Re: [Groff] refer question

[Peter Schaffter]

On Fri, Apr 01, 2005, Ted Harding wrote:
> I understand that the MLA style is the general "norm" for
> publications in the Humanities, to the extent that many
> Humanities journals either strongly recommend it or insist
> on it.
> 
> To your above list you could also add, for instance, the
> AMA (American Mathematical Association) style, used in
> JAMA. There are so many! One of the principal merits of
> specialised bibliography programs is that they can be
> configured (using a syntax-like "style file") to adhere
> to a specified standard.

I was considering setting up various bibliographic styles which
could be accessed from within the mom macros, but once I became
aware of how many styles there are, I decided it would be an
inefficient use of time.

> This is one reason I've never much liked using {g|t}roffs
> "refer". While it has the feature that you can set up a
> database using standard tags, and refer to items in this
> in various natural ways in your text, it is distinctly
> inflexible when it comes to changing style.

Actually, since I've started adapting the s.tmac refer module, I'm
surprised at how flexible it actually is.  Not "flexible and fast,"
just flexible.  There's a lot of painstaking work involved.  Still,
I'm not unhappy with it in this regard.  Yet.

-- 
Peter Schaffter
  Author of _The Schumann Proof_ (RendezVous Press, Canada)
  http://www.golden.net/~ptpi/theschumannproof.html