Provide explicit delimiter for author groups or collapsed cites within cs:citation

[fbennett]

When citations are collapsed, the behavior at CSL 1.0 is to set an implicit comma-space delimiter as the default for joining the collapsed elements. Discussion in this thread recommends that this delimiter be made explicit, either for author-collapsed cites, or for groups of cites which share the same author element.

[rmzelle]

Instead of calling this delimiter "year-delimiter" (which Bruce had issues with: #40 (comment) ), how about "collapse-delimiter" (we already have "after-collapse-delimiter")?

See also http://citationstyles.org/downloads/specification.html#citation-collapsing

[fbennett]

+1 for collapse-delimiter

[bdarcus]

The key conclusion I drew in that thread, I think, is the following:

I do think, as I mentioned above, that we'd want to add some explicit discussion of author grouping to the spec where collapsing gets recast in those terms, and to perhaps even make a point of calling out a reserved author macro.

So I actually think the (collapse) language on this is wrong, and vague. Really what we're saying here is the following:

1. citations can be grouped by author and (sub-grouped) by year
2. each of these groups have delimiters

If it's that straightforward, then shouldn't the attribute names for these delimiters be equally straightforward?

For sake of argument (e.g. I'm not sure this is a good idea yet), why not simply author-group-delimiter and author-year-group-delimiter?

Why, BTW, is this split out as a separate ticket? Isn't this directly tied to the details of how #40 is implemented, and described in the spec?

[rmzelle]

Renaming delimiters ("year-suffix-delimiter" to "author-year-group-delimiter") would require a CSL 1.1 release. And I'm not sure we'd gain much by doing it.

[bdarcus]

Leave that aside for now though. I want us to clarify the logic, and in turn the explanation.
We can then backup and deal with the compatibility issues.

[fbennett]

Another use case for an explicit collapse delimiter has been raised on the Zotero forums:

http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/17446/multiple-citation-separators/#Item_26

[fbennett]

To take stock, we have seen styles that explicitly require a special delimiter when citations are collapsed. Our working example for APA was:

(Brown 1992, 1998; Smith 2001)

Bruce has raised the question of whether the choice of delimiter is a property of collapsing, or a property of the (rendered?) author. If it is taken to be the latter, that would cover forms like this:

(Brown 1992, Brown 1998; Smith 2001)

Is there a style that has this requirement?

[bdarcus]

"Be made explicit" how? By the CSL spec, or by the style author?

When citations are collapsed, the behavior at CSL 1.0.1 is to set an implicit comma delimiter as the default for joining the collapsed elements. Discussion in this thread recommends that this delimiter be made explicit, either for author-collapsed cites, or for groups of cites which share the same author element.

[fbennett]

By the style author, on an attribute added to CSL for that purpose.

[rmzelle]

@adam3smith, have you seen any styles that use a different delimiter for cites by the same author, even though they're not collapsed? (the "(Brown 1992, Brown 1998; Smith 2001)" example above)

[bdarcus]

I still think collapsing is likely orthogonal to the purpose of this
delimiter.
On Jun 30, 2011 10:55 AM, "rmzelle" <
reply@reply.github.com>
wrote:

@adam3smith, have you seen any styles that use a different delimiter for
cites by the same author, even though they're not collapsed? (the "(Brown
1992, Brown 1998; Smith 2001)" example above)

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:

#52 (comment)

[rmzelle]

@adam3smith: sorry, I just saw I asked the same question before in the #40 issue.

Assuming we need to support citations like "(Doe 1992, Doe 2003; Smith 2001)", I think we need to modify collapsing behavior. As discussed in #40, citeproc-js now groups when the collapse attribute is set. But for the example above we need grouping in the absence of collapsing.

Maybe grouping could be activated whenever the collapse attribute or the proposed author-group-delimiter is set?

[adam3smith]

yeah, as I said back then I think I've seen it, but I'm not 100% sure - so it certainly wouldn't be a super pressing issue.

[rmzelle]

Covered:

Spec: citation-style-language/documentation#18 and citation-style-language/documentation#19
Schema: 4873383

[rmzelle]

I changed the default value of cite-group-delimiter to ", " so the default behavior won't change between CSL 1.0 and 1.0.1. See citation-style-language/documentation#11 (comment)

[bdarcus]

Per the link issue, seems we may still have some tweaks needed here?

I'm hoping to wrap up work on the schema in the next few days, so if either of you have a suggestion, now would be a great time.

[bwiernik]

@bdarcus I don't really understand the rush to push out the 1.1 release. Let's just take the time to get it done.

[bdarcus]

As I said earlier, I just have a feeling I won't have much time to dedicate to this going forward. The other, more important, issue is I don't think we should overload the release with too many features, lest it to be too much work to implement. But clearly there are a few things we need to finish, and get right.