Got it. There is a way to control for that. I'll take a look at the style later today, you can keep the note in the Court field.

No, only that that the style never even looks at the variable for that item. Only variables that might be used in the style are listed in the abbreviation lists. It's probably just an oversight in the drafting of the style.

A few posts up there is a GitHub link. That message has instructions on how to post a copy of your data. It will save you the trouble of typing things out, and it gives me the exact data used on your machine.

(1) The parentheticals now work beautifully. My only thought is that it would be nice not to have put in !jurisdiction>>>F.3d to suppress the name of the jurisdiction.

(2) The hereinafters are better, most things seems to be showing up A few issues though. Here's one:

They have a problem that I think I have noticed in Journals as well. Suppose I enter a new item. Maybe I have to use it in a document first for this to happen, but eventually I decide to edit the item, to fix a typo, whatever. The newly edited item now shows up in hereinafter and other abbrevs, but so does the old item, which no longer exists and which I would like to get rid of, since it is confusing. Also, the edited item does not inherit the old hereinafter, it must be re-entered.


And may I just emphasize: This is all nitpicking. This is so amazing and we all owe you an enormous debt for undertaking it

This is all nitpicking.

Thanks! It's very rewarding to see people taking an interest in the tool.

Yes, this doesn't try to address that, at least in this iteration. The pairings would need to be stored in the document itself. That could be done, but it would be awkward to implement, and I seem to remember there are storage limitations for document metadata in some of the word processor formats supported by Zotero.

An alternative might be to have "document profiles" that the user can select. One for the future, anyway.

Hi Frank

Just wondering what the time horizon was for addressing issue two in my last post, the missing "at" in hereinafters. The other issues can be worked around but that one essentially cannot be (at least it takes more time than it is worth). If it will be awhile I will avoid using hereinafters in my current drafts, but I would find them useful if the issue will be fixed relatively soon.

Thanks!

I hate the official Bluebook, so I never check it, but I believe it is a standard principle of legal citation. I use the Cornell website as a reference. Here's what they say (link below)

§ 6-520. Short Form Citations - Cases

Full Citation
Brown v. Helvering, 291 U.S. 193, 203 (1934).

Short Form Citations
Brown, 291 U.S. at 203.
291 U.S. at 203.
Id. at 203.

The short form should include an identifiable portion of the case name unless it appears in the passage supported by the citation.


http://www.law.cornell.edu/citation/6-500.htm

If you don't use an "at" it looks like the page referred to is the first page of the case rather than a pincite

Things are looking really good. Most significant problem now is the Abbreviations which are still being very temperamental, as we discussed earlier. When you have time I would be happy to work on the interface with you but for now the best solution seems to just periodically (between documents mostly) reinstall the abbrevs JSON which cleans things out, but of course loses some things that I need. So I need to make my own JSON with my important items. I don't know the code but made an educated guess and successfully added one entry but have a couple of questions that might help speed things up

(1) My key additions are almost all non-law journals, like Journal of Political Economy. On your original abbrevs list, there are entries of

"Political": "Pol.",
"Journal": "J.",

but they don't seem to replace parts of titles. In cases where the Abbrevs JSON replaces the whole title (Harv. L. Rev,) it works perfectly. Is there any way to fix the JSON so it replaces individual words in titles?

(2) The link to the Phrases JSON is broken. Is it available and would it help me?

(3) Right now the hereinafter seem to be available only for cases. It is useful for other items too sometimes, can it be made available?


Thanks!

I'm still having problems with phrases. I updated the Abbrevs and tried to import the new Hints link with no luck

Is there any way to tell from the interface whether I have imported it correctly? Journal Abbreviations show up on the interface when you chose "Reporters and Journals". No changes are apparent after I import phrases. However, I have found that it sometimes took several tries to import the names abbrevs, so I want to be sure I have succeeded.

Thanks

Could you give me a quick primer on the best way to edit the JSON documents? Sometimes when I add thing it works, sometimes not, o obvious difference in syntax, very frustrating. Part of the problem is probably than I am opening the JSON in word, typing or pasting, then saving and changing the extension name. Sometimes this introduces errors that I have now fixed (curly quotes but some I don't understand.

Is there a more straightforward way to do this, like in Firefox?

Thanks

Notebook worked, thanks!

Biggest problem now: How do I wipe clean all the abbreviations to start with a clean slate? I have tried everything, although a little unsystematically so I might have messed up. I believe I have reinstalled Abbrevs addon, AMLAW style, and the abbrevs json and sarted new docs without clearing slate. I think once I may have succeeded when I went as far back as reinstalling Firefox,zotero etc but this seems excessive. Where do the abbreviations live?

I tried reinstalling the original Abbrevs JSON from your site - shouldn't that at least erase all my changes to it? Sometimes it seems like it doesn.t

The biggest problem is hereinafters. And they never seem to appear in any JSON I export to clean up. Where are they stored?

And finally: This may not be worth solving, because it will go away in the long run, but it is very vexing right now. Suppose I get things so they are working new documents. I often cannot transfer the changes to an old one. I have even gone as far as stripping out all zotero formatting (using the link in zotero)and saving as rtf. Usually when I reimport the new JSON the new stuff I have added transfers over but I cannot get rid of old stuff. Often hereinafter behave erratically, sometimes using the newly assigned abbreviation sometimes not.

What are the files "abbreviations-for-zotero.sqlite"? I know sqlite files store zotero info like databases. Are these part of your Abbrevs set up and part of what causes the persistence of abbrevs. both wanted and unwanted? Should I pruce them when I am having problems?

Thanks!

I think I have narrowed down the odd hereinafter behavior when a new JSON is applied to an old document. For some reason, there must be two full cites before the short cite is used.

Thanks, this is exactly the kind of detail that I need for debugging.

Importing the empty list worked for new documents but was uneven for old documents. I am pretty sure I actually imported it because there was no error in the error console and some cites did change: the jurisdictions now just have code instead of correct names. However, although the abbreviations are no longer listed in the Journals and Reporters menu, they not only persist in text after updating but are used again in newly inserted cites.

Would it be possible for you to look at the JSON that is not importing? I have a tight deadline and it wold really help to have it installed. How would I send it?