Re: Formatting bibliography with mom and refer

[Peter Schaffter]

On Tue, Feb 02, 2021, - - wrote:
> I'm not quite sure what's decided by refer and what by mom
> regarding the format of the references in my bibliography list.

The formatting of references is controlled by mom (order of fields,
punctuation, italics).

> I currently have no idea how to affect the order of the fields.
...
> Is there anyway to include the field/change the reference label
> format in general with macros or do I need to dive into the tmac
> files?

Mom generates references in MLA style, which is hardcoded into
mom's macro file, om.tmac.  Making changes requires making changes
in that file.  The order of fields is set in the 'ref*specs' macro;
punctuation and spacing are determined by the various 'ref*add-<f>'
macros, where <f> is the single-letter field identifier.

If you're new to groff, you'll like find mucking about in om.tmac a
bit intimidating, the 'refer' section particularly, however the code
is well commented.  Ask if you have any questions whatsoever.

> I have a reference database file containing mainly web site
> references but the site URL inserted to %u field is not shown in
> the output document in anyway and that's a big problem for me.

I imagine the missing %u is because you're using an old version of
mom, most likely the one that shipped with your groff installation.
The %u bug was reported and fixed a while ago.  Grab a copy of the
most recent version of mom from

  https://www.schaffter.ca/mom/mom-2.4-4_e.tar.gz

and replace your version of om.tmac with the one in the package.
Again, if you have questions, ask.

-- 
Peter Schaffter
https://www.schaffter.ca