Inclusive dates

gregwlee
I'd like to cite a multiple-volume work whose dates span a range of years, e.g., 1986-1995. But when I try to produce the reference, only the first date appears (e.g., 1986). Is there any way to get the Date field to allow a span of years? I'm using Chicago 16th. Thanks.
  • adamsmith
    unfortunately not really at this time. Putting an underscore at the beginning of the date field renders it literally and you can take it out later, but that's the best we've got as of now. Obviously improvements are planned, but not easy for a number of reasons.
  • gregwlee
    Thanks for the speedy reply. When I tried underscore, I actually ended up with only the last date (e.g., 1995). What am I missing?
  • fbrauer
    You probably tried "_1986-1995"; better try "1986_1995". It seems "2012_2013" is rendered as "2012_2013", but "_2012-2013" is rendered as "2013".

    Maybe I'm missing something, but I have always wondered about two things:

    What is the problem with parsing date ranges, e.g. in the ISO 8601 format "YYYY-MM-DD/YYYY-MM-DD" or, if the slash (aka solidus) is a problem, the alternative "double hyphen" format accepted by ISO 8601, "YYYY-MM-DD--YYYY-MM-DD"?

    Still, even if parsing date ranges is, for whatever reason, impossible in the short run, why can't Zotero treat an en-dash just like an underscore, i.e., render a date string containing an en-dash literally? This alone would be a perfectly acceptable solution for the vast majority of use cases, namely the ones with a simple YYYY–YYYY range.
  • David_Wer
    There is another issue with using the "_" as a workaround. When I use 2012_2013 it does indeed render it 2012_2013 in my word processing program but in zotero in the middle pane under the year column it shows 0000. Under the Date column it shows 2012_2013. Unfortunately the date column is difficult for me to use because for many of my entries I have months and days and this makes the whole column difficult to read easily.

    Is there any work around to deal with the 0000 showing up in the year column?
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