Report ID: 288547743

Dave Thompson
When changing styles from Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition (full mode) to Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticles Physics, I get an error. See screencast for details: http://www.screenr.com/8FjH

Running Windows 8.1 Pro, Firefox 26, and Word plugin 3.1.15

Your help would be greatly appreciated!
  • adamsmith
    never seen that one, I believe.
    First things to try would be
    1. See if this happens in a minimal new document (1 or 2 citations in CMoS, then switch).
    2. See if switching to a different style works
    3. See if running through these works
    http://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_troubleshooting#debugging_broken_documents
  • aurimas
    edited December 26, 2013
    Looks like the error reported here: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/32274/word-2013-zotero-lost-contact-with-bibliography/#Item_6

    It only happens when switching from Endnotes to an author-date style. The idea is to first switch to Footnotes and then to the other style.

    Edit: Err.. it doesn't have to be an author-date style, but not a note style... whatever we call them.
  • Dave Thompson
    Hi,

    Thanks for your help. I've isolated the problem to one URL that is causing the problem: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0502328

    Screencast: http://www.screenr.com/a5jH

    Where do I go from here?
  • Dave Thompson
    edited December 28, 2013
    Okay...forget the above statement.

    I found out that that citation works fine if you start out in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics style. If you do this you can switch back and forth to other styles as long as you stay away from Chicago styles (full note) or (note). However, if you switch to one of those Chicago styles and then try to switch back to the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics style, it fails and gives you the error. Other citations do the same thing.
  • aurimas
    edited December 28, 2013
    As I said above, it's the same problem as reported before. You just can't switch directly from Endnotes to a numeric/author-date style. You have to switch to footnotes first, then to the other style.

    Edit: the damage is also not permanent. Everything is fixed once you switch to footnotes.
  • Dave Thompson
    Thanks! That makes it work. I miss read your note the first time around. I was trying just the opposite of what you said. That is I was ensuring that I was in endnotes mode not footnotes mode.

    Do you know if this bug will be fixed in a new release?
  • aurimas
    It's probably not going to be fixed any time soon (I don't think anyone's working on it), but thankfully there is a fairly trivial workaround.
  • Dave Thompson
    edited January 2, 2014
    I found out there is more to this problem than just having to go through footnotes to do the style change. So I made a screencast of doing a round-trip from Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics style to a Chicago style with endnotes and then back again to Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. Even with the help of the forum, this problem has taken me days to figure out. So, I hope this helps someone else until the bugs get fixed.

    Screencast: http://screenr.com/ucIH
  • aurimas
    So from what I gather, the only problem is that the bibliography remains after switching to an Footnote/Endnote style? (I don't have a way to listen to the screencast atm, so if there were some other issues you mentioned, do let us know)

    So we should either remove the bibliography altogether or not render it when switching to footnote/endnote style.

    The downside of removing it is that you have to re-insert it when switching back (but that's how it would be anyway if you started with a footnote/endnote style). Also, what happens to items that you may have added to bibliography only? That information would be lost.

    The downside of rendering bibliography as an empty field, would be that it's an invisible field that could get moved around to random places in the document during editing, which probably would cause a lot more confusion and headache when switching back to a bibliography style.
  • adamsmith
    The bibliography should absolutely be kept when switching to a footnote/endnote style as long as that style does have settings for a bibliography (as CMoS does). Having both notes and a bibliography is a common requirement. So while maybe inconvenient for Dave in this particular case (though really only inconvenient to the extent of three extra clicks) the current behavior is both intended and desirable.
  • Dave Thompson
    Aurimas,

    Sorry you can't access the audio on the screencast. No, there are no additional issues, you described the problem well. It just took me forever to figure out what is going on and how to workaround the issues. The process is not intuitive and there are no instructions. I can live with a few extra clicks now that I know what to do.

    Thanks again you guys for all your help.

    Dave

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