| Authors: | Frank Bennett |
|---|
The Citation Style Language (CSL) is an XML grammar for expressing the detailed requirements of a citation style. A CSL processor is a tool that generates citations and bibliographies by applying CSL style rules to bibliographic data.
The citeproc-js CSL processor is over a decade in service, a fact
that shows through in ways both good and bad. On the downside, the
code base is not pretty, and can serve as a solid
illustration of the burden of technical debt (in case you need one of
those for your computer science class). On the upside, though,
citeproc-js passes a suite of over 1,300 integration tests with flying
colors. When run in CSL-M mode [1] it can handle multilingual and
legal content with a flexibility and precision unrivaled by any other
tool at any price. And it has been quite heavily field-tested, as the
citation formatter driving word processor integration in both
Mendeley and Zotero.
More important than fleeting badges of popularity, though, is the CSL
standard. Developers can take comfort in the technical strength of the
CSL Specification, and
the existence of other processors under active
development. CSL is the modern way to handle bibliographic projects,
and citeproc-js is a convenient way to take advantage of it.
If you think you have found a processor bug, you can help track it down by submitting a test item or items that expose the error. To submit an item, join the public Jurism Test Submission group <https://www.zotero.org/groups/2339078/jurism_test_submissions>, sync, create a collection named for the style that shows the error, drop the item into it, jot a description of the problem in the Abstract field, and sync again.
For errors not associated with a particular style or item, file reports on the citeproc-js GitHub tracker <https://github.com/juris-m/citeproc-js/issues>.
The processor files citeproc.js` and citeproc_commonjs.js are built
automatically when tests are run (see below).
The processor is supported by a little over 1,300 test fixtures, which
can be run from a git clone of this repository after installing the
Citeproc Test Runner. The system requirements (apart from git itself) are:
git- Needed to fetch a clone of the
citeproc-jsrepository on GitHub.node.js- Any recent-ish version should work. Version 7 is used for automated testing.
mocha- Install Mocha globally with
npm install --global mocha.java- This is used to perform schema validation. Browser extension is not required, a basic command-line install is all you need.
Once the system requirements are set up, install the test runner with the following command:
npm install -g citeproc-test-runner
You can now run the full suite of integration tests from the citeproc-js directory
with the following command:
cslrun -a
You can review the full set of options by running``cslrun -h``. For more information on running tests, see the citeproc-js Manual or the README of the Citeproc Test Runner
The processor itself is contained in a single file. Two copies are in
the repository: citeproc_commonjs.js (an ES6 module); and
citeproc.js (a raw bundle of JavaScript). The former is
probably what you will want for most purposes today.
The following command will pull the sources of the processor and supporting files:
git clone --recursive https://github.com/Juris-M/citeproc-js.git
Directories of the repository contain a number of tools used for development and testing:
src- Processor source files. These are bundled into the two processor
copies by the test script
cslrun, distributed separately in theciteproc-test-runnerpackage vianpm(see below for details). csl-schemata- The RelaxNG schemata for CSL and CSL-M. These are used to validate style code. The schemata are not used directly by the processor at runtime.
demo- Contains a simple example of processor configuration in a Web environment. Can be viewed by running a local webserver in the directory.
docs- Source files for the
citeproc-jsmanual on ReadTheDocs. fixtures/local- Integration test fixtures specific to the
citeproc-jsprocessor or to the CSL-M grammar variant. fixtures/std- Standard CSL integration tests from the Citation Style Language repository.
fixtures/styles- Style-level tests. For more information, see the citeproc-js Manual or the README of the Citeproc Test Runner
juris-modules- Jurisdiction modules. These are used to CSL-M mode to render legal citations in country-specific forms.
locale- The standard locale files from the CSL project.
tools- An assortment of scripts that are used, or have been used at some point,
in the maintenance of
citeproc-js.
| [1] | CSL-M is set of private extensions to official CSL used by the Jurism reference manager, a variant of Zotero. For more information, see the citeproc-js Manual |