# Why term-set?

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [August 23, 2006, 3:12pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200 "2006-08-23T15:12:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Johan\_Kool2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/cab0a1/32.png) [@Johan\_Kool2](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Johan_Kool2)\
**Post date:** [August 23, 2006, 3:12pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/1 "2006-08-23T15:12:44Z")

</div>

Hello,

Why are some of the terms in the locales files wrapped in term-set?  
Doesn’t make it easier. I liked the previous style _much_ better.

Johan—  
[http://www.johankool.nl/](http://www.johankool.nl/)

---

<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 23, 2006, 3:22pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/2 "2006-08-23T15:22:36Z")

</div>

That was Simon’s design.

I think a term-set refers to a collection of role or locator terms.  
E.g. in those cases, you aren’t doing a simple 1:1 mapping of a label  
to a term (as the simple term elements), but generally conditional  
lookup. The old approach didn’t account for that, and so would have  
broken I think.

I’ve not looked at it yet closely, but it seemed fine to me. What’s the  
problem, and what’s the (better) solution, given my comments above?

Bruce

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Johan\_Kool2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/cab0a1/32.png) [@Johan\_Kool2](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Johan_Kool2)\
**Post date:** [August 23, 2006, 3:46pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/3 "2006-08-23T15:46:03Z")

</div>

My problem is that I now have to figure out in which set a term  
occurs. E.g. is it in locators or in roles or in months or none of  
these? Before I would simply put the string “month-01-short” into a  
simple function that did the look up. Very simple.

I’d say we either go the full way and do it like this:

page pages paragraph paragraph p pp ¶ ¶¶

so, do it the whole way, or go back to flat. This halfway in between  
is just annoying. Perhaps it should be \<long|

> \<single|multiple\> instead.

Johan

---

<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 23, 2006, 3:57pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/4 "2006-08-23T15:57:11Z")

</div>

I’m going to let Simon respond here, and see if he can address your  
concerns.

Bruce

---

<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:** [August 23, 2006, 4:46pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/5 "2006-08-23T16:46:25Z")

</div>

I chose the approach because it’s extensible. “Long” and "short"  
won’t necessarily cover everything. We also need “verb” for contributors  
(e.g., “Edited By”), which poses a possible schema issue because we  
shouldn’t have “verb” for locators. It’s also conceivable that we’ll  
discover we need other term-sets in the future, and defining a new term-set  
is much simpler than altering the schema to accommodate a new type of term.  
 and are data-dependent, but term-sets are  
style-dependent, so the paradigm appears consistent to me.

To implement term-set in my code, I simply added an additional "term-set"  
argument to the function that retrieves locale terms. In this fashion, it’s  
exceedingly simple to map something like   
into a term, easier than if there were separate / tags. Rather  
than doing:

var month = getTerm(“month-01-short”);

I do:

var month = getTerm(“month-01”, “months-short”);

I suppose the term-set isn’t absolutely necessary for months, since no part  
of the style directly references them, but I figured I might as well put  
them there for consistency. If you disagree, feel free to take them out  
(although there shouldn’t be any difference in complexity). We could also  
change “month-01” to “01”; there’s no reason “month” has to be in the term  
name once it’s in a term-set.

Hope this clears things up.

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 23, 2006, 5:03pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/6 "2006-08-23T17:03:24Z")

</div>

> I chose the approach because it’s extensible. “Long” and “short”  
> won’t necessarily cover everything. We also need “verb” for contributors  
> (e.g., “Edited By”), which poses a possible schema issue because we  
> shouldn’t have “verb” for locators.

Actually, that’s no problem in RELAX NG. Just define separate patterns fro each.

> It’s also conceivable that we’ll  
> discover we need other term-sets in the future, and defining a new term-set  
> is much simpler than altering the schema to accommodate a new type of term.

This is important. The less we have to hard-code in the schema, the  
easier things will be long-term.

> and are data-dependent, but term-sets are  
> style-dependent, so the paradigm appears consistent to me.
> 
> To implement term-set in my code, I simply added an additional “term-set”  
> argument to the function that retrieves locale terms. In this fashion, it’s  
> exceedingly simple to map something like   
> into a term, easier than if there were separate / tags. Rather  
> than doing:
> 
> var month = getTerm(“month-01-short”);
> 
> I do:
> 
> var month = getTerm(“month-01”, “months-short”);

Good of you to give the example code here. Getting rid of the “month”  
makes it even easier, since you can just pull the value from the data  
do

getTerm(month, “months-short”)

> I suppose the term-set isn’t absolutely necessary for months, since no part  
> of the style directly references them, but I figured I might as well put  
> them there for consistency. If you disagree, feel free to take them out  
> (although there shouldn’t be any difference in complexity). We could also  
> change “month-01” to “01”; there’s no reason “month” has to be in the term  
> name once it’s in a term-set.

+1

Bruce

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Johan\_Kool2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/cab0a1/32.png) [@Johan\_Kool2](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Johan_Kool2)\
**Post date:** [August 24, 2006, 2:16pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/7 "2006-08-24T14:16:41Z")

</div>

I’ve updated locales\_nl.xml to reflect the proposed changes. Would  
this be an acceptable format?

Johan

\<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?\> in ibid benaderd in voorbereiding Referenties en uit pagina pagina's p pp redacteur redacteurs red reds vertaler vertalers vert verts januari jan februari feb maart maa april apr mei mei june jun juli jul augustus aug september sep oktober okt november nov december dec

---

<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 26, 2006, 4:35pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/8 "2006-08-26T16:35:55Z")

</div>

Simon; thoughts?

Bruce

---

<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:** [August 26, 2006, 4:44pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/9 "2006-08-26T16:44:49Z")

</div>

1. There’s no purpose to a tag if there are no separate sets of  
terms. If we do go this route, we should get rid of it.

2. In its current form, this specification would need an extra tag to handle  
verb roles (e.g., Edited By). While this is not too big of a deal, it  
underscores the lack of extensibility inherent in the approach.

3. For me, at least, this approach is no simpler and probably harder to code  
than the term-set approach.

An alternative that would address these concerns is:

in  
ibid  
  
  
pagina  
pagina’s  
  
  
p  
pp

And then:

I’m not completely sure of the benefits this approach has over the current  
one, but I’m happy to go along with it if it would make things easier for  
others.

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 26, 2006, 4:54pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/10 "2006-08-26T16:54:22Z")

</div>

> 1. There’s no purpose to a tag if there are no separate  
> sets of  
> terms. If we do go this route, we should get rid of it.
> 
> 2. In its current form, this specification would need an extra tag to  
> handle  
> verb roles (e.g., Edited By). While this is not too big of a deal, it  
> underscores the lack of extensibility inherent in the approach.

Let me see if I understand the differences. Johan’s version is:

```
	<term-set name="roles">
		<term name="editor">
			<long>
				<single>redacteur</single>
				<multiple>redacteurs</multiple>
			</long>
			<short>
				<single>red</single>
				<multiple>reds</multiple>
			</short>
		</term>

```

Your’s does not have a separate elements for the different forms, but  
instead has compound set names? E.g.

```
	<term-set name="roles">
	   <term name="editor">
	     <single>redacteur</single>
	     <multiple>redacteurs</multiple>
	   </term>
	   <term name="editor-short">
	     <single>red</single>
	     <multiple>reds</multiple>
	   </term>

```

Is that the difference?

> An alternative that would address these concerns is:
> 
> in  
> ibid  
>   
>   
> pagina  
> pagina’s  
>   
>   
> p  
> pp
> 
> And then:

I agree this is better for the more structured approach.

> I’m not completely sure of the benefits this approach has over the  
> current  
> one, but I’m happy to go along with it if it would make things easier  
> for  
> others.

Johan, care to elaborate on why we need a more structured approach?  
E.g. what _are_ the practical benefits?

Bruce

---

<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:** [August 26, 2006, 5:03pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/11 "2006-08-26T17:03:22Z")

</div>

Actually, mine defines separate term-sets which are then referenced from the  
label:

 editor editors translator translators ed eds tran trans 

And then:

But the basic principle is the same.

The benefit I can see to the more structured approach is that if a style  
tries to get a form of a term that a given locales.xml file doesn’t support,  
it can use a different form of the same term, rather than rolling over to  
the English version. I’m not sure how much help this is, because either way  
there’s a pretty big discrepancy between the desired output and the real  
output, but it’s worth some thought.

Simon

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Johan\_Kool2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/cab0a1/32.png) [@Johan\_Kool2](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Johan_Kool2)\
**Post date:** [August 27, 2006, 8:15pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/12 "2006-08-27T20:15:38Z")

</div>

Hello,

To answer a few remarks/questions.

> if a style tries to get a form of a term that a given locales.xml  
> file doesn’t support, it can use a different form of the same term,  
> rather than rolling over to the English version.

That would be very odd and confusing behaviour. If I see English text  
appearing in my output I know what’s wrong: localization is missing.  
If I see text appearing I didn’t expect, it could be either a missing  
translation or a misconfigured style. That sounds very confusing to  
work with.

> 1. There’s no purpose to a tag if there are no separate  
> sets of  
> terms. If we do go this route, we should get rid of it.
> 
> 2. In its current form, this specification would need an extra tag to  
> handle  
> verb roles (e.g., Edited By). While this is not too big of a deal, it  
> underscores the lack of extensibility inherent in the approach.

My problem is ao that it is unhandy to have to construct a special  
string to look up a text. Perhaps we could do by using the term-set  
as before, but by splitting it up into 2 attributes. Or perhaps on  
term-set instead of term.

```
	<term-set name="roles">
	   <term name="editor" form="long">
	     <single>redacteur</single>
	     <multiple>redacteurs</multiple>
	   </term>
	   <term name="editor" form="short">
	     <single>red</single>
	     <multiple>reds</multiple>
	   </term>

```

This is also much more flexible, but allows simpler ways to find  
something in the file. Is that an idea?

Johan

---

<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 28, 2006, 12:58am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/13 "2006-08-28T00:58:35Z")

</div>

Yes, it’s an idea. I’m pretty much agnostic about which is better  
though.

Any other opinions?

Bruce

---

<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:** [August 28, 2006, 3:42pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/14 "2006-08-28T15:42:24Z")

</div>

> > if a style tries to get a form of a term that a given locales.xml  
> > file doesn’t support, it can use a different form of the same term,  
> > rather than rolling over to the English version.
> 
> That would be very odd and confusing behaviour. If I see English text  
> appearing in my output I know what’s wrong: localization is missing.  
> If I see text appearing I didn’t expect, it could be either a missing  
> translation or a misconfigured style. That sounds very confusing to  
> work with.

Then it seems like, from a feature standpoint, there’s no advantage to a  
more structured approach over the current one.

> > 1. There’s no purpose to a tag if there are no separate  
> > sets of  
> > terms. If we do go this route, we should get rid of it.
> > 
> > 2. In its current form, this specification would need an extra tag to  
> > handle  
> > verb roles (e.g., Edited By). While this is not too big of a deal, it  
> > underscores the lack of extensibility inherent in the approach.
> 
> My problem is ao that it is unhandy to have to construct a special  
> string to look up a text. Perhaps we could do by using the term-set  
> as before, but by splitting it up into 2 attributes. Or perhaps on  
> term-set instead of term.
> 
> redacteur redacteurs red reds 
> 
> This is also much more flexible, but allows simpler ways to find  
> something in the file. Is that an idea?

Again, the is useless if you’re going to put the form on each  
term.

I still don’t exactly see where the difficulty exists in implementing term  
sets, and I wonder if you’ve misunderstood the concept. You should know  
exactly what term-set to look in at all times from the “term-set” attribute  
on . (I think I only updated Chicago and APA, but it’s trivial to  
add the attribute to the other styles.) You should never have to loop  
through all of the sets. What makes the approach you gave above any easier  
to implement? I am trying to think of an XML API that would make this  
difficult, but I can’t.

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 28, 2006, 4:01pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/15 "2006-08-28T16:01:36Z")

</div>

Yeah, I think what he’s suggesting would mean in fact this:

… while your suggestion was just:

I agree the difference is trivial. I guess in the absence of a clear  
reason why the latter is problematic, I’d stay with the second.

I suppose one advantage to the former is that the schema is then a  
little simpler (because there’s then less “name” options).

Bruce

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Johan\_Kool2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/cab0a1/32.png) [@Johan\_Kool2](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Johan_Kool2)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2006, 9:22pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/16 "2006-08-28T21:22:54Z")

</div>

Ok. Keep it the way it is then. It seems odd to me to be  
concatenating attributes into one attribute, but well… it’s not  
such a big a deal that I am going to care that much about it. 🙂

Cheers,

Johan

---

<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 28, 2006, 9:47pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/17 "2006-08-28T21:47:05Z")

</div>

I’m going to look at which of the two options is easier to implement  
(and maintain) in the schema, and then decide based on that.

Bruce

---

<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:** [August 30, 2006, 6:30am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/18 "2006-08-30T06:30:10Z")

</div>

I’ve changed the format to something that should satisfy Johan’s objections  
while further simplifying the schema. Now, we simply have:

```
<term name="page">
  <single>page</single>
  <multiple>pages</multiple>
</term>
<term name="page" form="short">
  <single>p</single>
  <multiple>pp</multiple>
</term>

```

Labels are now:

All we need in the schema is:

attribute form { token }?

Or, if we want to formalize the what’s currently in the XML file within the  
schema:

attribute form { “short” | “verb” }?

As in other places in CSL (e.g., contributors and titles), form defaults to  
long, then switches to short if specified. I figured that this makes more  
sense if we need a term in the short form ( makes  
more sense than ). If there are any complaints,  
I’m willing to revert to the old version.

Simon

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Johan\_Kool2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/cab0a1/32.png) [@Johan\_Kool2](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Johan_Kool2)\
**Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 9:17am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/19 "2006-08-30T09:17:57Z")

</div>

Thanks Simon,

I think it looks good this way. Esp. vs. .

Johan

---

<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 30, 2006, 9:49am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200/20 "2006-08-30T09:49:19Z")

</div>

> Labels are now:

How do you indicate the short verb form of contributors?

> All we need in the schema is:
> 
> attribute form { token }?
> 
> Or, if we want to formalize the what’s currently in the XML file  
> within the  
> schema:
> 
> attribute form { “short” | “verb” }?

All of this stuff should be formalized. If there’s a reason to allow  
extension independent of explicit extension in the schema (not the case  
here I believe), then we build in an extension points like so:

1. define a pattern for the options; say “label-forms”

2. add an extension pattern like so:

labels-forms = “short” | “long” | label-forms.extension  
label-forms-extension = notAllowed

A custom schema can then override the latter with custom terms.

There are few places in CSL where this is necessary though.

Bruce

[Next page](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/why-term-set/200.md?page=2)