A similar approach, that doesn’t rely on free text parsing, is what
Dan Stillman originally suggested: have predefined formatted data, and
allow users to modify it. Of course, there are a range of ways to
approach this as well (pure free text, pop-up tokens that allow one to
select from options, etc.).
It looks like Steve Ridout implemented this idea, as linked by Ian above:
I’ve been meaning to incorporate this sort of functionality into the
Zotero styles page (and was actually planning to sit down and finally
try it today), so it’s great to see a working PoC. As you say, there are
a bunch of ways this could work—free-form, tokens, fixed, customizable,
client-side, server-side—but I still think this is one of the easiest
ways to meet a lot of people’s needs and allow more people to benefit
from the authoring work done by Sebastian and others.
It would be nice to see a user friendly implementation of this idea.
Aside from the direct benefit, it could collect formatted citation
data for styles which don’t yet exist, help identify bugs in the
existing styles, and help to crowd source a large test suite of
formatted styles.
Steve
PS. Simon’s csl-inference tool sounds cool, I’ll try it out when I get a chance.
It would be nice to see a user friendly implementation of this idea.
So what might that involve?
Maybe:
easier, quicker, more robust input of more variable, and complex,
input data; the sort of stuff behind this issue:
the ability to do something with the results. For example, if the
edit distance is 0, then other results should be hidden or
deemphasized, and the user should be given the choice to either use
that style (click “install style”), or to create a dependent style
with a new name (for journal styles). If there is no direct match,
then ideally it would take the closest match, ask if the user wants to
create a new style, and then simply create it straightaway, and create
a preview for the user to confirm.
Aside from the direct benefit, it could collect formatted citation
data for styles which don’t yet exist, help identify bugs in the
existing styles, and help to crowd source a large test suite of
formatted styles.
Just wanted to bump this older thread, since I think this is the primary thing the CSL world needs to easy style creation. I see the parsing code mentioned earlier is still being developed; would be cool for some developer to pick this up and see if they can use it to create good CSL styles from formatted references and citations.