Re: [Docutils-users] Scientific article example

[Paul T. <pau...@gm...>]

On 10/17/11 4:35 PM, Alan G Isaac wrote:
>>> My view is that your citation should specify the volume,
>>> although obviously your field may have a different
>>> practice.  In any case [mykey{page:197,volume:2}]_ does
>>> what you want.
>> No, not at all, because that undermines the whole purpose
>> of bibliographic management, that you specify the minimal
>> data, and let the formatter format it. In this case, there
>> are two different bits of data, along with the key: the
>> page number, and the volume. MLA may require that you
>> write "p. 55, vol. 2" whereas another publication may
>> require that you write "page:197, Volume:2".
> In that case, use a different key for each citation,
> and then use a style that formats that key in any way you find useful.
> So you really should be creating a separate **database entry** for each
> volume, and then rely on a formatter-style for citation creation.
> E.g., see Bibtex's conventions.

But again, that undermines the whole purpose of having a bibliographic 
system. A bibliographic system should do the formatting for me, without 
my having to enter in a new database for each style. If I followed your 
recommendation, and I had 500 entries, I would have to re-type all 500 
entries. What would be the point of having a bibliographic system? The 
idea behind bibliographic management is to avoid such redundancy. 
Theoretically, I would be able to write on RST document and submit it to 
a journal. I should be able to choose the formatting of my citations. 
Then, if I needed to submit my article to another journal that required 
a different style, I would not have to change anything; I could simply 
choose a different style.
>> but I'm not sure what you mean by "too implicit."
> You are proposing conventions that are not unambiguous
> and (as a result) not readily extensible.

I don't see how you can say this. I already provide one line of code 
that can clearly parse the information in a non ambiguous way. I 
actually like your way, but stated we could mix the pattern if there was 
only a page number. The page number is simply the text after the citation:

if "}" not in cit_text:
     fields = cit_text.split()
     if len(fields) > 1:
         page_num = fields[1]
     else:
         # parse {page:x} etc

There is nothing ambiguous about that.
>
> Be sure to distinguish citations and citation references.
> As things stand, it is already possible to handle citation
> formatting using e.g. bibstuff.  You can also use bibstuff
> to substitute text for citation references, to a certain
> extent.  The problem is that that reST provides no syntax
> for associating *instance-specific* information with a
> particular instance of a citation reference.  I'm just
> proposing a *syntax* for doing that.  It has *no* implications
> for what will be done with that info (e.g., how it will be
> formatted).
>
>
I assume a citation has to be formatted in some way, beyond a key word. 
That is certainly the case for many articles in the humanities. I cannot 
use bibtex because I do not use LaTeX. RST is supposed to be more than a 
front end for LaTeX, right?

You write: "The problem is that that reST provides no syntax
for associating *instance-specific*"

Sorry, but I really don't know what you mean by "instance-specific."

Paul