I'll try to do this soon-ish. Remind me in a week if you haven't heard back?

OK, so I'll assume you're familiar with the basics of style editing - they're explained here:
http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step
We first start by writing a sort macro.
Let's put this right above this line:
<citation et-al-min="4" et-al-use-first="1" disambiguate-add-names="true">

The basic form of this macro is this:
<macro name="sort-key">
<choose>
<if type="book chapter" match="any">
<text value="1"/>
</if>
<else-if type="article-journal article-magazine" match="any">
<text value="2"/>
</else-if>
<else>
<text value="3"/>
</else>
</choose>
</macro>

You can find a list of all the csl item types and how they map to Zotero item types here: aurimasv.github.io/z2csl/typeMap.xml and can use that to make as many sort distinction as you want. The macro assigns a number to every group of item types and you can then just sort by it.

Once you're done, find the sort section for the bibliography. It currently looks like this:
<sort>
<key macro="contributors-sort"/>
<key variable="title"/>
<key variable="genre"/>
<key variable="issued"/>
</sort>

and add <key macro="sort-key"/> as the first line, ie.d.
<sort>
<key macro="sort-key"/>
<key macro="contributors-sort"/>
<key variable="title"/>
<key variable="genre"/>
<key variable="issued"/>
</sort>

I believe this will sort from 1 to 3 (or whatever the highest number is). You can reverse the sort order by adding sort="ascending" into the sort key, as in:
<key macro="sort-key" sort="ascending"/>

Any problems let me know.

why don't you put your version of the style on gist.github.com and link to it here- other people might be interested and more intimidated by the thought of modifying a style.

cool, thanks.

I don't think it's available anywhere -- the problem is that people have different needs as to which item types should be grouped into categories and I just don't see how to get this right.

Let me know if you run into problems, feel free to e-mail me as needed.

no, sorry, you can't test for specific content of any field. You can, though, check whether there's anything in the archive field, which would in almost all cases be a good way to distinguish between primary&secondary sources.

Hi, I have a similar question too. I am working on my bibliography in the MLA format. I need to separate my sources into two different headings: "Primary sources" and "Secondary sources" that would look like this (https://i.stack.imgur.com/CdxIx.png), listing the authors' names in the alphabetical order under two separate headings. I'd be greatly appreciated if someone could kindly let me know how to nail this with Zotero.

Thanks for the lightning-fast answer, adamsmith!

I think I might not be able to do this with Zotero then. Originally I was expecting that if it's possible to add something like a code that will make Zotero to ask me whether the source to be inserted into the bibliography is a primary source or secondary source. But you seem to be saying that at the first place there must be a way to distinguish the type of the source, which I don't think there is.

Take what I am doing now for example. Almost every item I use is either a book or a journal article. But then, say, if this book is John Milton's _Paradise Lost_, one of the most magisterial works ever of English literature, then it is definitely to be categorized as a primary source; and if it is a journal article or another book discussing _Paradise Lost_, then it is a secondary source. However, with my understanding of your question, I don't think I can do this in Zotero, right?

Got it. Will try to find out some other way to work it out. Thank you for the time!

No sorry, nothing new

yes, you can absolutely distinguish between books ("book" in CSL), journal articles ("article-journal") and reports ("report") -- not clear what your starting point is, but if you say where you are with your custom style, someone will likely be able to help.

You'll have to modify the style. My post above describes how this works in general:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/127355/#Comment_127355

Oscola already has some of this logic built in, that means you only have to adapt the sort-key macro to what you want.

Hi Adam, is there a way to sort by a field such as court, system, etc. (basically a field that is not used for citation purposes) but used for categorization purposes in the background? I think if i could use one of these open fields in my database it would resolve my issues.

@bwiernik That opens fascinating possibilities - I can't get it to work, though.

I've entered keyword: primary and keyword: secondary into the Extra field and then
got a sort macro doing this, but with it called first for my bibliography, I'm not getting the sort order I want. Any ideas?


<macro name="sort-key">
<choose>
<if keyword="primary">
<text value="1"/>
</if>
<else-if keyword="secondary">
<text value="2"/>
</else-if>
<else>
<text value="3"/>
</else>
</choose>
</macro>


Thanks, that's what I thought originally - ok, I'll stop trying then.