# proposed changes to CSL to permit AGU-style reference sorting

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/proposed-changes-to-csl-to-permit-agu-style-reference-sorting/471>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [May 26, 2008, 9:45am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/proposed-changes-to-csl-to-permit-agu-style-reference-sorting/471 "2008-05-26T09:45:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![David\_Kaplan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3ab097/32.png) [@David\_Kaplan](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/David_Kaplan)\
**Post date:** [June 10, 2008, 10:17am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/proposed-changes-to-csl-to-permit-agu-style-reference-sorting/471/21 "2008-06-10T10:17:47Z")

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Hi,

I am starting to understand the logic here. From Bruce’s email:

```
    The way we do it now is the content of the conditional "type"
    attribute is a list; so one ore more.
    
    <if variable="author editor" match="any" min="3"/>

```

This formulation of more complex conditions with min and max seems clean  
to me. I assume that both can be in a single if to set an upper and  
lower bound?

I imagine that match=“any” means match on first existing variable  
(author first, then editor). Perhaps this should be match=“first”? I  
presume there would also be a match=“all” which would count all the  
"author"-type variables listed?

One thing I note though is that it is a bit strange to do essentially a  
"substitute" in this using a variable list, but to also have a  
 which is used in to select which variable to use.  
Is it possible to just use a similiar mechanism in ? Perhaps  
macros are a problem with this? Perhaps limiting conditionals to just  
testing on variables and not macros will cause problems with as  
well at some point (e.g., counting name parts picked out by macros???)?  
I am not sure these are really important issues, just pointing out  
things that could be problems down the road.

Other than that, this formulation of conditionals works for me.  
combined with appropriate min and max in declarations to pick  
out particular authors, this looks like it should solve the problems  
with AGU format. What will happen with the options “et-al-min”, etc.?  
It seems to me that the cleanest thing would be to remove them all at  
once, but this involves modifying existing CSL’s.

Also, at some point I mentioned some confusions regarding  
name-as-sort-order - what it really means, first vs. all, etc. Perhaps  
now would be a good time to clear this up in the schema since we will be  
making changes already. It seems to me that there are two needs that  
people had the idea of addressing with name-as-sort-order. One is that  
journals often differ on whether they want the first name to appear  
before or after the last name in references. This ordering also may  
change on which author is in question (first versus 2-infinity). There  
needs to be a way to specify this in CSL. This could be down with  
something like name-as-sort-order (though it might need to take  
more/different values to represent all cases).

Another competing issue is how to deal with non-western names that might  
use the first name for ordering. I think this should be dealt with  
differently with something in Zotero that indicates which name is THE  
name. But maybe there is something that needs to be in CSL about this.

Cheers,  
David–

* * *

David M. Kaplan  
Charge de Recherche 1  
Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement  
Centre de Recherche Halieutique Mediterraneenne et Tropicale  
av. Jean Monnet  
B.P. 171  
34203 Sete cedex  
France

Phone: +33 (0)4 99 57 32 27  
Fax: +33 (0)4 99 57 32 95  
[http://www.ur097.ird.fr/team/dkaplan/index.html](http://www.ur097.ird.fr/team/dkaplan/index.html)

* * *

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![David\_Kaplan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3ab097/32.png) [@David\_Kaplan](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/David_Kaplan)\
**Post date:** [July 29, 2008, 8:06am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/proposed-changes-to-csl-to-permit-agu-style-reference-sorting/471/22 "2008-07-29T08:06:28Z")

</div>

Hi,

Sorry that it has been a while since this was discussed. I am wondering  
if these changes for dealing with AGU-style reference sorting are  
somewhere on the back burner or fell off the truck. The more I look,  
the more I find that almost all science journals implicitly or  
explicitly use “AGU ordering” if they use named references (as opposed  
to numbered references).

Last I remember, it looked like we were arriving at a consensus on how  
thing should work here:

[http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg\_name=1213093067.6500.28.camel%40piura](http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_name=1213093067.6500.28.camel%40piura)

Cheers,  
David

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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:** [July 29, 2008, 2:20pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/proposed-changes-to-csl-to-permit-agu-style-reference-sorting/471/23 "2008-07-29T14:20:29Z")

</div>

We need to hear from the Dan/Simon, Johan, Andreas, Liam, etc. about  
their thoughts on this, and a commitment to implement it.

I’d really like to clean up these remaining issues so we can call CSL  
1.0, but it seems people are distracted with other things.

IIRC, the proposal is to allow a min and max attribute on a conditional?

Bruce

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![David\_Kaplan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3ab097/32.png) [@David\_Kaplan](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/David_Kaplan)\
**Post date:** [August 14, 2008, 11:48am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/proposed-changes-to-csl-to-permit-agu-style-reference-sorting/471/24 "2008-08-14T11:48:54Z")

</div>

Hi,

Responding to Bruce’s email a while back (I was on vacation), the idea  
for making AGU formats work involved a few things:

1. A way to say in only print authors m thru n.
2. A way to test for the number of authors being greater than or less  
than a certain number.
3. This would allow removing some of the et-al options in favor of  
macros that would be more flexible long term.
4. More precision on what name-as-sort-order really does. In  
particular, there needs to be something that clearly controls whether  
author first names appear before or after last names in a list of  
authors.

Some pseudo-code for 1 and 2 above proposed by Johan is below (I  
suggested something a bit more general involving general tests for some  
quantity greater than some other, but this would do the trick I think):

--\> 3,4,5,6,…  
 --\> 0,1,2,3  
 --\> 3  
 --\> 3,4,5,6

we end up with this:

Cheers,  
David

---

<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:** [August 14, 2008, 2:58pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/proposed-changes-to-csl-to-permit-agu-style-reference-sorting/471/25 "2008-08-14T14:58:12Z")

</div>

I don’t recall this as being a real issue here. I’ve not yet seen any  
problem with how the current system works on this, and it has the  
advantage that it’s at least in theory international-friendly.

Bruce

---

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**Author:** ![Simon\_Kornblith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@Simon\_Kornblith](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Simon_Kornblith)\
**Post date:** [August 20, 2008, 4:56pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/proposed-changes-to-csl-to-permit-agu-style-reference-sorting/471/26 "2008-08-20T16:56:35Z")

</div>

As for 1, 2, and 3, I’m somewhat hesitant to introduce this complexity  
if it’s only used in a few styles, although if we decide we want these  
features, I don’t think there are any serious issues. For 1, I’d  
suggest that, if we intend on adding an element to , we  
should just tack this on there. For 2, the conditionals proposed in  
the previous emails (e.g., ) seem like necessary evils if we need this kind of  
processing. While up to this point, every attribute on has  
represented a separate condition, it’s probably true that having  
attributes that don’t represent conditions is better than making  
implementations parse out the attributes.

I agree with Bruce that 4 is unlikely to present a serious issue. name-  
as-sort-order basically controls whether the last name appears before  
the first name, although it also takes into account that, with some  
foreign names (e.g., Mao Zedong), the last name shouldn’t come before  
the first name.

Simon

---

<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:** [August 21, 2008, 2:55pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/proposed-changes-to-csl-to-permit-agu-style-reference-sorting/471/27 "2008-08-21T14:55:56Z")

</div>

> > Hi,
> > 
> > Responding to Bruce’s email a while back (I was on vacation), the idea  
> > for making AGU formats work involved a few things:
> > 
> > 1. A way to say in only print authors m thru n.
> > 2. A way to test for the number of authors being greater than or less  
> > than a certain number.
> > 3. This would allow removing some of the et-al options in favor of  
> > macros that would be more flexible long term.
> > 4. More precision on what name-as-sort-order really does. In  
> > particular, there needs to be something that clearly controls whether  
> > author first names appear before or after last names in a list of  
> > authors.
> 
> As for 1, 2, and 3, I’m somewhat hesitant to introduce this complexity  
> if it’s only used in a few styles, although if we decide we want these  
> features, I don’t think there are any serious issues.

Yeah, my feelings as well. I seem to remember David mentioning that  
there were likely a number of styles that would need this  
functionality, but I don’t know if he was very specific about how  
many.

I recall Johan gave this a thumbs up earlier. Any other  
thoughts/commitments to implement?

> For 1, I’d suggest that, if we intend on adding an element to , we  
> should just tack this on there.

Yeah, we need this regardless. So we might as well add this.

Bruce

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