CSL STYLE ERROR: reference with no printed form.

gugushika
I use China National Standard GB/T 7714-2015 (note, 中文). The note said "CSL STYLE ERROR: reference with no printed form" when I tried to cite a paper again. (It works well in the first citation. )
I found on our forum that some users encountered the same problem when using other formats. I guess it needs updating.
  • adamsmith
    which word processor are you using?
  • hapaxlegomenon2
    I have the same issue with the various CSL styles (non-custom & custom) I have recently tried in Zotero 7.0.32 on Kubuntu 24.04. Right click on an item > create bibliography from item > in pop-up window, select citation style (output mode Bibliography;Copy to clipboard) > ok. I paste into Librewriter, and a properly formatted citation shows in Librewriter.

    However, if I repeat the process (starting with a right click on the same item), "[CSL STYLE ERROR: reference with no printed form.]" appears in Librewriter.

    If I try the process again on a new (i.e., second) item, a properly formatted citation shows in Librewriter, but it only works for the second item once. If I repeat the process on the second item, I get the error message above.

    Same thing happens if I paste into another application, e.g., the KDE text editor, Kate. A citation from an item will paste into Kate and appear in the correct format the first time, but when I repeat the process for the same item, it shows "[CSL STYLE ERROR: reference with no printed form.]" in Kate.
  • hapaxlegomenon2
    I tested right clicking an item, creating bibliography & pasting citation into a text editor several ways. I tested on different Zotero versions, and using 5 different CSLs: Amer Chem Soc and APA (both are built-in CSL), OSCOLA 4th edition and Bluebook Inline (both are CSLs added via Manage styles>Get additional styles), and my own personal custom CSL. Citations did paste into a text editor without error for all 5 CSLs in version 7.0.24. In subsequent Zotero versions, the Bluebook Inline and my custom CSL both would paste the correct citation on the first try, but if I went back, right clicked on the same item to create bibliography and then pasted, an error message would appear "[CSL STYLE ERROR: reference with no printed form.]". This message might be combined with part of the cite or a remnant of a prior cite, depending on how many different items I had already been creating citations from. I've included my test results in a table, which I will try to upload with this comment.

    Perhaps related, I have also found that the built-in Zotero citation preview function shows an incomplete citation for the same 2 CSL styles (Bluebook Inline and my custom one) that end up having the pasting issue described above. Using the ZoteroPreview plugin from dcartertod shows the correct citation form for all 5 CSLs up until Zotero version 7.0.21.

    Hopefully, there is some useful information here. I will be running version 7.0.21 for now, to ensure both the applicable preview and pasting functionality.
    https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u6597395/xulf39ohycmdbqo7bqtc.png
  • adamsmith
    Thanks -- I can replicate this. This affects styles that don't have a bibliography defined. The intended behavior is that they just use the citation form when you copy the (non-existent) bibliography to clipboard. That's exactly what happens the first time. On each subsequent time it adds one more version of the [CSL STYLE ERROR: reference with no printed form.] (which is the string the the citation processor uses for empty citations.

    That's clearly a bug, and Zotero devs will look into this.

    In the meantime, though, you can fix this if you select "Citation" instead of "Bibliography" as the Output mode
  • hapaxlegomenon2
    edited 19 days ago
    Thank you

    Edit: That's super helpful to know about the behavior of styles that don't have a bibliography defined. I added a bibliography code to my custom CSL style (literally just copied the citation code section into a bibliography code section), and now I can see the correct format in the Zotero built-in preview in version 7.0.32.
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