Re: [Groff] refer macros

[Ted Harding]

Hi again Nicola,

I'm pleased you got going with Andy Dougherty's suggestion.
I have just one comment on your mail.

On 12-Jul-00 Nicola Bernardini wrote:
> I have looked at bib. I have pulled it down from the net, compiled it
> and tried to play with it. While it looks much better than refer, it
> requires (from what I can see) a complete re-organization of the
> bibliographic database and I do not have the time to do it right now.

Mainly, the database format of 'bib' matches that of 'refer',
the main differences being:

- 'bib' has a %F field which can be used to over-ride whatever formatted
  reference string 'bib' would have used;

- 'refer' has a %L field ("label") to specify labels used to
  designate references instead of numbers;

- 'refer' has a %Q field ("Author if not person") while /bib' does not;

- 'bib' has a %W field for "local finding information" which 'refer' has
   not.

- UNIX 'refer' does not honour multiple %E fields ("editor"), while
  'bib' allows multiple editors like multiple authors. I'm not sure
  about how groff 'refer' behaves in this respect: the man page hints
  that it might allow multiple %Es, but I never tried it.

Most of these differences are quite minor, and the only cases which
could cause trouble in moving from 'refer' to 'bib' are %L and %Q,

However, the manner of planting citations in the text is quite different.

So I'm a bit puzzled by "it requires (from what I can see) a complete
re-organization of the bibliographic database" (unless, of course,
you are referring to the citations).

> I have also followed the instructions by Andy Dougherty, and by miracle
> I now have a perfect (or at least it looks like that) mm.refer file
> which I can .mso in my paper file and use it right away. I had to make
> minor modifications to his patch file and everything worked like charm.

That's excellent!
Best wishes,
Ted.

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Date: 12-Jul-00                                       Time: 23:48:25
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