# new zotero styles page

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [May 14, 2011, 6:18pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008 "2011-05-14T18:18:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [May 14, 2011, 11:12pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/21 "2011-05-14T23:12:07Z")

</div>

Issues I see are on latest Chrome, Ubuntu 11.04, on a 12" screen.

BruceOn May 14, 2011 6:36 PM, “Dan Stillman” \<@Dan\_Stillman\> wrote:

> On 5/14/11 2:18 PM, Dan Stillman wrote:
> 
> > [http://www.zotero.org/styles-new](http://www.zotero.org/styles-new)
> 
> A screenshot from Bruce suggests that the search box isn’t necessarily  
> being rendered properly everywhere.
> 
> This is what it should look like:
> 
> [http://www.zotero.org/styles-files/screenshot.png](http://www.zotero.org/styles-files/screenshot.png)
> 
> If it doesn’t look like that for you, let me know your OS and browser  
> version.

* * *

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rintze\_Zelle](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/rintze_zelle/32/175_2.png) [@Rintze\_Zelle](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Rintze_Zelle)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 3:08am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/22 "2011-05-15T03:08:30Z")

</div>

I tinkered a little bit with the HTML and CSS. I think you can save some  
vertical space by changing the positions of the Citation Formats and Fields  
tag clouds, reducing the white space around the “Style Search” title, and  
using one introductory paragraph instead of two:

[http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/6597/stylesrepository.png](http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/6597/stylesrepository.png)

Rintze

P.S.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dan\_Stillman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dan\_Stillman](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Dan_Stillman)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 5:14am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/23 "2011-05-15T05:14:14Z")

</div>

I’ve put up a version using your proposed layout. At most screen sizes  
it should be five lines of field tags with the bottom tag aligned with  
the bottom of the citation formats, and it’ll wrap more if necessary.  
This layout will work until someone adds a style with  
citation-format=“author”, at least.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rintze\_Zelle](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/rintze_zelle/32/175_2.png) [@Rintze\_Zelle](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Rintze_Zelle)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 12:15pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/24 "2011-05-15T12:15:00Z")

</div>

There already is one, MLA, but it’s currently labelled as author-date.

I noticed that all the styles have an updated timestamp of 2011-05-12  
12:16:08. Going forward, would probably be preferable to update the  
timestamp in the github repository after an commit, if we can figure out to  
do that.

Rintze

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 1:12pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/25 "2011-05-15T13:12:27Z")

</div>

Huh?

Wouldn’t that be the other way around: that the index should draw the  
updated value from the git repo (easy to do, and something more human  
readable would be preferable), and that we should use a post hook ( as  
w/the svn repo) to add that to the checked out files (also easy to  
do)?

Bruce

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 1:23pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/26 "2011-05-15T13:23:56Z")

</div>

Respectively:

Pretty Date Example - $ git log --date=iso --pretty=format:"%ad" -1 apa.csl

Keyword expansion - [http://progit.org/book/ch7-2.html](http://progit.org/book/ch7-2.html)

Bruce

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rintze\_Zelle](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/rintze_zelle/32/175_2.png) [@Rintze\_Zelle](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Rintze_Zelle)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 1:24pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/27 "2011-05-15T13:24:44Z")

</div>

I just mean the cs:updated timestamp should reflect the time and date of the  
last style edit.

Rintze

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 1:34pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/28 "2011-05-15T13:34:36Z")

</div>

Oops …On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 9:23 AM, Bruce D’Arcus \<@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1\> wrote:

> Pretty Date Example - $ git log --date=iso --pretty=format:“%ad” -1 apa.csl

That’d be to get a standard iso date-time format for the cs:updated value.

This would get a pretty, relative (and thus locale-specific), date:

$ git log -1 --pretty=format:“%ar” apa.csl

Bruce

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dan\_Stillman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dan\_Stillman](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Dan_Stillman)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 3:53pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/29 "2011-05-15T15:53:54Z")

</div>

> ```
> >>
> >> I've put up a version using your proposed layout. At most
> screen sizes
> >> it should be five lines of field tags with the bottom tag
> aligned with
> >> the bottom of the citation formats, and it'll wrap more if
> necessary.
> >> This layout will work until someone adds a style with
> >> citation-format="author", at least.
> >
> > There already is one, MLA, but it's currently labelled as
> author-date.
> 
> ```

OK, well, that’s kind of why I had it the other way around. With five  
format labels there’s not much wasted space the other way.

Is the label going to be fixed? Are there others?

> ```
> >
> > I noticed that all the styles have an updated timestamp of
> 2011-05-12
> > 12:16:08. Going forward, would probably be preferable to update the
> > timestamp in the github repository after an commit, if we can
> figure out to
> > do that.
> 
> Huh?
> 
> Wouldn't that be the other way around: that the index should draw the
> updated value from the git repo (easy to do, and something more human
> readable would be preferable), and that we should use a post hook ( as
> w/the svn repo) to add that to the checked out files (also easy to
> do)?
> 
> ```
> 
> I just mean the cs:updated timestamp should reflect the time and date  
> of the last style edit.

Do you mean cs:updated, or do you mean the index timestamp? Remember,  
the reason we advised leaving cs:updated blank in the styles was so that  
authors wouldn’t feel compelled to update it on every update, which  
would be a waste of their time. (I know there was the issue of whether  
the styles still validated client-side…)

The problem with using smudge/clean filters in .gitattributes is that,  
as far as I can tell, they require particular client-side programs  
(e.g., Perl). A Windows user isn’t going to have Perl. So leaving it  
blank seems best.

None of the date logic on the styles page changed, by the way. The  
timestamps will be correct as the styles are updated. It’s just more  
complicated to use the commit timestamp than to update the timestamp if  
the style has changed, and so I didn’t bother.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 4:05pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/30 "2011-05-15T16:05:04Z")

</div>

…

> > I just mean the cs:updated timestamp should reflect the time and date  
> > of the last style edit.
> 
> Do you mean cs:updated, or do you mean the index timestamp? Remember,  
> the reason we advised leaving cs:updated blank in the styles was so that  
> authors wouldn’t feel compelled to update it on every update, which  
> would be a waste of their time. (I know there was the issue of whether  
> the styles still validated client-side…)

There are a variety of issues with forcing style authors to update the  
cs:updated values manually:

- it’s tedious
- it’s error prone (easy to forget to do, most basically)
- it mixes content and metadata (the metadata changes the sha1 value)

> The problem with using smudge/clean filters in .gitattributes is that,  
> as far as I can tell, they require particular client-side programs  
> (e.g., Perl). A Windows user isn’t going to have Perl. So leaving it  
> blank seems best.

“Leaving it blank” but presumably using some other code outside of git  
to create the proper cs:updated values?

In any case, users aren’t often going to interact with the git repos  
directly, so not sure that’s a reasonable argument against the git  
filters?

> None of the date logic on the styles page changed, by the way. The  
> timestamps will be correct as the styles are updated. It’s just more  
> complicated to use the commit timestamp than to update the timestamp if  
> the style has changed, and so I didn’t bother.

Not following you here. Can you restate, in light of my questions above?

Thanks,  
Bruce

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dan\_Stillman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dan\_Stillman](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Dan_Stillman)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 4:15pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/31 "2011-05-15T16:15:42Z")

</div>

> > The problem with using smudge/clean filters in .gitattributes is that,  
> > as far as I can tell, they require particular client-side programs  
> > (e.g., Perl). A Windows user isn’t going to have Perl. So leaving it  
> > blank seems best.  
> > “Leaving it blank” but presumably using some other code outside of git  
> > to create the proper cs:updated values?

Well that’s what either filters or the styles page would do.

> In any case, users aren’t often going to interact with the git repos  
> directly, so not sure that’s a reasonable argument against the git  
> filters?

Who are “users” here? I was referring to style authors.

If you think only a few people will be committing and checking out and  
we can require them to have Perl (or we’d be OK with the filters  
sometimes not being run), then filters are fine. Otherwise, this  
shouldn’t happen via git, and it should be left to the styles page.

> > None of the date logic on the styles page changed, by the way. The  
> > timestamps will be correct as the styles are updated. It’s just more  
> > complicated to use the commit timestamp than to update the timestamp if  
> > the style has changed, and so I didn’t bother.  
> > Not following you here. Can you restate, in light of my questions above?

The update script for the styles page assumes no filters and just  
replaces the contents of with the current timestamp if the  
content of the file has changed since the last run. If we were using git  
filters it would just use directly.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 4:26pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/32 "2011-05-15T16:26:59Z")

</div>

> > > The problem with using smudge/clean filters in .gitattributes is that,  
> > > as far as I can tell, they require particular client-side programs  
> > > (e.g., Perl). A Windows user isn’t going to have Perl. So leaving it  
> > > blank seems best.  
> > > “Leaving it blank” but presumably using some other code outside of git  
> > > to create the proper cs:updated values?
> 
> Well that’s what either filters or the styles page would do.
> 
> > In any case, users aren’t often going to interact with the git repos  
> > directly, so not sure that’s a reasonable argument against the git  
> > filters?
> 
> Who are “users” here? I was referring to style authors.

Yes, me too.

> If you think only a few people will be committing and checking out and  
> we can require them to have Perl (or we’d be OK with the filters  
> sometimes not being run), then filters are fine. Otherwise, this  
> shouldn’t happen via git, and it should be left to the styles page.

I guess we can always play it by ear, but in any case leave the  
cs:updated value blank in the repo?

> > > None of the date logic on the styles page changed, by the way. The  
> > > timestamps will be correct as the styles are updated. It’s just more  
> > > complicated to use the commit timestamp than to update the timestamp if  
> > > the style has changed, and so I didn’t bother.  
> > > Not following you here. Can you restate, in light of my questions above?
> 
> The update script for the styles page assumes no filters and just  
> replaces the contents of with the current timestamp if the  
> content of the file has changed since the last run. If we were using git  
> filters it would just use directly.

How do you determine the updated value: from the file itself, or from git?

For whatever reason, they’re not (necessarily) the same thing.

$ ls -l apa.csl  
-rw-r–r-- 1 bdarcus bdarcus 10186 2011-05-15 09:27 apa.csl

$ git log --date=iso --pretty=format:“%ad” -1 apa.csl  
2011-05-04 15:49:04 -0400

Bruce

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dan\_Stillman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dan\_Stillman](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Dan_Stillman)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 4:39pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/33 "2011-05-15T16:39:04Z")

</div>

> > If you think only a few people will be committing and checking out and  
> > we can require them to have Perl (or we’d be OK with the filters  
> > sometimes not being run), then filters are fine. Otherwise, this  
> > shouldn’t happen via git, and it should be left to the styles page.  
> > I guess we can always play it by ear, but in any case leave the  
> > cs:updated value blank in the repo?

Yes, I think so.

> > > > None of the date logic on the styles page changed, by the way. The  
> > > > timestamps will be correct as the styles are updated. It’s just more  
> > > > complicated to use the commit timestamp than to update the timestamp if  
> > > > the style has changed, and so I didn’t bother.  
> > > > Not following you here. Can you restate, in light of my questions above?  
> > > > The update script for the styles page assumes no filters and just  
> > > > replaces the contents of with the current timestamp if the  
> > > > content of the file has changed since the last run. If we were using git  
> > > > filters it would just use directly.  
> > > > How do you determine the updated value: from the file itself, or from git?

We don’t use the updated value—just the system timestamp when the script  
is run.

> For whatever reason, they’re not (necessarily) the same thing.
> 
> $ ls -l apa.csl  
> -rw-r–r-- 1 bdarcus bdarcus 10186 2011-05-15 09:27 apa.csl
> 
> $ git log --date=iso --pretty=format:“%ad” -1 apa.csl  
> 2011-05-04 15:49:04 -0400

The first is just the checkout time, which git doesn’t set specially.

The latter is the commit time.

We don’t use either.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dan\_Stillman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dan\_Stillman](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Dan_Stillman)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 4:40pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/34 "2011-05-15T16:40:28Z")

</div>

(But if the script was run from a post-commit hook then our timestamp  
would be basically the same as the commit time.)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 4:55pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/35 "2011-05-15T16:55:56Z")

</div>

> We don’t use the updated value—just the system timestamp when the script  
> is run.

OIC.

Isn’t that potentially dangerous (if we assume it likely that sources  
for styles will proliferate, and that a given style may be available  
from more than one source)?

Or to put it more directly, why not use the git value?

> (But if the script was run from a post-commit hook then our timestamp  
> would be basically the same as the commit time.)

Isn’t the question of how the script is run (outboard vs. post-commit,  
etc.) really orthogonal to the timestamp issue? E.g. you can get the  
git commit timestamp from a simple shell script.

Bruce

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rintze\_Zelle](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/rintze_zelle/32/175_2.png) [@Rintze\_Zelle](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Rintze_Zelle)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 5:26pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/36 "2011-05-15T17:26:04Z")

</div>

So you all agree that:

a) the CSL 1.0.1 schema should require that the cs:updated element holds  
either a xsd:dateTime timestamp or have no content

and

b) that for styles in the git repo, cs:updated should be blank. So we should  
delete any existing timestamps, and make sure they aren’t added for further  
commits.

?

Rintze

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rintze\_Zelle](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/rintze_zelle/32/175_2.png) [@Rintze\_Zelle](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Rintze_Zelle)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 5:42pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/37 "2011-05-15T17:42:33Z")

</div>

I will fix the label after the final merge. I don’t know if there are  
others.

In the past, both the citation format and field metadata never got curated  
very well, because it wasn’t really used. With the tag cloud filtering that  
data becomes a lot more useful, so it’s something worth checking (e.g. there  
are currently 129 styles marked “generic-base”, many of which are  
journal-specific styles, so that should be fixed).

Rintze

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Carles\_Pina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dbc845/32.png) [@Carles\_Pina](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Carles_Pina)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 5:52pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/38 "2011-05-15T17:52:21Z")

</div>

Hi,

> > > I guess we can always play it by ear, but in any case leave the  
> > > cs:updated value blank in the repo?

I would not do it (see below)

> > Yes, I think so.
> 
> So you all agree that:
> 
> a) the CSL 1.0.1 schema should require that the cs:updated element holds  
> either a xsd:dateTime timestamp or have no content
> 
> and
> 
> b) that for styles in the git repo, cs:updated should be blank. So we should  
> delete any existing timestamps, and make sure they aren’t added for further  
> commits.

I would not do it, I expect the cs:updated to have the timestamp in  
the repository, so it’s easy to clone, users can just browse the  
repository using the github interface and download the ready-to-use  
style, etc.

I would update the cs:updated when pushing with the pushing date, no?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 6:04pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/39 "2011-05-15T18:04:34Z")

</div>

Carles,

…

> > So you all agree that:
> > 
> > a) the CSL 1.0.1 schema should require that the cs:updated element holds  
> > either a xsd:dateTime timestamp or have no content
> > 
> > and
> > 
> > b) that for styles in the git repo, cs:updated should be blank. So we should  
> > delete any existing timestamps, and make sure they aren’t added for further  
> > commits.
> 
> I would not do it, I expect the cs:updated to have the timestamp in  
> the repository, so it’s easy to clone, users can just browse the  
> repository using the github interface and download the ready-to-use  
> style, etc.

Except that the github interface lists updated date-times for all  
files by default already.

And how do you respond to my previously noted problems? To repeat …

There are a variety of issues with forcing style authors to update the  
cs:updated values manually:

- it’s tedious
- it’s error prone (easy to forget to do, most basically)
- it mixes content and metadata (the metadata changes the sha1 value)

> I would update the cs:updated when pushing with the pushing date, no?

You mean like pre-commit or pre-push script?

That solves some of my issues above, but not all of them.

Bruce

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Carles\_Pina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dbc845/32.png) [@Carles\_Pina](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Carles_Pina)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 5:48pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/new-zotero-styles-page/1008/40 "2011-05-15T17:48:53Z")

</div>

Hi,

> By popular demand[1], I’ve updated the Zotero styles page to use CSL 1.0

I’m very happy to read and see it!

> styles from GitHub, and I’ve taken the opportunity to add some new

the “old” page had, at the end, a “Get Involved” section. Do you plan  
to add the same? (I guess that redirecting the people to the github,  
etc.?)

> search features, with the ability to filter by name, dependent status,  
> citation format, and field.

yes, looks neat. Hopefully the previews will be there soon.

> Let me know if you run into any problems with the new page or have ideas  
> for improvements.

I thought something similar for [www.citationstyles.org](http://www.citationstyles.org), maybe can be  
partially reused? I forgot if someone was working on it (I remember  
Bruce talking about some software to prepare tables).

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