Prefix/suffix conflicts with "collapse" in multiple cites

edited August 18, 2018
The sentence I want to write is:
This paper is an overview of the phenomenon (for previous descriptions see Smith 2014 and the appendix to Smith 2013).

In my style, same-author cites are collapsed by the rule collapse="year-suffix-ranged", which is usually good but here is causing an error.

I have inserted a multi-item cite via the 'classic' popup, and I have used prefixes to include the additional text within the parentheses.[*] The prefix for the first is "for previous descriptions see", and the prefix for the second is "and the appendix to":
This paper is an overview of the phenomenon (for previous descriptions see Smith 2014, and the appendix to 2013).

As you can see, this is not formatted properly:
1. There is an extra comma that is in the way (it's not glaringly wrong here, but not desired).
2. The author's name should repeat before "2013".

The collapse rules should be disabled when there are prefixes or suffixes.

Are there any suggested workarounds for this? Since we are not supposed to manually change cite fields, I don't see any options.

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[*]I really don't like this method of doing this (so counter-intuitive), but it's the only way that works until this problem is solved: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/5282/multiple-in-text-citation-patterns

I'm trying to format my paper "correctly" in Zotero, but running into roadblocks with the limited options we have for in-text cites.
  • Yeah, that looks wrong to me.

    @fbennett -- shoudn't there be logic in the processor to prevent collapse if two elements are separated by an affix?
  • edited August 18, 2018
    Ah! Good catch:
    prevent collapse if two elements are separated by an affix
    So we'd want:

    (See also Smith 2017, 2018 for more info)
    But:
    (See also Smith 2017 and similar arguments in Smith 2018)

    This could potentially get tricky for complex citations with mixed same-different author cites and multiple sets of affixes, but if it's possible in the processor collapse if and only if there are no separating affixes, that would be ideal!
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