Citation-number sort test mystery

CSL Development
1

I am looking at sort_BibliographyCitationNumberDescendingViaMacro.txt

It is pretty simple. It has eight basic input references and this sorting configuration:

<sort>
   <key macro="citation-number" sort="ascending"/>
   <key macro="citation-number" sort="descending"/>
</sort>

<macro name="citation-number">
   <text variable="citation-number"/>
</macro>

I am confused, however, by the expected output of

<layout>
   <text variable="citation-number" prefix="[" suffix="] "/>
   <text variable="title" />
</layout>

as

[8] Book One
[7] Book Three
[6] Book Four
[5] Book Six
[4] Book Two
[3] Book Five
[2] Book Seven
[1] Book Eight

The titles are in the given input order but the citation numbers are in reverse order.

However, when I read the spec, a second <sort><key/></sort> is only used for "items sharing the first sort key value,” in this case, the same citation-number. So the sort=“descending” variant in this test shouldn’t apply.

There could be a feedback loop I’m missing since it seems this is sorting by the same value it’s altering, that is, the position of the reference in the bibliography. But I still don’t see a scenario where references would have the same citation-number.

2

I seem to recall having the same discussion when John MacFarlane re-wrote citeproc for pandoc. (He also has a list of tests his citeproc purposefully doesn’t pass that may be useful for you). @bwiernik @Bruce_D_Arcus1 do either of you recall where those discussions are? Are they on the github for the specs?

3

I think most of them happened on the test suite repo.

1 Like
4

Yeah, in general, the issue tracker on the test suite repo is the place to go, including for new questions on the details there.

5

Thanks guys. I’ll check there for questions like this instead of spamming the forum :slightly_smiling_face: