Hi,

Thanks very much for your help and your quick reply. Actually, I have nothing at the bottom of the page, not even the number of the citation. Thanks also for your help with the date format.

once again - nature styles and the like do not produce footnotes. They aren't supposed to - neither in Zotero nor in the journal - have a look at Nature journal: There are just numbers in the text and a biography in the end - no footnotes.
If you do want footnotes, you have to use a style that has class="note" in the header (in the line that starts with <style )
and you need to define what's in that note in the <citation> part of the bibliography.
I don't know if the simple generator can do that.

OK. My style now also produces footnotes. I just have a small issue. The style relies on the "edition" macro to insert edition number. I use the suffix " ed." after the edition number e.g., 5 ed. . I however would like to set the style 5th ed., th being not in the same alignment as ed. Is it possible to set a suffix with two different alignment instructions ?

The Simple Style Generator is essentially worthless at this point. It takes (much) more work to fix the broken styles it creates than it does to go through the process of tweaking an already-existing style.

Oh sorry no, I replied too quicly. Th should be higher than the rest of the text. If you mention for example square meters , the small 2 which means power two slightly is higher than the m.
If you do not exactly understand what I want th to look like, please compare the position of the 2 and the m in the square metre symbol or like the representation of an exponent in maths.

The th of 5th edition also should be slightly higher than 5 and edition.

I am using the line of code adamsmith suggested elsewsere in my code but it clearly does not reproduce the difference

Yes, I had the feeling it was impossible to set a macro with two types of alignment in the same suffix and I already knew that the suffix would have to always be the same. I however preferred to ask just in case I misunderstood something and I must confess I had that hope when I posted my message yesterday. I also noticed that I could get ordinal numbers but supersciption really seems useful to me. Thanks for your help anyway.

you'd need to post the code somewhere for troubleshooting - while there are some issues with superscript, that shouldn't be the caste.
You can just post code without registration over at
gist.github.com
just paste it in the window and click "Create Public gist" at the bottom

Could you please let me know what I should type in order to correctly configure a macro.
I would like to set assign the same style all the items that have the same word in the publication field.

I therefore use the following code :

<macro name="title">
<choose>
<if type="chapter">
<choose>
<if variable="container-title" match="word">
<text variable="title" preffix="V° " suffix=", "/>
…

Could you please let me know if it is correct ?
Please note that the word is not the complete publication title but only a word all the items have in common in their zotero publication field.

The syntax seems correct but the prefix is not applied.

I understand the reasons behind this decision although I think the contrary would allow to elaborate much nicer macros. If I can't use it I will have to rely on exceptions by type and this really is not convienient. I have seen that the question about adding more than two exceptions has been raised many times but I haven't seen any portion of documentation which addressed that issue. Could you please let me know how I could add more exceptions manually ?

Furthemore, it seems that "entry-encyclopedia" is treated as "chapter", is this due the code or a mistake I made ?

Thanks for the mapping. The simple style generator can create one style with two exception, e.g. book and journal article. I however would need to set more than the just two exceptions, e.g. book, journal article, entry encyclopedia and rapport. How do I do this ?

In fact before I posted I already tried to add more exceptions by using else-if. One of these exceptions was entry-encyclopedia. I did not know why It always treated as a chapter which also was present in the style. Now I understand, it is a question of mapping.

Is there a chance the mapping evolves so that it would be possible to use entry-encyclopedia as well as chapter ?

yes, you can post it as a separate feature request. What you would want to include is an example style that cites chapters and encycl. entries so differently that it cannot be achieved with current Zotero specifications.

Btw. as Bruce says, I strongly recommend against using the simple style creator or basing your style on its output. It's a much better idea to start from a high quality existing style such as APA or CMOS

Edited: Yes, indeed recommend against!

I totally agree with you but, beside the fact that CSL and XML were new to me when I posted my first message, there was no indication on the website about where to start. It only is later that I discovered that in fact the SSG created code that was the opposite of good syntax. If I had seen on the website that this tool creates styles that were uneasy to modify, that a condition cannot be tested using a specific content field, I probably would have started differently. The syntax indeed is not difficult to understand, the only problem is that I considered the style generated by the generator as a model of good coding practices.

This is not a reproach since I know the SSG is a tool designed to cope with the most obvious needs. It is just one of the reasons why I sticked to the SSG.

Furthermore, Zotero really is an attractive tool especially if one likes to use open source apps, not only because of their price for the independence they offer. Zotero however is limited by another factor, it was conceived by anglo-saxon people that were not aware of different ways of mananging sources in diffrent countries which is absolutely understandable since one cannot know everything. I am not even sure that commercial solutions are doing a better job from that point of view since I have not tested them.

A good example of that is encyclopaedia-entry and chapter which are based on a totally different layout, i.e., different prefix, diffrent content and diffrent font style. If I understand you well I cannot achieve completly diffrent outputs using the actuel version of the code.

Considering this, one can undertand the other reason which explains why I sticked to the SSG-made style even if I also looked at Chicago Full with bibliography: it was the closest to what I wanted to achieve.

Despite this period of blind searching, Zotero certainly will be really useful. Thank you also for your helpfulness.

It would be a good idea to put a warning on the SSG page as well since I found it without searching the zotero site but the internet.

In my style chapters are set like this :

Author, Italicised title in Publication, Publisher, Date

Encyclopedia :

Publication, V° Entry

An other encyclopedia format :

Publication, V° Entry, Fasc. collection-number

As you can imagine when I learned when I learned that I could not test a condition with a qpecfic foeld content I siet a condition if collection-number match="any" to distinguish through the encyclopedia type. All these items are still treated like chapter even if the condition : if type entry-encl. is tested before else if article journal and if else chapter, else

I know I cannot test for it and that's where the problem is.


n° refers to the §

Chapter output (used for collective works) :
A. Martin, Rich text citations in A history of Zotero development, Publisher, 2009, p. or n°

Encyclopedia
The CSL encylopedia, Publisher, V° Zotero, n°
Another Encyclopedia, Fasc. n° 1234, V° Zotero, n°

(The number corresponds to the collection number)

Other works (not periodicals)
A. Martin, My book, Collection, 5^th ed., Publisher, 2009, p, or n°

The th is supscripted not subscripted

In the bibliography, I do not mention pages or n°


I hope this helps.