Re: Refer database fields (was: Re: Why does refer(1) have no database field for =?UTF-8?Q?=20"edition"?)?=

[G. Branden Robinson]

Hi  Pierre-Jean,

I'm following up privately as well as to the list in case you're not
subscribed.  I apologize for the intrusion if it is one.

Also I think I misunderstood one of your points and I wanted to clear it
up.  (I made some minor formatting changes for line length purposes.)

At 2021-08-11T00:14:43+1000, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> Hi, Pierre-Jean!
> 
> At 2021-08-09T13:42:39+0200, pierrejean.fichet@posteo.net wrote:
> > To add to the discussion concerning refer, here is an excerpt of my
> > past work and choices on that subject.
> > 
> > There's an ISO standart which defines the needed and optional fields
> > of a bibliography list, as well as their order: ISO-690.
> > 
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_690
> > 
> > It's unfortunately not much used, and even worst, not freely
> > available... But the idea to define fields and their order and let
> > the choice of typography and punctuation to the user is valuable.
> 
> Agreed on all points.  I find proprietary standards to be dubious
> things.
> 
> > For my thesis, I had to hack refer to make it sort the bibliography
> > list according to the order of fields defined by that standart.
> 
> Yes, this is certainly something for which a communication channel is
> needed to the preprocessor, to suit the many different citation styles
> that control this aspect of formatting as well.
> 
> > I needed the following fields, that I implemented in u-ref.tmac, for
> > utmac:
> > 
> > %H information about the publication (first edition, french edition,
> > etc.)
> 
> This would serve the need I raised (for an edition number) just fine.
> 
> > %h heading of the section in which the citation appears.
> > 
> > %M the collection in which the book in published.
> 
> Doesn't %B already do this?
> 
>        %B     For an article that is part of a book, the title of the
>               book.

I retract this.  If I undersand you correctly, we might use %M for
things like the "Loeb Classical Library" series, or, perhaps, George R.
R.  Martin's _Song of Ice and Fire_.

> > %P total number of pages of the book.
> 
> This collides with an existing usage.
> 
>        %P     Page number.  A range of pages can be specified as m-n.
> 
> > %p page of the citation.
> 
> Any chance you might consider swapping %p and %P in utmac?  Also,
> because I'm curious, is there really a citation format that demands
> the total number of pages in the book?  :-O  (Checking your Wikipedia
> URL...it's apparently the ISO 690 practice for citing an entire work.
> Good grief.)
> 
> > %U co-author, translator, etc.
> 
> For GNU refer(1) I think we'd want to tighten the semantics of this to
> just the translator; %A already supports multiple authors.
> 
>        %A     The name of an author.  If the name contains a suffix
>               such as “Jr.”, it should be separated from the last name
>               by a comma.  There can be multiple occurrences of the %A
>               field.  The order is significant.  It is a good idea al‐
>               ways to supply an %A field or a %Q field.
> 
> > %w which kind of electronic document (CDROM, online, etc.)
> > 
> > %x url of an electronic document.
> > 
> > %y update date of an electronic document.
> > 
> > %z last access to an electronic document.
> 
> I think most of your extensions seem sound, with the exceptions of %B
> and %P, and with a tweak to %U.
> 
> > I also implemented:
> > 
> > - two formats: one for notes, and another for the bibliography list,
> 
> I think there's already infrastructure for this but it might not be
> sufficiently developed in groff's macro packages.
> 
> > - a contextual substitution of the references by "ibid." or "op. cit.
> > p. xx."
> 
> No loc. cit.?  ;-)
> 
> For reference, here's how the field letters were "standardized" in the
> old days[1].
> 
>  %A Author's name
>  %B Book containing article referenced
>  %C City (place of publication)
>  %D Date of publication
>  %E Editor of book containing article referenced
>  %F Footnote number or label (supplied by \fIrefer\fP\|)
>  %G Government order number
>  %H Header commentary, printed before reference
>  %I Issuer (publisher)
>  %J Journal containing article
>  %K Keywords to use in locating reference
>  %L Label field used by \fB\-k\fP option of \fIrefer\fP
>  %M Bell Labs Memorandum (undefined)
>  %N Number within volume
>  %O Other commentary, printed at end of reference
>  %P Page number(s)
>  %Q Corporate or Foreign Author (unreversed)
>  %R Report, paper, or thesis (unpublished)
>  %S Series title
>  %T Title of article or book
>  %V Volume number
>  %X Abstract \(em used by \fIroffbib\fP, not by \fIrefer\fP
>  %Y,Z ignored by \fIrefer\fP
> 
> At a glance, these semantics were unchanged from 4.2BSD (1983) through
> to 4.4BSD (1994).
> 
> We can see here how %F, %M, and %X got freed up.  (GNU refer(1) now
> calls "%X" the "annotation".)
> 
> Regards,
> Branden
> 
> [1] https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.2BSD/usr/man/man1/addbib.1

Regards,
Branden

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