BUG: Incorrect alphabetical order in APA bibliography (Word plugin)

hgilbert
Oddly, Zotero is placing Miller and Millgram before Mill in an APA bibliography.

Any ideas as to what could be causing this or how to fix it? I have tried re-entering the surnames to ensure that there are no non-printing characters; the order is unchanged.

I am using Word 2010 and Zotero 4.0.28.10.
  • adamsmith
    (This was actually better in its original place. It's a citation style/processor, not a Word plugin issue. For future reference, you can move posts by editing the first post in a thread. If you feel like you post has been forgotten -- though do allow at least 72 hs for that -- you can bump it by posting to the same thread).
  • hgilbert
    Thanks, Adam. I wasn't sure what was the source of the problem.
  • fbennett
    Anyway, this will likely be fixed in an upcoming processor release. JavaScript engines all sort a little differently, and I have only recently been able to run the full test suite against the JS engines of the three leading browsers. It turned up discrepancies, which have been addressed. Release should be out by the end of the week.
  • hgilbert
    edited March 5, 2016
    That sounds good. I have now found other, similar discrepancies. It appears that sometimes when two surnames have all the same initial letters, but one is longer than the other (Mill and Miller, Stein and Steiner, Cole and Coleridge), the order is reversed from the expected one.

    But it's not completely consistent: Brandt correctly precedes Brandtstadter. One Gill precedes and one Gill follows Gilligan.
  • fbennett
    edited March 5, 2016
    Yes, that's the symptom. It's including spaces in the sort on some platforms. If those are removed in the sort key strings, it comes out correctly.
  • hgilbert
    edited April 2, 2016
    OK...end of the week was a bit optimistic. The problem is still there on April 2 (4 weeks later).

    Or...it's half-fixed. Brandt is now before Brandstetter but Cole comes after Coleridge!
  • adamsmith
    it actually did happen, but Zotero rolled it back bc of other problems with the processor. You can try installing the propachi-vanilla add-on (which swaps out the processor for the most recent versions) from https://github.com/Juris-M/propachi-vanilla/releases/latest.

    (And FWIW, this is the last time I'll react to one of your posts complaining about how everything takes too long etc.; it's rather tiresome and entirely unnecessary.)
  • fbennett
    The link without the trailing period:

    https://github.com/Juris-M/propachi-vanilla/releases/latest

    Installing that should fix sorting completely for you. If it doesn't, please report back.
  • hgilbert
    Adam,

    Thanks for the fix!

    Adam: I apologize for complaining, but really, I have only done so when promised deadlines have not remotely been held to. In the present case, one week was promised and four weeks passed without the problem being fixed, in the other case a solution was promised "soon" in 2010 and five years later there was still no solution.

    I understand that things often take longer than one expects. I appreciate all the work you do!
  • fbennett
    Point taken. I need to be more careful about giving hostages to fortune.
  • adamsmith
    The problem is that the effect is going to be that people are just not going to give any time estimates anymore (see fbennett's reaction). If you think that's a net improvement... I don't.

    A polite inquiry is a much more effective way to remind a (in many parts here: entirely volunteer) developer of something they said they'd do.
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