# on citestyles.org, wizard

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [September 27, 2009, 6:21pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776 "2009-09-27T18:21:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 17\
**Page:** 1

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**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:** [September 27, 2009, 6:21pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776/1 "2009-09-27T18:21:47Z")

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So just some notes to think about in terms of rough plans for [citestyles.org](http://citestyles.org).

Here’s what I think we need on the coding front:

1. The styles tab will host the styles in the zotero repo updated to  
CSL 1.0. For this, we need something like what Rintze is working to  
find styles.

2. We probably need the HTML pages-per-style that Robert mentioned.  
Ideally those HTML pages also have a comments facility (though this is  
less critical, and adds complexity).

3. Finally, the style wizard to create new styles easily (I’d say a  
reasonable goal is five minutes).

To remind people, I started to spec it out here:

[http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/xbiblio/wiki/CslWizardDesign](http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/xbiblio/wiki/CslWizardDesign)

I also started a mockup using JQuery here:

[http://www.users.muohio.edu/darcusb/citations/MakeCSL/](http://www.users.muohio.edu/darcusb/citations/MakeCSL/)

Finally, I started to play with a Python script that can ingest a  
simple JSON definition of a style, and spit out a CSL:

[http://xbiblio.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/xbiblio/csl/scripts/makecsl/](http://xbiblio.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/xbiblio/csl/scripts/makecsl/)

So on this front, assuming my basic idea is right, I think we need to finish:

1. the (or a) script, which includes ensuring we have a sufficient  
collections of macros for that

2. the JS/JQuery-based UI (generating the JSON for 1? and hooking up  
citeproc-js-based previewing?)

We also need a good designer to write some CSS and such for  
[citestyles.org](http://citestyles.org) in general.

Are there any particular opinions about:

a) whether this is right, and …

b) how we should proceed such that people/companies can contribute to  
this? Put differently, who’s willing to dedicate what specific  
resources to what specific work? Where should the code live? Under  
what license? With what sorts of contribution mechanisms?

Bruce

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<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:** [September 27, 2009, 6:22pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776/2 "2009-09-27T18:22:53Z")

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Um, [citationstyles.org](http://citationstyles.org).

Bruce

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**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:** [September 27, 2009, 6:36pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776/3 "2009-09-27T18:36:41Z")

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Assuming we want to use a server-side search, maybe this helps:

[http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/xbiblio/wiki/StyleSearchApi](http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/xbiblio/wiki/StyleSearchApi)

Rintze

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**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:** [September 27, 2009, 7:00pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776/4 "2009-09-27T19:00:28Z")

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Why both title-start and title-exact? Do we really need that kind of detail?

Just asking …

Bruce

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<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:** [September 27, 2009, 7:12pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776/5 "2009-09-27T19:12:49Z")

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Both have their uses. title-start allows you to easily skip all the “journal  
of …” results if you’re looking for a title that starts with something  
different. Likewise, title-exact helps with finding short generic journal  
titles (Cell, Nature, Science).

Rintze

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**Author:** ![Frank\_Bennett](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/frank_bennett/32/198_2.png) [@Frank\_Bennett](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Frank_Bennett)\
**Post date:** [September 27, 2009, 7:14pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776/6 "2009-09-27T19:14:04Z")

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> > So just some notes to think about in terms of rough plans for  
> > [citestyles.org](http://citestyles.org).
> > 
> > Here’s what I think we need on the coding front:
> > 
> > 1. The styles tab will host the styles in the zotero repo updated to  
> > CSL 1.0. For this, we need something like what Rintze is working to  
> > find styles.
> 
> Assuming we want to use a server-side search, maybe this helps:
> 
> [XBib download | SourceForge.net](http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/xbiblio/wiki/StyleSearchApi)

Probably just title-contains is enough for titles?  
Would it be useful to also be able to select all of the dependent  
styles of a master?

The results would need to include the navigation values (number of  
items to list, page position) so that they can be thrown back at the  
server.

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<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:** [September 27, 2009, 7:25pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776/7 "2009-09-27T19:25:45Z")

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> Probably just title-contains is enough for titles?

My thought as well. Seems the default should be that the search input  
is a space-separated list of tokens? So if I’m searching “Journal of  
Particle Physics” I should just be able to type “particle physics” and  
it will return the above style (if present) at the top of the list.

> Would it be useful to also be able to select all of the dependent  
> styles of a master?

Yes, though not necessarily from the search field per se.

> The results would need to include the navigation values (number of  
> items to list, page position) so that they can be thrown back at the  
> server.

“Page position”?

I’d really like to avoid old-school search results interfaces that  
force users to page through a bunch of pages. I want this to work fast  
and simply.

All of this sort of reminds me: might be nice to define the use cases  
before settling on the solution?

Bruce

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<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:** [September 27, 2009, 8:06pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776/8 "2009-09-27T20:06:42Z")

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I think the main ones are:

1. a user is looking for one specific style, e.g. the one dictated by some  
journal. You can expect the user to search by title or issn/issn-l.
2. a user is looking for a style with the desired formatting. Here you might  
expect users to skim over a couple dozen of styles. The ability to select  
for style features (currently only citation-format) is very helpful here.
3. a user is looking for a way to install all the styles he/she is likely to  
need. Here subscriptions to a group of styles might be very useful.  
Currently the field/subject categories can be used for this, but maybe  
something more flexible would be handy as well (e.g. the ability for users  
to create sharable style collections that contain arbitrary sets of styles).  
E.g. in my research group we probably publish \> 95% of all our papers in  
just 10 journals.

Rintze

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<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:** [September 27, 2009, 9:33pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776/9 "2009-09-27T21:33:32Z")

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> I think the main ones are:
> 
> 1. a user is looking for one specific style, e.g. the one dictated by some  
> journal. You can expect the user to search by title or issn/issn-l.

Yup.

Question: should the database be able to index styles hosted elsewhere?

> 1. a user is looking for a style with the desired formatting. Here you might  
> expect users to skim over a couple dozen of styles. The ability to select  
> for style features (currently only citation-format) is very helpful here.

Yes.

Related to this and the wizard feature, it should be possible for a  
user to also easily see that the style they want doesn’t exist, and to  
be able to someone create a new one based on an existing one that is  
close?

> 1. a user is looking for a way to install all the styles he/she is likely to  
> need. Here subscriptions to a group of styles might be very useful.  
> Currently the field/subject categories can be used for this, but maybe  
> something more flexible would be handy as well (e.g. the ability for users  
> to create sharable style collections that contain arbitrary sets of styles).  
> E.g. in my research group we probably publish \> 95% of all our papers in  
> just 10 journals.

Don’t you first want to sat that a user might want to search by field?  
Do we want to say there should be index pages based on field?

Bruce

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<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:** [September 27, 2009, 9:36pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776/10 "2009-09-27T21:36:53Z")

</div>

Just as a reminder, there’s a screenshot here of the Django repo app  
that I started awhile back.

[http://community.muohio.edu/blogs/darcusb/archives/2008/02/25/from-proposal-to-example-csl-gallery](http://community.muohio.edu/blogs/darcusb/archives/2008/02/25/from-proposal-to-example-csl-gallery)

It includes three main mechanisms to access styles:

1. by category
2. by title
3. search

The first two are just index pages.

Bruce

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**Author:** ![Robert\_Knight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ba9def/32.png) [@Robert\_Knight](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Robert_Knight)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 12:00pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776/11 "2009-09-28T12:00:52Z")

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> b) how we should proceed such that people/companies can contribute  
> to this? Put differently, who’s willing to dedicate what specific  
> resources to what specific work? Where should the code live? Under  
> what license? With what sorts of contribution mechanisms?

Hello,

We’d be willing to contribute to the CSL wizard part of this in the  
near term - both drafting a proposal for the user interface (and  
integrating it on the wiki page you mentioned) and technical  
development of the style wizard. We might also be able to help out  
with aspects of the design in future - although to begin with as long  
as the page is simple to use and functional the CSS fine tuning can  
wait.

For the license, something I would suggest something simple, liberal  
and well known. I’m thinking of BSD for example.  
I would suggest that the code should live somewhere where all  
interested parties have easy access to it (both to read and to  
contribute) - eg. a hosting service such as Google Code, Launchpad,  
Gitorious or similar - preferably one which allows people to easily  
fork and experiment.

Regards,  
Robert.2009/9/27 Bruce D’Arcus \<@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1\>:

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<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:** [September 28, 2009, 3:11pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776/12 "2009-09-28T15:11:47Z")

</div>

> > b) how we should proceed such that people/companies can contribute  
> > to this? Put differently, who’s willing to dedicate what specific  
> > resources to what specific work? Where should the code live? Under  
> > what license? With what sorts of contribution mechanisms?
> 
> Hello,
> 
> We’d be willing to contribute to the CSL wizard part of this in the  
> near term - both drafting a proposal for the user interface (and  
> integrating it on the wiki page you mentioned) and technical  
> development of the style wizard. We might also be able to help out  
> with aspects of the design in future - although to begin with as long  
> as the page is simple to use and functional the CSS fine tuning can  
> wait.

Right.

> For the license, something I would suggest something simple, liberal  
> and well known. I’m thinking of BSD for example.  
> I would suggest that the code should live somewhere where all  
> interested parties have easy access to it (both to read and to  
> contribute) - eg. a hosting service such as Google Code, Launchpad,  
> Gitorious or similar - preferably one which allows people to easily  
> fork and experiment.

So we’ve got four questions, with Robert suggesting the following:

1. Who’s willing to dedicate what specific resources to what specific work?

Mendeley is offering to contribute to the design and development of  
the wizard ui; let’s call it makecsl-ui.

I know Zotero is also interested in working on some of this.

1. Where should the code live?

I’m partial to bitbucket and github, but people here are tending to  
gravitate towards the former. So I’d suggest that. It gives us a nice  
ui with built-in wiki and issue tracker, and it’s designed for easy  
forking (mercurial).

1. Under what license?

Robert suggests BSD. I don’t really care; whatever emerges as  
consensus is fine by me.

1. With what sorts of contribution mechanisms?

The choice is between centralized (CVS/SVN-like) or decentralized.

I strongly favor the second because it lowers the bar to contribute.  
People can easily fork a project and work on it independently, and  
then issue a pull request if they want to merge.

So I’m going to float a proposal:

How about I setup two projects at bitbucket: makecsl-core and  
makecsl-ui. We can do the spec work over there on the wikis. We can  
deal with contribution and management stuff later as things evolve  
(e.g. I can assign one or more other people to take over ownership to  
manage issues, commit access, etc.).

Alternately, there could be just a single makecsl repo, but I’m  
thinking there may be value in splitting them.

Anyone from Zotero care to comment on any of this, in particular #3?

Any other thoughts?

Bruce

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Robert\_Knight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ba9def/32.png) [@Robert\_Knight](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Robert_Knight)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 4:04pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776/13 "2009-09-28T16:04:19Z")

</div>

> The choice is between centralized (CVS/SVN-like) or decentralized.  
> I strongly favor the second because it lowers the bar to contribute.  
> People can easily fork a project and work on it independently, and  
> then issue a pull request if they want to merge.

I concur.

> I’m partial to bitbucket and github, but people here are tending to  
> gravitate towards the former. So I’d suggest that. It gives us a nice  
> ui with built-in wiki and issue tracker, and it’s designed for easy  
> forking (mercurial).

Seems sensible. We’re more used to git but I’m sure we can pick up  
mercurial without problems.

> Alternately, there could be just a single makecsl repo, but I’m  
> thinking there may be value in splitting them.

I would suggest keeping the structure simple with just one repo  
initially - we can always split things out later on.

Regards,  
Robert.2009/9/28 Bruce D’Arcus \<@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1\>:

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**Author:** ![Sean\_Takats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sean\_Takats](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Sean_Takats)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 9:52pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776/14 "2009-09-28T21:52:28Z")

</div>

I’ll wait for our core development team to chime in regarding code  
repositories, but on the licensing front we would prefer GPL 3.0.  
Based on our experiences with the wider Zotero development community,  
we believe it will attract and reward the greatest amount of  
contribution. We’ve already heard from CSL developers who are cagey  
enough about the packaging and redistribution of CSLs by Mendeley, and  
I don’t know that I want to antagonize that community further.

Sean

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<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:** [September 28, 2009, 10:44pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776/15 "2009-09-28T22:44:33Z")

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Robert, what do you guys think about GPL 3.0? I presume the basic  
difference is that we’d be saying people can’t modify and deploy the  
code on the web without also releasing the code. Is there any  
particular reason that restriction would be a problem?

Are there possibly unanticipated problems with using GPL 3 here (I  
don’t really understand the intricacies of potentially conflicting  
licenses in this area)?

Bruce

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Robert\_Knight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ba9def/32.png) [@Robert\_Knight](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Robert_Knight)\
**Post date:** [September 29, 2009, 10:02am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776/16 "2009-09-29T10:02:42Z")

</div>

> Robert, what do you guys think about GPL 3.0? I presume the  
> basic difference is that we’d be saying people can’t modify and  
> deploy the code on the web without also releasing the code

GPL 3.0 is fine for us. To clarify what the requirements are though -  
the ‘release the code’ part  
there applies to code that the user is running on the client (eg.  
JavaScript in the web browser).  
I would hope though that the code running on the server would just  
reflect a branch in the CSL repository that you proposed but  
it is worth being aware of the conditions.

> Are there possibly unanticipated problems with using GPL 3 here (I  
> don’t really understand the intricacies of potentially conflicting  
> licenses in this area)?

The only potential I can see for problems is if someone wants to use a  
Javascript library which is not GPL-3 compatible when  
implementing the client UI. The well known ones that I know of are  
suitably licensed for use with GPL code.

Regards,  
Robert.2009/9/28 Bruce D’Arcus \<@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1\>:

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<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:** [October 1, 2009, 5:01pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/on-citestyles-org-wizard/776/17 "2009-10-01T17:01:55Z")

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OK, I put up the placeholder at …

[http://bitbucket.org/bdarcus/makecsl/](http://bitbucket.org/bdarcus/makecsl/)

… complete with this license. I’d suggest using the wiki here for  
specing it out (we need to move over the stuff from the xbib trac).

Bruce