Re: Citation processing via Zotero + zotxt

[Matt Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org>]

Hi John,

John Kitchin <jkitchin@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:

> If a reference type is not listed in the CSL, it also will not be
> supported by CSL I suppose.

How is this different than biblatex or bibtex? A user could just modify
the style or put in a request with a maintainer. 

> I also suppose the CSL must be backend specific to output formats
> appropriate to org, html, LaTeX, markdown, etc... for any particular
> style.

AFAIU, CSL styles are backend agnostic (otherwise they wouldn't be of
much use). It is the processor (citeproc-js, pandoc, etc.) that takes
the instructions (e.g., font-style="italic" in a CSL file) and adds the
appropriate markup for a defined backend. So once you add a new output
format to a processor, it works with all styles.

> We should not try to support all of these things. We could support a
> small number of things that could be improved or increased in the
> future.

I would suggest that tapping into a CSL tool like zotero of citeproc-js
is in fact *a small thing* we can do right now that would have a big
payoff for lots of users, even if it does not support 100% of use cases.

> The only time-tested, publication quality solutions for citations in
> my opinion right now are bib(la)tex, MS Word/reference manager, and
> "by hand". Even these get "edited" in their final print versions by
> journals.

Is this assessment based on your particular disciplinary experience? I
ask because many of us in the humanities have not enjoyed the benefits
of automated, text-based citation processing until quite recently, so
*both* biblatex and CSL seem awesome. The citation style in my field
(the Chicago Manual of Style) is more quirky and complex than any
scientific citation style. Thus, it is likely more feasible to implement
basic bibtex functionality in lisp than it is to re-implement
biblatex-chicago.[fn:1] CSL offers the advantage of allowing export to
backends that can easily be converted to Word (the format that
humanities publishers require).

> It might start making more sense to think of a lisp based citation
> processor. It might even address some limitations of bib(la)tex.

That would be very cool, especially if we could import/convert CSL files
(I don't want to rewrite all 1200+ lines of the
chicago-fullnote-bibliography CSL style). :)

Matt

Footnotes:

[fn:1] I cloned the CSL repository and did a quick sort by word count.
Not surprisingly, the longest files were all in the humanities:

    1296     2700    44202 chicago-fullnote-bibliography-fr.csl
    1273     2590    40935 chicago-fullnote-bibliography.csl
    1264     2576    40674 chicago-fullnote-bibliography-no-ibid.csl
    1241     2531    39515 chicago-library-list.csl
    1241     2530    39535 chicago-annotated-bibliography.csl
    1240     2524    39445 chicago-note-bibliography.csl
    1235     2506    40168 zeitschrift-fur-religionswissenschaft-note.csl
    1227     2508    39077 chicago-note-biblio-no-ibid.csl
    1132     2620    41990 mcgill-fr.csl
    1060     2149    34008 moorlands-college.csl
     998     2175    34470 lluelles.csl
     927     2066    31551 lluelles-no-ibid.csl
     911     1862    29828 proinflow.csl
     906     1961    28990 irish-historical-studies.csl
     878     1828    29238 universite-laval-faculte-de-theologie-et-de-sciences-religieuses.csl
     862     1830    29437 chicago-author-date-fr.csl
     856     1782    28244 oxford-studies-in-ancient-philosophy.csl
     809     1941    27717 university-college-dublin-school-of-history-and-archives.csl
     809     1796    26790 turabian-fullnote-bibliography.csl
     806     1857    27140 wheaton-college-phd-in-biblical-and-theological-studies.csl
     796     1791    26472 modern-language-association-6th-edition-note.csl
     793     1671    26453 sheffield-hallam-university-history.csl
     792     1910    30773 pour-reussir-note.csl
     788     1792    26377 svensk-exegetisk-arsbok.csl
     781     1782    26316 early-christianity.csl
     779     1772    26038 society-of-biblical-literature-fullnote-bibliography.csl
     775     1808    26461 new-testament-studies.csl
     768     2350    29928 clio-medica.csl
     714     1533    22993 iso690-author-date-cs.csl
     708     1578    25548 chicago-author-date-basque.csl
     708     1520    22731 iso690-author-date-sk.csl
     707     1605    24582 melbourne-school-of-theology.csl
     701     1533    22280 moore-theological-college.csl
     696     1756    25783 associacao-brasileira-de-normas-tecnicas-ufjf.csl
     694     1474    22229 podzemna-voda.csl
     692     2315    29639 foerster-geisteswissenschaft.csl
     692     1591    24881 oscola.csl