verb-short terms

[fbennett]

The en-US locale contains the following verb-short term nodes:

    <!-- SHORT VERB ROLE FORMS -->
    <term name="container-author" form="verb-short">by</term>
    <term name="director" form="verb-short">dir.</term>
    <term name="editor" form="verb-short">ed.</term>
    <term name="editorial-director" form="verb-short">ed.</term>
    <term name="illustrator" form="verb-short">illus.</term>
    <term name="translator" form="verb-short">trans.</term>
    <term name="editortranslator" form="verb-short">ed. &amp; trans. by</term>

The preposition "by" is missing from director, editor, editorial-director, illustrator, and translator, although it is present on container-author and editor-translator. I don't know whether this is set up this way by intention, but it is inconsistent, and seems inconsistent with the meaning of the attribute.

Unfortunately, verb-short is used in 81 styles in the repository, and we can assume that it is meant to return the term without the preposition. I don't know how many styles would return container-author or editortranslator (and so expect the preposition to be present on at least some cite forms).

I haven't checked whether other locales reflect the English or follow the semantics of the attribute, but that would be a concern as well. It seems to me that the terms in the verb-short group should be consistent, but I don't have any ideas about how to get there without putting in a lot of work or risking a lot of complaints. Without style-level tests it's hard to judge how much of an outcry there would be if the prepositions were just added where they are missing.

(I recently started shipping a static locale set with citeproc-js for use in testing, and noticed the problem when a flurry of tests failed after I idly "fixed" the terms in the static bundle. I'll adjust the tests to reflect the "fixed" values, but the issue remains in the official locales.)

[fbennett]

(If this is set up this way by intention, of course, there is no problem.)

[rmzelle]

The furthest I could trace this back is http://xbiblio.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/xbiblio/csl/locales/locales-en-US.xml?revision=382&view=markup&pathrev=382 , which is before my time. Couldn't find a thread about it on the xbiblio mailing list, either. (I wondered about this myself as well)

[fbennett]

As a further note on this, the following macro in chicago-author-date.csl is likely the original source of many instances of verb-short across the archive.

  <macro name="translator">
    <names variable="translator">
      <name name-as-sort-order="first" and="text" sort-separator=", " delimiter=", " delimiter-precedes-last="always"/>
      <label form="verb-short" prefix=", " suffix="." strip-periods="true"/>
    </names>
  </macro>

It should pretty clearly be changed to "short" in this context.

[rmzelle]

I think it makes sense to change the translations in the "en-US" and "en-GB" locale files, but existing styles would all need to be checked and either a) be switched from "verb-short" to "short" or b) have the term redefined in the style cs:locale section.

[fbennett]

Checking a style a day, it would take about 3 months. Too bad the work isn't glamorous enough for Summer of Code ...

[rmzelle]

I'll look into it. I love menial work.

[adam3smith]

completely agree this should be changed. It sounds like it should be
possible to update this automatically, by just replacing verb-short in all
styles that don't redefine it to
short plural="never" (which is what I have used for CMoS).

I don't have any recollection of any discussions on this either.

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 7:57 AM, Rintze M. Zelle
[email protected]:

I'll look into it. I love menial work.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/38#issuecomment-8528844.

---

Sebastian Karcher
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Political Science
Northwestern University

[rmzelle]

I changed a bunch of styles: citation-style-language/styles@4bf538a

(I excluded styles that have a default-locale set to a non-English language, and some more complicated cases)

I now realize, though, that the short plural="never" replacement might not be enough, because the singular "short" form of "translator" is "tran", while the "verb-short" form is "trans". There is a second difference, for "illustrator", which is "ill." and "illus." in the locale files, respectively.

[adam3smith]

the second difference doesn't matter, though, since that's just a couple of
weeks old and no one has coded with that in mind.
But yes, I remember now seeing the translator thing.
no fun.

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 8:55 PM, Rintze M. Zelle
[email protected]:

I changed a bunch of styles:
citation-style-language/styles@4bf538a

(I excluded styles that have a default-locale set to a non-English
language, and some more complicated cases)

I now realize, though, that the short plural="never" replacement might not
be enough, because the singular "short" form of "translator" is "tran",
while the "verb-short" form is "trans". There is a second difference, for
"illustrator", which is "ill." and "illus." in the locale files,
respectively.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/38#issuecomment-8550480.

---

Sebastian Karcher
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Political Science
Northwestern University

[rmzelle]

Unless anybody objects, I'm starting to think that it might be easier to just define the "verb-short" term forms in the styles.

[fbennett]

No objection here.

[rmzelle]

I wrote a script ( https://github.com/citation-style-language/utilities/blob/master/csl-reindenting-and-verb-short-fix.py ) that defines the affected verb-short terms to the relevant styles. The logic:

1. I eliminate styles with default-locale set to a non-English locale. I keep styles where default-locale is set to "en", "en-US", or "en-GB", and styles that lack default-locale.

2. I look at all the cs:names elements to check which name variables are in use.

a) If there is no cs:locale element, I create one without the xml:lang attribute and add the required verb-short terms.
b) If there is a single cs:locale element, I add a cs:terms child element if needed, and add the required verb-short terms, unless they're already defined.
c) If there are multiple cs:locale elements, the script throws a warning and skips the style (this case is a bit complicated, and only affected one style: citation-style-language/styles@0c32f32 )

The results of the script are here: citation-style-language/styles@88c78ae

Could @adam3smith and/or @fbennett take a quick peek to check whether this looks okay? If there are no complaints, I'll update the locale files by adding the "by" preposition.

[rmzelle]

Changes to locale files: 92270bb