Front End to assist in Creating Output Styles

The current process that seems available for creating new output styles for Zotero seems to me to be difficult for the average (non programmer) user.

I would love a simple front-end/utility developed that would enable a sort of "paint on screen using available fields and other characters" method of generating output styles.. It would make the product so much more user friendly as there are so many styles out there used by so many research organizations and the current provided ones don't cover them and generating a new one is or seems so difficult.
(unless I have missed a feature that is already there and lost in my reading somewhere)

Event the ability to say import an say "Endnote output style" and adding it to the current available styles would be useful as there are hundreds of Styles already in the Endnote system (which I used in the past).. Hmm mind you that may have copyright issues!!

ps.. Love Zotero. and currently get by with the Chicago styles provided but they do not quite fit the standard at the university where I do my research. I and my fellows just live with it. ;-)

S.
  • Currently the online simple style generator is the closest to matching your needs at this time, although there is also:
    chrome://zotero/content/tools/csledit.xul

    Improvements to CSL editors are certainly planned.


    A bit OT to your specific inquiry, but others may have interest: I have a simple python script to calculate the edit distance between the examples of the 100 or so core styles in the repository & a hand-hacked html file. This makes it easy to find the closest matching style & you can use that as a template to make your new style.
  • Event the ability to say import an say "Endnote output style" and adding it to the current available styles would be useful as there are hundreds of Styles already in the Endnote system (which I used in the past).. Hmm mind you that may have copyright issues!!
    Been there, done that.

    It is good that you wish to create styles. Please check them into SVN if you make good progress.
  • Hi.. Thanks..

    The online system of course does not cover my subject area - which is Music/Musicology. ;-)

    When I get time will check it all out.. At the moment I am surviving with the Chicago Full Biblio version supplied...

    S.
  • The categorization has absolutely nothing to do with the style that you get in the end--it is only to add metadata to the file that you create.

    The categories are also somewhat ad hoc, but are the only styles currently enumerated in CSL. Would "humanities" do for now? Whether or not it does, that shouldn't stop you from making new styles. You can always edit the metadata if a new "musicology" category is added in the future.
  • The chrome://zotero/content/tools/csledit.xul tool is actually very useful, and seems a pretty good way to learn the syntax hands on. A web-based formatter would be great but in the meantime I managed to combine a couple styles into the one I wanted by copy/paste to a text editor, and then back. I guess the next will go faster.

    Here are a few undocumented gotchas... The <title> field has to be updated, which is obvious enough in hindsight. The <id> field seemed at first unnecessary. The chrome tool formats correctly without it, and Zotero will output the bibliography correctly. However, the style doesn't appear when trying to import a citation using the OpenOffice toolbar. I just pointed the <id> to the csl file on my computer and it works fine. If the style becomes official then I should change it somehow to the Zotero URL. I have no idea how, in fact. The csledit tool doesn't allow resaving. Is there something like firefox's about:config for Zotero?

    Last... now I'm left with two new styles of the same name. I see them both when dumping the database with sqlite3 but I don't know what to do about it. Does Zotero provide a way to axe old styles?

    thanks.
  • edited October 11, 2008
    Last... now I'm left with two new styles of the same name. I see them both when dumping the database with sqlite3 but I don't know what to do about it. Does Zotero provide a way to axe old styles?
    As far as I know, the easy ways are: a) in the 1.5 Sync preview 2.2, you can delete individual styles by hand or b) in copies of Zotero in the 1.0 branch, you can reset all styles via "Reset Translators and Styles...", which removes any added styles. Both options can be accessed via the preferences panel of Zotero.
  • Thanks - that worked. I have 1.0.5 for now.
  • Yikes, I missed earlier, but better comment for the record:
    Here are a few undocumented gotchas... The <title> field has to be updated, which is obvious enough in hindsight. The <id> field seemed at first unnecessary. The chrome tool formats correctly without it, and Zotero will output the bibliography correctly. However, the style doesn't appear when trying to import a citation using the OpenOffice toolbar. I just pointed the to the csl file on my computer and it works fine. If the style becomes official then I should change it somehow to the Zotero URL. I have no idea how, in fact.
    It would help to read some documentation, so that you're not floundering around in the dark like this. The id, for example, is absolutely required, and it's important.
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