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Document Preferences

Document preferences decide how a document lays out its citations: which style, which language, whether to romanize, footnotes or endnotes. They are stored in the frontmatter at the top of the document and travel with it.

Managed keys

CiteDesk maintains five permanent keys in the YAML property block at the top of the document; all five are always present:

---
citedesk-style: http://www.zotero.org/styles/apa
citedesk-locale: en-US
citedesk-romanize: source
citedesk-journal-abbreviations: auto
citedesk-note-type: footnotes
---

Three optional keys appear only when they are not empty. They are written by Edit Bibliography; see Edit Bibliography.

You do not need to edit the keys by hand. Press Change on the document card in the right pane to open the Document Preferences window; pressing OK writes the changes back. If the keys are changed elsewhere while the window is open, the window refuses to save and tells you that the document preferences have been changed elsewhere.

Style

The value of citedesk-style is the style ID declared in the style file. Built-in styles and styles you import are treated alike, and all are managed in the style manager on the Cite page of the settings.

The style decides three things: how citation text is written; whether citations go in the text or in footnotes (decided by the style's class, not by you); and whether there is a bibliography. If the style defines no bibliography, the preview says so.

Layout language

citedesk-locale decides which language is used for punctuation, date formats and fixed words such as "et al.". The value is the code of a bundled CSL locale, en-US by default; there is no "automatic" option, because a whole document has exactly one layout language. When a style declares a default language of its own, this field is locked and shows the declared language.

The layout language is a different thing from the language of a reference: the former decides how things are typeset, the latter is part of the reference data.

Romanization

citedesk-romanize is a single switch. all means that names, titles and journal titles are replaced by their recorded romanized values before typesetting; anything else means the original text is used. When it is on, every reference of the document is typeset as English. Romanized values are entered in the reference form; positions without one keep the original.

For example: a Chinese paper citing English references uses a Chinese layout language and leaves romanization off; a manuscript for an English journal that must romanize its Chinese references uses an English layout language and turns romanization on.

Journal abbreviations

When citedesk-journal-abbreviations is auto, places where the style prints an abbreviated journal title use the MEDLINE journal abbreviations; off does not. The switch is shown in the window only when the chosen style uses abbreviated journal titles; its value is saved with the document whether or not it is shown.

Footnotes or endnotes

citedesk-note-type corresponds to Zotero's "Display citations as": footnotes or endnotes. The window shows it only when the style is a note style. It takes effect only when you export a manuscript: Word writes page footnotes or end-of-document endnotes, PDF puts the notes at the foot of the page or at the end, and HTML always puts notes at the end.

Edit Bibliography

The Edit Bibliography window in the right pane (the counterpart of Zotero's window of the same name) can do three things, whose results go into the three optional keys:

  • add references that are not cited in the text to the bibliography: citedesk-bibliography-add;
  • leave cited references out of the bibliography: citedesk-bibliography-omit;
  • change one bibliography entry to what you want it to be: citedesk-bibliography-custom, stored as formatted text.

These affect only the bibliography, not the citations in the text. IDs that cannot be found in the library are kept, shown dimmed in the window and marked "Not in library". When you change a reference ID or merge references, the IDs here change with them. A customized entry is discarded the next time the window opens if its reference is neither cited nor in the add list; changing the style or the language does not invalidate it.

If the chosen style has no bibliography, the application says that the current bibliographic style does not define a bibliography and does not open the window.

A missing style

When the style declared by the document cannot be found on this computer (for example after moving to another computer, or if the style was removed):

  • the document is still displayed, temporarily typeset with the APA style;
  • citedesk-style in the document is left unchanged, and installing the same style brings it back;
  • the preview and the right pane say that the bibliographic style used in this document is missing, with an Install button below: when the style ID is a web address, the button downloads the style from that address. Styles from zotero.org or citationstyles.org are installed directly; other sources ask you first.

An invalid style

When the style is on this computer but cannot be used, you get the message that the style appears to be invalid, followed by the original error, and the document is temporarily typeset with APA while its settings stay unchanged. This means that CSL file itself has a problem: if you wrote it yourself, check it with the official CSL validation tools first; otherwise choose a different style.