Further discussion on this topic should probably take place in it's own thread, but as for my opinion on the CSL development process (apologies for the long ramble):
While there are known limitations in CSL 1.0.1, it's been proven to be a sturdy release, and having sporadic releases has its advantages. It simplifies maintenance and distribution of our styles and locale files (since we just maintain files for the latest CSL release), it makes it easier to share styles and locale files between applications (since they're usually on the same version), and CSL processors become more thoroughly tested and stable. If we had rolling releases there would be all kinds of compatibility problems. I personally haven't minded the slow progress of development in the past two years. It was a nice break, and allowed us to focus on improving our CSL infrastructure and curating our repositories. Since the release of 1.0.1, we've gained thousands of styles (http://pinux.info/csls_counter/), we have created a workflow to generate the majority of our dependent styles from spreadsheet data (https://github.com/citation-style-language/utilities/tree/master/generate_dependent_styles), we started using Travis-CI to get and keep our style and locale repos in tip-top shape (https://travis-ci.org/citation-style-language/styles/), created a separate distribution style repo that only gets updated if Travis is happy (https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles-distribution), we started keeping track of renamed styles (https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles-distribution/blob/master/renamed-styles.json), and we have a nice new validator (http://validator.citationstyles.org/). In early 2013 I even checked every style by hand (about 3000 at that time), adding ISSNs where possible, and verifying that all the journals for which we had styles were still active. One reason for not implementing certain features in CSL 1.0 and 1.0.1 was that we couldn't come up with an elegant solution, or weren't ready to commit to a certain design path. Frank Bennett's forging ahead with Multilingual Zotero has been an ongoing experiment and playground for making certain extensions to CSL, and his user feedback will be very valuable in directing future CSL development. So, that said, I do think it's getting time to start preparing for another release. In this light: I'm working to update the CSL primer and migrate it to http://docs.citationstyles.org/. Once that is done, I'm planning to move the specification there as well. Since the contents of http://docs.citationstyles.org/ is automatically generated from the reStructuredText sources, and supports versioning, this should make it much easier to develop the CSL specification and having a rendered copy of the "master" branch at all times. I won't deny that Zotero and CSL have a special relationship, for which there are many reasons. Zotero was the first big project to use CSL, Simon co-developed CSL in the early days, many other CSL developers come from Zotero, the Zotero forums are one of the most active places on the web to discuss CSL, Zotero's open source nature makes it easy to study the Zotero-CSL interface, etc. But we're keenly aware that CSL is in wide use, and I think everybody here is committed not to give Zotero an unfair advantage by focusing purely on Zotero/CSL compatibility. We'll continue our process of proposing every change to CSL on the xbiblio list, and try to reach consensus on all changes. The way I expect things to happen is that, once Zotero starts focusing on its metadata model, most discussion will first take place on the zotero-bits repo. Based on the conclusions draw there, we'll propose a neat list of changes to CSL here on this list, and ask for comments/feedback/approval. There should be plenty of time for the vetting process. Zotero has kept the same metadata model for years, so we can take a few months. We'll probably coordinate a CSL release somewhat with Zotero, but give plenty of notice not to surprise anybody. Of course, this doesn't prohibit anybody from independently proposing changes on this mailing list in the meantime. Everybody is welcome to participate at the zotero-bits repo as well. In relation to what Bruce said, I would like CSL to provide more guidance on what the role is of the different item types, and which metadata fields should be available for each type. If we do prepare documentation and/or a schema for this, I expect we would take the new Zotero/CSL mapping as a starting point, and try to create a canonical version based on that. As for other changes to CSL: I'm happy to continue managing the CSL project, but I personally won't be pushing as hard for further changes to CSL as I once did a few years ago. So if anybody feels development is too slow, feel free to bug me or the xbiblio list, or step up yourself. Rintze On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 2:15 PM, Sebastian Karcher <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Robert, > > that maybe needs clarification: we will never just "filter down" > Zotero changes to CSL. Before we make changes to CSL, we will propose > them here, will have a period for comments on spec changes and will > talk about a time-table for implementation. > > Where Zotero comes in is mainly that it makes sense to think about > some changes in how they interact with a reference manager, if they > require changes there, etc. We've implemented some changes > significantly ahead of Zotero (dataset item type, the various > "original-" variable) and there's little reason we couldn't do that > again. So the Zotero item/field revamp is mainly a good opportunity to > take this on. See Avram's link for details so far. The tags there > should help to distinguish items that are only relevant to Zotero from > CSL-related issues. > So, along the lines of what Bruce says, this really shouldn't be a > "filtering down from Zotero" process at all. The main reason Zotero > comes up is that Rintze, me, and Frank are all most familiar with > Zotero, so we're using that as a way to think about CSL changes. But > any other reference manager related input as to what is needed in CSL > is just as welcome. > > For any changes in functionality that aren't directly related to > reference managers (things like "idem" for example), we'd of course > work closely with implementers, and given that Frank's citeproc-js is, > for all intents and purposes, the benchmark there, you're in the front > seat anyway. > > Hope that makes sense. > > Sebastian > > > On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 11:39 AM, Robert Knight > <[email protected]> wrote: >> Hi Rintze, Sebastian, >> >> Thank-you once again for your continued work on the project. Your >> proposal sounds good to me and >> I think you're best placed to judge how to use it. >> >>> While development of >>> CSL has been quiet before the flurry of activity we expect once Zotero >>> starts revisiting its metadata model, >> >> Is there any background info on this that you would recommend reading? >> If changes to Zotero's model filter down to CSL then it will likely >> affect Mendeley as well and future interoperability >> between documents authored with plugins from one tool or the other. >> >> Regards, >> Rob. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Comprehensive Server Monitoring with Site24x7. Monitor 10 servers for $9/Month. Get alerted through email, SMS, voice calls or mobile push notifications. Take corrective actions from your mobile device. http://p.sf.net/sfu/Zoho _______________________________________________ xbiblio-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xbiblio-devel
