Titles

[bdarcus]

As I've been experimenting (see #100), titles turn out to be deceptively tricky.

The way CSL 1.0 works, we have:

• title (the title of the cited work)
• container-title (the title of the containing parent work, periodical, etc.)

The problem is, formatting of each of those depends on their type; hence a primary reason for the conditional.

For example, it's extremely common to render component titles quoted, and otherwise render them in italics.

With #100, I now have this:

bibliography: 
  template:
    - contributor: author
      form: long
    - date: issued
      form: year
    - title: title # QUESTION
    - title: parent-monograph # NOTE
      prefix: In 
      emph: true
    - title: parent-serial # NOTE
      emph: true
    - date: issued
      form: month-day
    - number: volume
    - variable: doi

The "note": these components only render if there's a value for them. So in effect, they are simple conditionals.

The "question": what to do with the main title?

Options:

1. add top-level config options for this, per #104, which are in effect like standardized 1.0 macros
2. split that title type into two (monograph-title and component-title probably), just like in #100 for the parent title; could easily be extended later to include additional conditions, like type

The first is probably more complex, the second would result in more verbose templates.

PS - I am aware of needing to think about related titles other than parents/containers; ideally they can be easily added.

[bdarcus]

If and when you have time, @denismaier, any thoughts on titles?

[denismaier]

Just a quick question for clarification: what do you mean with main title?

[bdarcus]

Yeah: I can see that's ambiguous.

The work title; CSL 1.0 "title".

Main and sub stuff will be handled the same as the dates example above: with the "form" field.

The "title" values just specify which data to get. So this is just saying, if there's a serial parent title, use it.

title: parent-serial

I'm really trying to find a way to avoid a 1.0-like conditional.

[bdarcus]

Reading through some of the history, to avoid making a dumb mistake ...

Here's the original discussion thread that documents the decision to add macros.

https://sourceforge.net/p/xbiblio/mailman/xbiblio-devel/thread/D221FAB5-D1A8-47F5-98A9-E1EE825641E6%40simonster.com/#msg3519484

Substitution and title requirements (different formatting when substituted; not now supported here, and may be tricky with this approach), and why the conditional:

https://sourceforge.net/p/xbiblio/mailman/xbiblio-devel/thread/C123BC3B.17AD1%25simon%40simonster.com/#msg3519323

Note: I think the conditional design (BTW, Simon suggested calling it this rather than choose at that point) is maybe a consequence of it's being XML, and can be different here if we need it. See #20 for details.

Why we ditched the required article, book, chapter "fallback" templates:

https://sourceforge.net/p/xbiblio/mailman/xbiblio-devel/thread/5222DFE8-7FE4-4C5F-BBFA-29116282E996%40muohio.edu/#msg3519424](https://sourceforge.net/p/xbiblio/mailman/xbiblio-devel/thread/fbb7c5df0907040952r7e0c9ae8hbe9050916e0a4099%40mail.gmail.com/#msg22959134)

A suggested list of standardized macro names:

https://sourceforge.net/p/xbiblio/mailman/message/18358554/

Aside: this quote of mine seems to have stuck in the back of my brain!

It's a bad idea IMHO to treat publisher and place as ... flat fields in ways that are inconsistent with other structures (notably contributor).

A publisher is an organization responsible for distributing some citable thing. It has a name, and it has an address (place).

Initial upshot of the above suggests these make sense

• publisher as a contributor
• explicit typing of template components
• adding conditions to the template components; it will have some limitations, I think, but should work
• keeping something like macros, but also some standardized parameters etc (e.g. add the former)

For titles:

Still thinking on this given the above.

[denismaier]

Ok, a couple of ideas:

• use macros instead of rendering the title directly. In this macro, using conditionals wouldn't be to painful, or would it?

• I think the pattern matching idea could be quite nice. It's actually close to what biblatex does: https://github.com/plk/biblatex/blob/083c54d7ab9e09d254c5b0ce1b508fd10074e48c/tex/latex/biblatex/biblatex.def#L579C32-L579C32 defines the field formats for the title (first the default format, then diverging formats for special types). In styles you'll then just use \printfield to actually print the title using the defined format. (I think there's a way to override it if that should be necessary.)

• regarding conditionals: one way to go could be to provide conditionals, but also some syntactic sugar.

By the way, while we're at titles, biblatex also has a booktitle and a maintitle, so there should probably another level in the hierarchy.

[bdarcus]

The BibLaTeX examples are indeed interesting. They basically use type lists for the conditions; something like:

- title: title
  types: [ article, post ]

... biblatex also has a booktitle and a maintitle, so there should probably another level in the hierarchy.

Would not booktitle basically be this parent-monograph?

And what's maintitle?

Another option there is to add the relation field.

- title: main
  relation: parent

[denismaier]

Bruce D'Arcus. An essay concerning reference lists. In Collected Works, Vol. 5: On citations and references... Book title: volume title Maintitle: Collected Works

So, just another level in the hierarchy.

[bdarcus]

I think, on reflection, the primary issue is only with primary titles.

Given my general uncertainty about whether we really need a template conditional, and what the ideal design should be, my impulse is to be more minimal early on; something like at the top-level

  titles:
    primary:
    - class: component # chapter and article titles render the same
      type: [article, chapter] # just for illustration; probably wouldn't need here
      style: [quote]
    default:
      style: [emph]

Final decisions on what all this should look like would really need input and testing from domain experts (e.g. style authors/editors), and/or #29 #45, but I need a reasonable solution now to actually implement a basic Chicago style.