# RPC & citeproc-js

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/rpc-citeproc-js/616>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [April 19, 2009, 5:28am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/rpc-citeproc-js/616 "2009-04-19T05:28:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 2

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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:** [April 20, 2009, 7:58am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/rpc-citeproc-js/616/21 "2009-04-20T07:58:12Z")

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Apologies if this discussion belongs on-list, as it’s not directly  
related to CSL, but I feel that some subscribers here (particularly  
the Mendeley people) might have something to say regarding these issues.

> …
> 
> > Our current plan is to encode the collaborator ID as a URI, as RDF,  
> > with the  
> > bibliographic ontology.
> 
> Ah good 🙂
> 
> > This should satisfy your use case, although it might  
> > be hard to figure out how to store bibliographic metadata in doc/  
> > docx…
> 
> Yes, but I have a feeling there are ways to do this; certainly in  
> docx.
> 
> An interesting development in the past six months or so is that MS has  
> joined the ODF TC at OASIS, so there’s at least some effort at working  
> on interoperability between them.

The docx container format definitely specifies a way to do this, and  
there is probably an API included in Office 2007 for Windows (since it  
looks like some add ins use it), but it looks as if it would be  
impossible to embed metadata properly in Word 2008 for Mac. There are  
no APIs for the built-in bibliography/citation support. This means  
that we are quite limited in the ways we can store both citation  
elements (fields) and the associated bibliographic metadata.

With respect to the former, I don’t think there’s any way around  
continuing to use Word’s decrepit field/bookmark support. We have to  
be able to modify citation elements while the document is open, and in  
the absence of any APIs for anything else, fields (or bookmarks) are  
simply the only way.

With respect to the latter, it turns out custom XML is actually  
preserved across opening/saving a document, but it can’t be modified  
while the document is in use. Again, there are no APIs to perform any  
kind of modifications, and simply modifying the zip while the document  
is open doesn’t work (any modifications just get clobbered on save).  
This leaves us with a few options:

1. Store metadata The Right Way, by running a background process that  
waits until the document is saved/closed, then adds the appropriate  
metadata to it. Assuming we don’t want this background process running  
all the time, it would be triggered by using any kind of Zotero  
functionality, and continue running until that document is closed.  
This would be very kludgy, and probably undesirably CPU-intensive.  
Additionally, if Word crashed, and a recovered document were opened  
and re-saved without using any Zotero functionality, it would be saved  
without any metadata.

2. Store metadata in field objects. Beyond being the wrong way of  
doing things, this approach has its own disadvantages, since the  
metadata would either need to be attached to each field (thus  
significantly increasing file size) or only some fields, in which case  
deleting the first citation would also delete the associated metadata.  
The metadata would be added back if Zotero functionality was triggered  
on the same computer as it was created on, but this could be a problem  
if a document were modified without triggering Zotero, or if a  
collaborator opened and edited a document before Zotero got triggered.  
It would, however, work with both doc and docx.

3. Store metadata in Word’s custom document properties. This would  
mean splitting things up into 255 character chunks, since that seems  
to be the length limit, and would likely be associated with some kind  
of speed hit for the initial reading of metadata. This would also work  
with both doc and docx.

4. Store metadata as hidden text, or in some other kind of invisible  
object. I haven’t investigated this much, and it might actually lead  
to the most functional implementation, but generally, the approach  
just seems wrong.

I welcome advice regarding these options. In OpenOffice, of course, we  
can just use the RDF support which you advocated and appears to be  
included in OO 3.0 (although I haven’t tested it).

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:** [April 20, 2009, 1:21pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/rpc-citeproc-js/616/22 "2009-04-20T13:21:57Z")

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> Apologies if this discussion belongs on-list, as it’s not directly related to CSL, but I feel that some subscribers here (particularly the Mendeley people) might have something to say regarding these issues.

No need to apologize; this is an important implementation concern.

…

> I welcome advice regarding these options.

Would probably help to heard from MS. I forwarded your post to a  
couple of key people there.

> In OpenOffice, of course, we can just use the RDF support which you advocated and appears to be included in OO 3.0 (although I haven’t tested it).

It’s not in 3.0. My understanding is that it’s coming in 3.2 later this year.

Sun has a developer working on this, and he successfully integrated  
Redland into OOo and added an API wrapper on top of it. He also got  
all the in-package RDF stuff working. Where I believe he got delayed  
was on multi-user editing details like this.

But as I said, it should be coming soon-ish.

Bruce

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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:** [April 23, 2009, 8:36pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/rpc-citeproc-js/616/23 "2009-04-23T20:36:15Z")

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A reply from the Microsoft project lead for the bibliographic stuff,  
forwarded with permission …---------- Forwarded message ----------  
From: Amani Ahmed [amaniah@exchange.microsoft.com](mailto:amaniah@exchange.microsoft.com)  
Date: Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 3:49 PM  
Subject: RE: [xbiblio-devel] Storing bibliographic information in word  
processing documents [was RPC & citeproc-js]  
To: Bruce D’Arcus \<@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1\>  
Cc: Doug Mahugh [Doug.Mahugh@microsoft.com](mailto:Doug.Mahugh@microsoft.com)

Hi Bruce -

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you on this. I wanted to  
confirm some things before responding.

You and Simon are correct that the XML for the bibliography sources  
cannot be manipulated directly when the document is open. However,  
you overcome this issue by using the object model supported by Office  
2007. Our OM provides objects that represent each of the bibliography  
sources with the document — the properties of which can be retrieved  
and set as needed. More details on this can be found on MSDN:  
[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb258052.aspx](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb258052.aspx)

As for storing your own custom metadata with the document, you can  
accomplish this by creating your own custom XML part with the document  
package. You can define the schema for this custom XML part in such  
as way so that the ID for a particular bibliography source is stored  
alongside the metadata properties associated with it. Again, this  
data from the custom XML part can be manipulated through our object  
model ([http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb608618.aspx](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb608618.aspx)) This  
solution, of course, is under the assumption that the “metadata” you  
were referring to below were addition properties you wanted to store  
on a bibliography source by source basis. Please correct me if I made  
the wrong assumption here. 🙂

I’m still following up with our Mac division to confirm whether  
building a solution this is manner will port over to their version of  
the application. I will let you know what I hear back from them.

Please let me know if you would like any more details on the solutions  
above or have further questions.

Thanks,

Amani

-----Original Message-----  
From: Bruce D’Arcus [mailto:@Bruce_D_Arcus1]  
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 1:07 PM  
To: Amani Ahmed  
Subject: Re: [xbiblio-devel] Storing bibliographic information in word  
processing documents [was RPC & citeproc-js]

Amani – any chance you can get back to me and Simon on this issue?

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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:** [April 23, 2009, 8:56pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/rpc-citeproc-js/616/24 "2009-04-23T20:56:38Z")

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A quick reply Amani …

> Hi Bruce -
> 
> Sorry for taking so long to get back to you on this. I wanted to confirm some things before responding.
> 
> You and Simon are correct that the XML for the bibliography sources cannot be manipulated directly when the document is open. However, you overcome this issue by using the object model supported by Office 2007. Our OM provides objects that represent each of the bibliography sources with the document — the properties of which can be retrieved and set as needed. More details on this can be found on MSDN: [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb258052.aspx](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb258052.aspx)

Right, but one problem is that this model is somewhat limited.

The bigger problem is that I don’t think this API is available on the  
Mac version.

> As for storing your own custom metadata with the document, you can accomplish this by creating your own custom XML part with the document package. You can define the schema for this custom XML part in such as way so that the ID for a particular bibliography source is stored alongside the metadata properties associated with it. Again, this data from the custom XML part can be manipulated through our object model ([Custom XML parts overview - Visual Studio (Windows) | Microsoft Learn](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb608618.aspx)) This solution, of course, is under the assumption that the “metadata” you were referring to below were addition properties you wanted to store on a bibliography source by source basis. Please correct me if I made the wrong assumption here. 🙂

So are you saying that the custom XML part would essentially be a  
separate island of XML that got linked to the main bibliographic  
representation through a common ID?

For comparison, for ODF 1.2, we’d probably be using the bibo RDF  
vocabulary, which is both richer, and more flexible; a developer would  
add additional properties by simply including those triples in the  
same RDF/XML package. I suppose ideally, we’d be able to use the same  
RDF/XML in both ODF and OOXML.

[http://bibliontology.com/](http://bibliontology.com/)

> I’m still following up with our Mac division to confirm whether building a solution this is manner will port over to their version of the application. I will let you know what I hear back from them.

OK, thanks. As I said above, I expect the answer may not be  
encouraging. But I 'd be happy to be wrong.

Of course, some (though not all) of these issues would be solved if MS  
were to simply adopt CSL as its citation styling language, rather than  
XSLT. There are now over 1000 CSL styles, all of them a product of  
part-time ad hoc community effort, and the CSL versions of the major  
styles are, I think it’s fair to say, much smaller and simpler, but  
also more compliant. XSLT just isn’t a very good language to do this  
stuff in.

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:** [May 1, 2009, 9:25am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/rpc-citeproc-js/616/25 "2009-05-01T09:25:42Z")

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Bruce, Did you ever get a response re: storing metadata in Office 2008  
for Mac? I’m not too optimistic, but since this is something we  
probably want to implement sooner rather than later, it would be great  
if you did.

Thanks,  
Simon

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