# removal of locales files

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/removal-of-locales-files/396>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [December 27, 2007, 5:56pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/removal-of-locales-files/396 "2007-12-27T17:56:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 11\
**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:** [December 27, 2007, 5:56pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/removal-of-locales-files/396/1 "2007-12-27T17:56:25Z")

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Simon,

I noticed this from the SVN log:

- remove outdated branch schema, APA CSL, and locales\_en.xml (current  
versions are available in the Zotero repository)

I’m confused. It seems you removed the branch locales files, which is  
fine. But why does your log entry say “current versions are available in  
the Zotero repository”? The “current version” should be maintained along  
with the schema, since they’re tightly coupled; no?

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:** [December 28, 2007, 8:52am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/removal-of-locales-files/396/2 "2007-12-28T08:52:11Z")

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We can add it back, but it seems to me that it’s more trouble than  
it’s worth to maintain separate versions of the files in two  
repositories, since any modifications have to be merged to both. The  
Zotero repository also contains locales.xml files localized in non-  
English languages, which were never in the xbiblio repository.

Simon

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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:** [December 28, 2007, 4:28pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/removal-of-locales-files/396/3 "2007-12-28T16:28:50Z")

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But why are you maintaiining these files in your repo at all? They  
are specific to CSL; not Zotero. As a result, you’ll force every  
implementor to create and maintain their own, or go hunting in your  
repo for them. Not good.

Also, Johan had a Dutch locales file in this repo.

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:** [December 28, 2007, 5:06pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/removal-of-locales-files/396/4 "2007-12-28T17:06:03Z")

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Obviously, Zotero uses the locales files to format CSLs, and won’t  
operate without them, which is why there’s a copy in our repository.  
There’s no way to avoid this. If you want to keep the canonical copies  
of the locales files in the xbiblio repository, you or I can merge  
changes into the Zotero repository, but the Zotero repository is no  
less accessible to implementors than the xbiblio repository, and, to  
me, this just seems like a waste of time.

At the moment, we have locales files in 35 different languages,  
including one in Dutch, in extension/branches/1.0/chrome/content/  
zotero/locale/csl.

Simon

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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:** [December 28, 2007, 5:27pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/removal-of-locales-files/396/5 "2007-12-28T17:27:06Z")

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Simon Kornblith wrote:

> Obviously, Zotero uses the locales files to format CSLs, and won’t  
> operate without them, which is why there’s a copy in our repository.  
> There’s no way to avoid this.

That’s fine. What I don’t want is for you to make changes to those files  
that don’t show up here. That would be not much better than if you kept  
a local copy of the CSL schema and edited it. It’s effectively a fork,  
for no obvious reason than a mild question of convenience.

> If you want to keep the canonical copies  
> of the locales files in the xbiblio repository, you or I can merge  
> changes into the Zotero repository, but the Zotero repository is no less  
> accessible to implementors than the xbiblio repository, and, to me, this  
> just seems like a waste of time.

Come on Simon. Of course it’s a (very mild) waste of time for you. But  
CSL isn’t just for you. The locales schema is part of CSL, as are the  
locales files. They belong here. I don’t see that as an unreasonable  
position. Do you?

Does anyone else have an opinion on this? To clarify, we’re talking  
about the files that contain the language-specific term strings  
(“accessed on”, “in”, “January”, etc.).

Bruce

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**Author:** ![Liam\_Magee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Liam\_Magee](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Liam_Magee)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2007, 7:37pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/removal-of-locales-files/396/6 "2007-12-28T19:37:29Z")

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After some delay, I’m looking to resume the Ruby implementation of CSL in  
the new year. It would be handy to have all of the non-implementation  
specific files in one logical repository, as much for convenient reference  
as anything else.

Regards,

Liam.

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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:** [December 28, 2007, 10:23pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/removal-of-locales-files/396/7 "2007-12-28T22:23:25Z")

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> Simon Kornblith wrote:
> 
> > Obviously, Zotero uses the locales files to format CSLs, and won’t  
> > operate without them, which is why there’s a copy in our repository.  
> > There’s no way to avoid this.
> 
> That’s fine. What I don’t want is for you to make changes to those  
> files  
> that don’t show up here. That would be not much better than if you  
> kept  
> a local copy of the CSL schema and edited it. It’s effectively a fork,  
> for no obvious reason than a mild question of convenience.

I agree. If you want to keep the canonical version, we should make  
sure that any changes to the locales files get made in both  
repositories. This isn’t a strange idea; Mozilla has its own SQLite  
library source, most distros keep their own kernel source, etc. I just  
want to make sure the files stay in sync.

> > If you want to keep the canonical copies  
> > of the locales files in the xbiblio repository, you or I can merge  
> > changes into the Zotero repository, but the Zotero repository is no  
> > less  
> > accessible to implementors than the xbiblio repository, and, to me,  
> > this  
> > just seems like a waste of time.
> 
> Come on Simon. Of course it’s a (very mild) waste of time for you. But  
> CSL isn’t just for you. The locales schema is part of CSL, as are the  
> locales files. They belong here. I don’t see that as an unreasonable  
> position. Do you?

I don’t think it’s unreasonable. It doesn’t take much time for me to  
import the locales from xbiblio into the Zotero repository, but, then  
again, it takes the same amount of time for another implementor to  
check out the locales from the Zotero repository and the schema from  
the xbiblio repository (instead of all from one repository). It’s all  
open source; it doesn’t belong to either of us. If you have a strong  
preference for keeping the canonical versions in the xbiblio  
repository, that’s fine with me.

Simon

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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:** [December 31, 2007, 4:44am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/removal-of-locales-files/396/8 "2007-12-31T04:44:40Z")

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Simon Kornblith wrote:

> … it takes the same amount of time for another implementor to  
> check out the locales from the Zotero repository and the schema from  
> the xbiblio repository (instead of all from one repository).

Huh? But that presumes they know that you’re hosting the files, and  
where they are. I don’t see how they could know that.

And it IS extra work for people like Liam to have to go and checkout the  
files from your repository.

> It’s all open source; it doesn’t belong to either of us.

That’s not the point; the point is what’s easiest to maintain, and for  
different developers to access.

I think your argument that it’s reasonable that non-Zotero developers  
(including me) should have to hunt around in a separate repository for  
files which are really essential to the implementation of CSL really  
makes no sense.

> If you have a strong preference for keeping the canonical versions in the xbiblio  
> repository, that’s fine with me.

OK then 😉

Best for the new year all!

Bruce

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**Author:** ![Elena\_Razlogova](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Elena\_Razlogova](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Elena_Razlogova)\
**Post date:** [January 2, 2008, 10:09am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/removal-of-locales-files/396/9 "2008-01-02T10:09:29Z")

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Happy New Year!

Would it be possible to write some sort of svn-to-svn script that  
syncs Zotero and Bruce’s locales files automatically? It’s a pain to  
make changes in two places manually every time, and it seems that  
most people currently working on CSL are Zotero developers (judging  
from postings on this list among other things), who would work  
primarily in Zotero svn.

At the moment, Zotero locales\_en\_US.xml is more complete than xbiblio  
locales\_en.xml, and of course there are many more CSL styles on the  
Zotero site as well. Bruce, do you not want those in your repository?

Elena

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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:** [January 2, 2008, 2:07pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/removal-of-locales-files/396/10 "2008-01-02T14:07:05Z")

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Elena Razlogova wrote:

> Happy New Year!
> 
> Would it be possible to write some sort of svn-to-svn script that  
> syncs Zotero and Bruce’s locales files automatically? It’s a pain to  
> make changes in two places manually every time, and it seems that  
> most people currently working on CSL are Zotero developers (judging  
> from postings on this list among other things), who would work  
> primarily in Zotero svn.
> 
> At the moment, Zotero locales\_en\_US.xml is more complete than xbiblio  
> locales\_en.xml, and of course there are many more CSL styles on the  
> Zotero site as well. Bruce, do you not want those in your repository?

I don’t really care about the styles, since they’re designed to be  
distributed (since they have URI Ids). Indeed, that’s a major feature.

The only reason I did that earlier was just because nobody was actually  
implementing CSL as I intended in this respect. In Zotero, for example,  
the styles were actually embedded in a single SQL file, which made them  
useless from the perspective of easy reuse.

Since Dan started to make the necessary changes with the Zotero styles  
repository and auto-loading of styles in 1.02, however, that problem’s  
solved. So it’d be silly for me to say styles ought to be hosted here. I  
just ought to create a list of repositories on the main CSL page.

The issue with the locales files is CSL cannot be implemented without  
them. They are designed to stay with the schema.

It doesn’t really matter to me how Simon implements the syncing; I’m  
just saying up-to-date locales files need to be here along with the  
schema, and that, for example, if you add a new term to the schema here,  
you ought to add the localizations to the locale file here as well.

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:** [January 3, 2008, 7:59am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/removal-of-locales-files/396/11 "2008-01-03T07:59:39Z")

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This should no longer be an issue. SVN has a feature to check out a  
directory from an external repository, which I just implemented. As  
long as it doesn’t make branching and tagging too difficult, this is  
pretty much the ideal solution.

Simon