Several months ago, I posted an issue on the schema tracker concerning
the “none” attribute. After giving it some more thought, I’ve come up
with the fuller proposal below. The changes proposed are
backward-compatible with the current schema.
At Rintze’s suggestion I ran this past Sebastian and processor
developers before posting here for broader review. The response has
been positive: Sebastian is in favour; Sylvester has implement the
syntax in citeproc-ruby; and Andrea and Charles have indicated that
they are ready to go forward with implementation.
Open issues are:
- Whether to include a *-none suffix on attributes in addition to
*-any and *-all (I left this out, Sylvester suggested including it,
and I can’t see a problem); and - Constraints to be imposed by the schema.
A test that exercises the syntax is available here:
The proposal would introduce two changes:
-
An optional not: prefix on elements of the list argument to
certain condition attributes; and -
Alternative forms of several condition attributes, identified
by an *-all or *-any suffix.
Under the proposal, conditional evaluation would take place as
follows:
(1) Each attribute argument list element is evaluated, returning
"true" or “false”;
(2) For each attribute, the results from (1) are evaluated using “all”
(if the attribute suffix is “-all”) or “any” (if the attribute
suffix is “-any”), following the rules described in the CSL
Specification. Legacy attributes with no suffix follow the value
of the “match” attribute, or “all” if no companion "match"
attribute is present).
(3) The “match” attribute evaluates the results from (2) using
"all" or “any” as described in the CSL Specification,
returning an overall test value of “true” or “false”.
This would allow two testing patterns that are not currently possible:
-
A single test can require both true and false values; and
-
Attributes can set an evaluation method (“all” or “any”) independent
of the “match” attribute that controls inter-attribute evaluation.
This flexibility makes it possible to reduce the bulk of CSL code.
As one example, the construct below is found in several styles in the
CSL repository:
<macro name="year-date">
<choose>
<if type="webpage">
<choose>
<if variable="issued">
<date variable="issued">
<date-part name="year"/>
</date>
</if>
<else>
<date variable="accessed">
<date-part name="year"/>
</date>
</else>
</choose>
</if>
<else>
<date variable="issued">
<date-part name="year"/>
</date>
</else>
</choose>
</macro>
What the code does is to print the “accessed” date if the item is a
webpage and has no “issued” date, and otherwise to print the "issued"
date, regardless of item type. A nested cs:choose statement is needed,
because negative and positive conditions cannot be declared together
on the same cs:if or cs:else-if element.
With the proposed syntax, the code sample above can be rewritten as a
single cs:choose statement:
<macro name="year-date">
<choose>
<if type="webpage" variable="not:issued" match="all">
<date variable="accessed">
<date-part name="year"/>
</date>
</if>
<else>
<date variable="issued">
<date-part name="year"/>
</date>
</else>
</choose>
</macro>
Condition attributes that would accept a not: prefix on argument
elements and be given alternative *-all and *-any forms under the
proposal are the following:
* is-numeric
* is-uncertain-date
* locator
* type
* variable
* jurisdiction (MLZ only)
* page (MLZ only)
Frank
