# status?

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/status/298>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [July 21, 2007, 7:37pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/status/298 "2007-07-21T19:37:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 9\
**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:** [July 21, 2007, 7:37pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/status/298/1 "2007-07-21T19:37:50Z")

</div>

Wa away last week, so just wanted to check where we’re at. Simon, can  
you perhaps summarize what’s still to be done, and perhaps suggest a  
roadmap of how we get there? I’m not seeing any activity on the branch  
schema 😉

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:** [July 22, 2007, 5:30am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/status/298/2 "2007-07-22T05:30:47Z")

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We have to write the schema, which I plan to work on this weekend. I  
have everything implemented in Zotero SVN.

Simon

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<div class="post-metadata">

**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:** [July 22, 2007, 9:32am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/status/298/3 "2007-07-22T09:32:51Z")

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Okay, schema committed, along with conforming sample APA style. Let  
me know what you think.

Simon

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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:** [July 22, 2007, 4:20pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/status/298/4 "2007-07-22T16:20:21Z")

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I’ve recently been having problems updating from the SVN. Do you?

Beyond that, does the APA style validate against the schema? 🙂

Also, you mentioned before writing a script to convert old styles to  
new. A good test would be if you can do that, and if the resulting  
styles validate.

Finally, you have APA as an “in-text” style; should be “author-date”.

Bruce

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<div class="post-metadata">

**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:** [July 22, 2007, 8:13pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/status/298/5 "2007-07-22T20:13:49Z")

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> > Okay, schema committed, along with conforming sample APA style. Let  
> > me know what you think.
> 
> I’ve recently been having problems updating from the SVN. Do you?
> 
> Beyond that, does the APA style validate against the schema? 🙂

Yes, it does. It’s slightly (but not significantly) different from  
what’s in Zotero right now, because I made a few changes to attribute  
names and option positions.

> Also, you mentioned before writing a script to convert old styles to  
> new. A good test would be if you can do that, and if the resulting  
> styles validate.

At some point, this will get done. I have other Zotero obligations to  
take care of, so I can’t make any promises as to when.

> Finally, you have APA as an “in-text” style; should be “author-date”.

I changed this, because I’d rather just have “in-text” and “note”  
style types. If you have better names for these, feel free to  
substitute, but I fail to see why the fact that it’s an “author-date”  
style makes any difference for anything besides sorting.

Simon

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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:** [July 22, 2007, 8:24pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/status/298/6 "2007-07-22T20:24:34Z")

</div>

> > Also, you mentioned before writing a script to convert old styles to  
> > new. A good test would be if you can do that, and if the resulting  
> > styles validate.
> 
> At some point, this will get done. I have other Zotero obligations to  
> take care of, so I can’t make any promises as to when.

So how do we establish CSL 1.0 and say we’re done?

Perhaps someone (Jim?) ought to take a crack at writing new styles in  
the updated version in the meantime? The IEEE style seems like a good  
candidate. I’ll work on finishing the Bluebook styles I started, but I  
can’t commit to that soon.

> > Finally, you have APA as an “in-text” style; should be “author-date”.
> 
> I changed this, because I’d rather just have “in-text” and “note”  
> style types. If you have better names for these, feel free to  
> substitute, but I fail to see why the fact that it’s an “author-date”  
> style makes any difference for anything besides sorting.

Well, if it makes no difference anymore for the schema validation or  
processing, that’s fine. However, it’s crucial metadata.

I don’t generally care about any style other than author-date.  
Likewise, many users won’t care about anything but note styles.

As I’ve said repeatedly, CSL needs to be designed to scale to thousands  
of styles (preferably in distributed repositories), and metadata like  
this helps allow that.

Beyond helping finding styles, it can help in editing them.

Bruce

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<div class="post-metadata">

**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:** [July 22, 2007, 8:46pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/status/298/7 "2007-07-22T20:46:09Z")

</div>

> > > Also, you mentioned before writing a script to convert old styles to  
> > > new. A good test would be if you can do that, and if the resulting  
> > > styles validate.
> > 
> > At some point, this will get done. I have other Zotero obligations to  
> > take care of, so I can’t make any promises as to when.
> 
> So how do we establish CSL 1.0 and say we’re done?
> 
> Perhaps someone (Jim?) ought to take a crack at writing new styles in  
> the updated version in the meantime? The IEEE style seems like a good  
> candidate. I’ll work on finishing the Bluebook styles I started, but I  
> can’t commit to that soon.

There are interns at Zotero HQ working on generating new styles with  
the new schema.

> > > Finally, you have APA as an “in-text” style; should be “author-  
> > > date”.
> > 
> > I changed this, because I’d rather just have “in-text” and “note”  
> > style types. If you have better names for these, feel free to  
> > substitute, but I fail to see why the fact that it’s an “author-date”  
> > style makes any difference for anything besides sorting.
> 
> Well, if it makes no difference anymore for the schema validation or  
> processing, that’s fine. However, it’s crucial metadata.
> 
> I don’t generally care about any style other than author-date.  
> Likewise, many users won’t care about anything but note styles.
> 
> As I’ve said repeatedly, CSL needs to be designed to scale to  
> thousands  
> of styles (preferably in distributed repositories), and metadata like  
> this helps allow that.
> 
> Beyond helping finding styles, it can help in editing them.

It truly belongs in the section, then. Should we use  
 or create a new tag?

Simon

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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:** [July 22, 2007, 8:56pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/status/298/8 "2007-07-22T20:56:18Z")

</div>

> There are interns at Zotero HQ working on generating new styles with  
> the new schema.

OK. Make sure they understand that the goal in the styles is to adopt  
DRY wherever possible, and that in general I’d suggest they avoid  
conditioning formatting on types where possible. My hunch is the more  
they use macro and conditionals and the less they’re tied to type, the  
more compact and robust the styles will be.

Perhaps, too, they can start documenting best practices and suggestions  
on the zotero dev wiki so that we can pull that together into some more  
formal documents.

I’m fine, BTW, if you guys want to host styles; just make sure they  
have good stable URI IDs, and that they’re resolvable directly so that  
others can use them (like say my XSLT code if/when I update it).

> It truly belongs in the section, then. Should we use  
> or create a new tag?

I was thinking reuse category. We could just give it a dedicated scheme  
URI.

So APA would get maybe:

Need to think more on the details (whether to use the URI and what it  
should be), but that seems sane.

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:** [July 23, 2007, 8:26pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/status/298/9 "2007-07-23T20:26:15Z")

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Dan – can I get some comment on this? If possible on your end, it  
seems to me we ought to move to realizing the distributed repository  
idea sooner rather than later. I really don’t like to hassle you guys  
to load the styles in the xbib repository, and it shouldn’t really be  
necessary in any case.

My hunch is using Atom is still the best idea. Just write a little  
script that generates the feeds from a directory of CSL files, and it  
should be pretty easy.

I realize adding the UI for selection is more work, but perhaps not  
essential at first.

In short, I want with CSL 1.0 for us to include information about  
repositories, and that CSL styles ought to be publicly available at the  
link URI.

Bruce