Re: Why does refer(1) have no database field for "edition"?

[Tadziu Hoffmann]

> > Why does refer(1) have no database field for "edition"?

> The lacuna isn't in refer(1), but in the macro packages using it.
> Any %c, where c is an alphabetic character, can be used to create
> a field refer(1) understands.  It is up to macro writers to work
> out the the formatting and placement within a refer(1) citation or
> bibliography entry.

Certainly it can be extended, but it would be useful if
there were some general agreement on which character to use
(preferably something mnemonic;  "E" is already taken by
"editor"), unless you are satisfied with a solution that
works only with one macro package (if competing approaches
are taken by the writers of different macro packages).

Sticking it onto the end of the title field is ugly, because
one might like the title to be printed in italics, whereas the
edition is "meta information" and should therefore perhaps be
in the regular font.  Making the macro parse the content of a
field to extract this kind of information is also unappealing,
because that is the whole purpose of having different fields
in the first place.

There is also no field for "type" (i.e., article, book,
etc.), so refer has to infer this information from the
presence/absence of other fields...