Contributor type vs category [#2305823]

I'm trying to figure out how contributor types and categories are supposed to be used.

A few oddities I noticed :
- Categories are replicated in the roles options on the biblio edit form
- No matter what the publication type is, all of the roles are present in the options (i.e. I have the supervisor role for thesis type, and it also appears when creating a book)
- It seems only the contributor category has an effect on the displayed values based on the field configuration for that publication type (in misc/biblio.field.type.data.csv)

IMHO, category should have the options "Person / Corporation / Institution" while roles should be defined according to each publication type (i.e. for Book : Primary author / Secondary Author / Editor / Translator)

Comments

Comment #1

PascalAnimateur commented 18 July 2014 at 18:08

Comment #2

vegardjo commented 28 November 2014 at 14:33

Any luck here? I guess the mapping between author category and display is defined by some standard, but I can't find any ducumentation on it.

For instance, the category set in node edit and what is viewed in the tabular view of the node (category on authors in edit view to the left, display on the right):

..for a film

Primary = Authors
Secondary = Series Director
Tertiary = Producer
Subsidiary = Performers
Corporate/Institutional = Corporate Authors

..and for a book

Primary = Authors
Secondary = Series Editor
Tertiary = Tertiary Authors
Subsidiary = Translator
Corporate/Institutional = Corporate Authors

..and for a thesis

Primary = Authors
Secondary = Secondary Authors
Tertiary = Advisor
Subsidiary = Subsidiary Authors
Corporate/Institutional = Corporate Authors

So, what decides this? And how can it be explained to the users adding entries? My preferred solution would be that the category labels changed when you changed the publication type, to reflect what would be displayed, but if this cannot be done we need to refer to some documentation for what is what.

Making this even more confusing is the role, as you can have a primary (category) and an editor (role), but this will never show anywhere. However, for some types, if you set a secondary (category) and (author) role, it will actually display as editor..

Any pointers much appreciated! :)