Request for Manual Type

[LineGap]

IEEE style guide makes a distinction between a online book and an online manual. The two are formatted differently. A manual has a period instead of a comma between the author and the title of the manual, and a manual has its date in parentheses.

A CSL file cannot determine if a publication is an online book or an online manual. That decision needs to be made by a human. So a new type is needed for manuals.

Thanks.

[zepinglee]

See https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/item_types_and_fields

Book: A book or similar published item. For government documents, technical reports, manuals, etc., use Report instead. This item type can also be adapted to fit many types of unusual items.

And the CSL spec https://docs.citationstyles.org/en/stable/specification.html#appendix-iii-types.

report A technical report, government report, white paper, brief, or similar work distributed by an institution; Also used for manuals and similar technical documentation (e.g. a software, instrument, or test manual);

[LineGap]

CSL has a report type because reports in some style guides require reports to be formatted significantly different than books, and those differences can't be handled by CSL alone. CSL can't reliably determine a report from a book, so a human needs to. If CSL could do it, you wouldn't need the report type. You could use the book type in Zotero.

The same is true with a manual formatted in the the IEEE style. It is not possible for CSL to distinguish between a manual and a book (or between a manual and a report) because the formatting is significantly different, and CSL can't do it alone. It needs a human to tell it the type. This is not true, however, for most other style guides because they make no or little distinction between a manual and a book, and CSL can easily handle it.

If there is no manual type, the only other way I see it being possible to support IEEE is to have Zotero add a UI field to the book type that the user would use to identify the book as a manual, and then have CSL read that field. But this field would probably be visible for all styles, not just IEEE, So, having the manual type seems to make better sense.

[LineGap]

I think this may explain it better.

An online book begins with an author followed by a comma: Author, An online manual begins with a author followed by a period: Author.

How is CSL to know whether to use a period or a comma?

[bwiernik]

For this case, IEEE uses the same formatting for "Manuals" as for "Software", and their example citations for manuals are generally software. I would recommend using CSL type software for these items.

[bwiernik]

@adam3smith I'd be interested in hearing your perspective here.

[LineGap]

Software has no edition field, but does have a version field. But I doubt new users would know to choose software for online manual, programmer for author, and version for edition. And then choose book for a non-online manual. None of that would be very intuitive. Also keep in mind that IEEE is a very popular style up there with APA and CMOS.

[bwiernik]

In CSL, any item type can have any field.

For Zotero as a specific CSL application, you can add edition to a Software item by entering it in Extra like this: edition: 2

[LineGap]

But Zotero choose what fields to display for an item type.

True, the Extra field is available, but a Zotero user wouldn't necessarily know whether CSL was reading the field, what the field was being used for, or know which other fields are being used for other purposes.

[LineGap]

If IEEE wasn't very popular, I might understand picking the software type, using Extra, or other fields for other purposes. But IEEE is very popular and is used in academia and throughout the mathematics, science, and engineering community. If APA or CMOS was needing a new type, I don't think a work-around would be satisfactory either.

[LineGap]

I downloaded the newest version of Zotero v7, but it still does not have a media field for books (or a new type for manuals) to support IEEE style guide. :(