavoidable if we use a suffix, but it means that, as compared to other pinpoints, we still need to go over the footnotes using "art." manually at the end, which is a shame and a little counter to the general (and wonderful) idea of everything staying automatic in Zotero.
It doesn't sound like you're actually using the workaround as described above. The point is to _not_ use the suffix field, but instead create your own empty locator - in this case (ab)using the sub verbo one - and then inputting "art. 2" into the locator field and selecting sub verbo as a locator. That will produce "Ibid., art. 2" and "Ibid." in a properly coded style.
I can't help you wrt to legal citation styles - partly for copyright reasons, none of the bluebook styles on the repository are very good. In the multilingual version of Zotero, fbennett has a style called something like "Wisconsin Legal" or so that is very close to actual bluebook requirements.
OK, but unfortunately when I use the sub-verbo field without the suffix for a document of type "statute", none of the styles I have installed (including the MLZ styles I recently updated), show the locator number at all!
I assume this is a problem with trying to force the style to cover things it's not used to. I think it's time I stopped hassling you guys and tried to lend a hand with legal styles and normal styles ways of dealing with legal texts. I'll contact Frank Bennett and see how I can help.
yeah, that's an issue that should be fixable pretty easily in the style. I just tested this with the Chicago Manual styles, so I know it works in general.
Depending on how adventurous you are, you might like to take a look at the MLZ styles. As adamsmith says, the Wisconsin Court Style is built to format things according to the Uniform System of Citation. It is an experimental project, but compatible in the database with official Zotero. Send me a note via zotero.org if you're interested in trying it out.
I'm really sorry to keep on coming back on this, but I'm getting an "s.v." before the "art." on (at least) the non-Ibid references if I use the sub-verbo strategy in many different styles (including the Chicagos and the MLZ ones). Obviously, I don't want an "s.v." in the citation. Are you suggesting that I edit the styles I use? This is a bit beyond me at this stage. Are there styles for which sub verbo is always blank?
Frank, I am already using your multilingual client and MLZ styles (as my firefox Zotero, while keeping normal Zotero 3 as standalone). Thanks very much. No problems with reference compatibility etc., but I am noticing occasional problems with styles and doc types for international law materials, which is why I was wanting to see if I could help out.
Then follow the instructions on changing style name and id and re-importing your style and you're done. If this is really an important unsability issue for you, it's more than worth the 30mins that takes to implement (as a complete beginner at this - an experienced user can do it in 3).
Julian: Great to hear that you're trying out the MLZ client and styles. They are still experimental, but stable enough to start being useful. Feedback on the international law types would be great to have at this point.
Locators on statutory types (legislation, treaty, bill) are handled very differently in MLZ. There is direct support for "art.", so you don't need the workaround. There is an example here. For the statutory types, you can "preload" a locator in the Section field, using a key for the label name (it defaults to section). For more precision, you can extend the "preloaded" locator with user input in the usual way, but only if there is a preloaded locator to start with.
This means you will have multiple Zotero items for a given bill, statute or treaty, but they will be treated as one item for backreferencing purposes, so ibid etc should work correctly.
The current keys are: art., ch., subch., p., pp., para., subpara., pt., r., sec., subsec., sch., tit. We can add more when required.
This is all very different from the way things currently work in official Zotero, so to avoid spreading confusion it might be good to take further questions off-forum for now. Feel free to write me direct via zotero.org, and we can hook up by mail.
Thanks very much, Adam. I'll do that for the styles I use.
Sorry to waste so many messages, but it wasn't clear to someone uninitiated like me that we were talking about a style edit. I was trying to avoid style edits so that I could follow style updates etc and change between them easily, but I think I'll now just go ahead and start building my own style for multilingual international law.
Hopefully others looking at the forum in the future will now see more easily what needs to be done. Your description was very clear. Thanks.
Thanks for those clarifications about MLZ, Frank. I'll create an account on http://citationstylist.org/ and give you future feedback there or via Zotero message.
Was there a decision on adding "Article" to the drop-down menu for pinpoints? Is this still in production? Or should I just plan to switch to MLZ? Any chance it might be added to the locators in the next iteration of CLS?
This is quite a few years later, but I was wondering if there was any developments on adding "Article" to the drop-down menu for pinpoints (locators)? It would be quite useful for the legal community (constitutions, international instruments, non-anglo-american statutes and regulations).
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By partially works, I mean that the Ibid works for the name of the text, but not for the number. It gives (A) "Ibid., art. 2" and then "Ibid., art. 2" instead of (B) "Ibid., art. 2" and "Ibid." (as it would for any other locator with the same number).
I realise that this is not a massive problem and is probably unavoidable if we use a suffix, but it means that, as compared to other pinpoints, we still need to go over the footnotes using "art." manually at the end, which is a shame and a little counter to the general (and wonderful) idea of everything staying automatic in Zotero.
I can't help you wrt to legal citation styles - partly for copyright reasons, none of the bluebook styles on the repository are very good. In the multilingual version of Zotero, fbennett has a style called something like "Wisconsin Legal" or so that is very close to actual bluebook requirements.
I assume this is a problem with trying to force the style to cover things it's not used to. I think it's time I stopped hassling you guys and tried to lend a hand with legal styles and normal styles ways of dealing with legal texts. I'll contact Frank Bennett and see how I can help.
Depending on how adventurous you are, you might like to take a look at the MLZ styles. As adamsmith says, the Wisconsin Court Style is built to format things according to the Uniform System of Citation. It is an experimental project, but compatible in the database with official Zotero. Send me a note via zotero.org if you're interested in trying it out.
Frank, I am already using your multilingual client and MLZ styles (as my firefox Zotero, while keeping normal Zotero 3 as standalone). Thanks very much. No problems with reference compatibility etc., but I am noticing occasional problems with styles and doc types for international law materials, which is why I was wanting to see if I could help out.
Here are the general instructions:
http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step
Specifically, you want to paste this code snippet right after
</info>in the style<locale xml:lang="en"><term name="sub verbo" form="short">
<single></single>
<multiple></multiple>
</term>
</locale>
Then follow the instructions on changing style name and id and re-importing your style and you're done. If this is really an important unsability issue for you, it's more than worth the 30mins that takes to implement (as a complete beginner at this - an experienced user can do it in 3).
Locators on statutory types (legislation, treaty, bill) are handled very differently in MLZ. There is direct support for "art.", so you don't need the workaround. There is an example here. For the statutory types, you can "preload" a locator in the Section field, using a key for the label name (it defaults to section). For more precision, you can extend the "preloaded" locator with user input in the usual way, but only if there is a preloaded locator to start with.
This means you will have multiple Zotero items for a given bill, statute or treaty, but they will be treated as one item for backreferencing purposes, so ibid etc should work correctly.
The current keys are: art., ch., subch., p., pp., para., subpara., pt., r., sec., subsec., sch., tit. We can add more when required.
This is all very different from the way things currently work in official Zotero, so to avoid spreading confusion it might be good to take further questions off-forum for now. Feel free to write me direct via zotero.org, and we can hook up by mail.
Sorry to waste so many messages, but it wasn't clear to someone uninitiated like me that we were talking about a style edit. I was trying to avoid style edits so that I could follow style updates etc and change between them easily, but I think I'll now just go ahead and start building my own style for multilingual international law.
Hopefully others looking at the forum in the future will now see more easily what needs to be done. Your description was very clear. Thanks.