APA Capitalization Issues

[fncll]

APA style requires that journal article titles have only the initial letter and the first letter following a colon capitalized, all the rest lower-case. The apa.csl file here doesn't seem to output in that format (unless, of course, I enter the article title in that way to begin with). As I regularly switch between APA and MLA, this is problematic. Can the CSL file specify the proper capitalization?

[adam3smith]

It is impossible to convert to sentence case automatically - think e.g. proper names. Therefore, all sentence case styles in CSL leave the title as is - it's recommended to keep/convert titles to sentence case in your database.
It is possible to automatically convert to title case (since there is only a small set of about a dozen words that don't get capitalized) so for styles that do require title case (such as MLA and Chicago Manual) CSL does that automatically.

edit: there is a text-case="sentence" option in CSL, we just don't use it - if you really want to you can apply it to customize styles, but, as I say, automating sentence case just isn't possible. Zotero has a one-click option to convert titles to pseudo-sentence case, which makes manual editing much faster - I don't know about other CSL implementations.

[fncll]

I understand that, but rather than making one have to either keep two databases or change the database when switching, why not at least do initial letter, letter following colon as caps and all other letters as lowercase, which would be significantly less work correcting... ie. significantly MORE correct than it is now while still working fine for other title case formats? I understand proper nouns, but throwing out all the other rules that presumably can be addressed doesn't seem optimal.

[fncll]

Also, mla.csl doesn't appear to be doing title case either. To wit, I get entries like this:
Moos, Daniel C. “Nonlinear technology: Changing the conception of extrinsic motivation.” Computers & Education 55 (2010): 1640-1650. Print.

Which is also incorrect, reflecting the case as I had to input it for the APA citation...

[adam3smith]

"why not at least do initial letter, letter following colon as caps and all other letters as lowercase"
because that way people who keep their database in sentence case (as we recommend) need to manually edit each title containing a proper noun. Also, you would have to modify every title every time you cite it. We're not going to do that. As I say, it's easy enough to customize this in behavior for a style (just add text-case="sentence" to ever line starting with <text variable="title"...) if you want this, but we're not going to put it on the repository.
Also, because automating title case works, there is no need to keep two databases - you just need one in sentence case. You're not the only person in this situation and it's working just fine for many of us, me included.

"Also, mla.csl doesn't appear to be doing title case either."
update the MLA style from the repository. Title casing had been accidentally removed for a short period of time. The current style does title case. If it doesn't, that's not a CSL problem, but a problem of the software you're using, which is interpreting CSL incorrectly. If that's the case contact support for the CSL implementation you're using.

[fncll]

If mla.csl does its job, then it's not a problem. I guess I somehow miraculously grabbed the file during the "short time" that this feature was removed. Of course, knowing that you had a flawed version for which there are no obvious notes would have made this whole thing significantly easier.

[adam3smith]

The "short time" was, admittedly, a month or so. The style was completely re-written and improved and title-casing got nixed.
For Zotero, we'll eventually get auto-updating of installed styles - other programs can/could do the same.

[fncll]

I apologize for being snippy. This has been an incredibly frustrating issue today and I let that frustration color my tone. I have grabbed the most recent version--I think I had already done so, but just to be sure--and it appears to be a problem with my tool chain (Pandoc + citeproc-hs) and I am pursuing a fix there.

Again, my apologies.