jurisdiction s/b case

vgivanovic
Zotero 7.0.7.SOURCE.304e76685 (64-bit) on Arch Linux using TexLive 2024

When I export my library using BetterBibLaTex and betterbiblatexAPA, an item of type Case shows up as '@jurisdiction'. If I manually change 'jurisdiction' to 'case', I can successfully use Biber to create the files required to pull my Bibliography into my LaTeX document.

Where does '@jurisdiction' come from? How do I convert it to '@case' so that exporting my library in BibLaTeX formats my bibliography correctly.

With '@jurisdiction' I get just a single line with the Title of the case. With '@case' I get all the information that's in the entry's Info section, correctly formatted.

I'm happy to clarify.

Thanks.
  • bwiernik
    ‘@jurisdiction’ is the type used for cases by most BibLaTeX legal styles, but my understanding is that legal items are very poorly handled by most other BibLaTeX styles.

    You can use BBT’s scripting feature to customize export. Questions for @emilianoeheyns the BBT developer should generally be asked on the BBT GitHub page
  • vgivanovic
    @bwiernik Thanks for the info. I'll follow up with @emilianoeheyns as you suggest.

    As an aside, in general, I don't think programs should silently alter a user's explicit choices. Warning them of unintended consequences is usually preferred.

    In this case, the silent change:
    (a) produces an incorrect bibliographic entry which is corrected when the silent change is reversed,
    (b) jurisdiction—at least for lay people— incorrectly describes the entry,
    (c) jurisdiction is not one of the types available in Zotero, and
    (d) jurisdiction generates a slew of BibLatex warnings.
  • adamsmith
    You can certainly work around this, but this is not a silent change:
    Zotero isn't a BibLaTeX frontend, but a reference manager that exports to BibLaTeX. Export necessarily makes choices about appropriate mapping between different formats.
    In this case, this choice seems straightforward to me:
    "case" is not defined as an item type in the BibLaTeX manual.
    "jurisdiction" is defined under 2.1.3 "Non-standard Type" as "Court decisions, court recordings, and similar things." -- i.e. exactly the type of thing that'd be saved as a case in Zotero.

    When exporting to a well-defined format such as BibLaTeX, it would be quite inappropriate to make up a new item type such as "case". I don't know why "jurisdiction" was chosen over "case" in BibLaTeX (I'm guessing broader international applicability outside of case law?) and why it's not working in your style of choice, but those would be questions for the BibLaTeX community and/or TeXexchange
  • vgivanovic
    @adamsmith You've stated your opinion, and that's fair.

    My opinion is that it is quite inappropriate that BibLaTeX should silently redefine the meaning of a word. In English (I am a native English speaker), the meaning of 'jurisdiction' does not overlap with 'case'. I understand that since BibLaTeX does not have a 'case' type, Zotero is forced to do something, and it chose to do something that causes an error later on. It's the silently part that bothers me most.

    It's ironic that changing 'jurisdiction' to 'case' as the type in the exported BibLaTeX file actually results in the correct behavior from the user's point of view, despite BibLaTeX not defining 'case' a valid type.

    BTW, exporting to Refer/BibIX, to Refworks and to Unqualified Dublin Core RDF all preserve 'case' as the type. (I chose those three only because they seemed vaguely familiar.) So, perhaps BibLaTeX should quite appropriately create a new type, 'case' that matches what's done for some other formats.

    Regardless, thanks to @bwiernik's useful suggestion, I added

    if (Translator.BetterBibLaTeX) {
    if (tex.entrytype === 'jurisdiction') tex.entrytype = 'case'
    }

    described in BBT’s scripting feature [https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/exporting/scripting/] to customize Zotero's BibLaTeX export. It seems to work.
  • bwiernik
    @vgivanovic The BibLaTeX type for cases is “jurisdiction”. That is what is stated very plainly in the BibLaTeX manual. “case” is not an item type in the BibLaTeX manual.

    The issue here is that BibLaTeX styles are a Wild West in terms of practices and conventions. If “case” happens to work with the APA style you are using, that is possibly just an accident of the fallback behavior of the style, or else the style author chose to use an alternate name for the item type than the one given in the BibLaTeX manual. Arguably the most correct solution here would be for the style author to update the style to use the standard BibLaTeX types.

    Your comparison to RefWorks, etc., is a bit of a non-sequitor. Those formats include an item type called “case”, Bib(La)TeX does not. Many export formats use different labels used for item types and fields than other formats or than are used in Zotero. For example, when exporting to CSL format, Zotero exports both “Film” and “Video Recording” items as “motion_picture” because that is the relevant type in CSL.
  • adamsmith
    I do think the BibLaTeX label is a bit odd, but you'd have to take that up with them.

    FWIW, I'm guessing this is due to a false friend: BibLaTeX's lead developer is German, and the German "Jurisdiktion" encompasses both the English "jurisdiction" and the much more general "Rechtssprechung", i.e. any form of legal pronouncement.

    Zotero, like any tool migrating between metadata formats, makes hundreds of translations (see e.g. bwiernik's examples) and if it were to be noisy about each of them, every export or import process would come with pages and pages of warnings/messages: surely not a useful or acceptable UX.
  • vgivanovic
    @bwiernik I'm not disputing what's in the Bib(La)TeX manual. I used Zotero, BetterBibLaTeX, biber, and biblatexAPA as intended, and I got results that were incorrect. As a user I'm only interested in two things: (a) filing a bug against the appropriate program [done], and (b) finding a hopefully temporary workaround [done]. All the rest of what I've said is me discovering where the bug lies.

    @adamsmith Your explanation of the origin of "jurisdiction" make sense. I note that my export file contains many warnings as comments. Had one of those warnings been

    % Changed required field 'type' from "case" to "jurisdiction" to match Bib(La)TeX standard.

    much of this discussion might have been rendered moot.
  • nickbart

    I fully agree with @bwiernik and @adamsmith, but I would like to add what I think is the most important aspect:

    @case is definitely not a recognized type in either biblatex or biblatex-apa, as should be sufficiently clear from the biblatex and biblatex-apa manuals as well as the biblatex-apa sample files, e.g. biblatex-apa-test-references.bib.

    In terms of warnings, the following console output from latex when run with biblatex or biblatex-apa should have been obvious enough on its own:

    Package biblatex warning: No driver for 'case'.
    (biblatex) Use fallback driver in input line 19.

    This somehow works, but only because of a fallback mechanism, and in no way suggests that using @case would be a real solution to the OP’s apparent formatting problems.

    These should better be discussed with the biblatex-apa team, on the basis of using @jurisdiction.

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