Re: [Docutils-users] Scientific article example

[Alan G I. <ai...@am...>]

> On 10/17/11 4:35 PM, Alan G Isaac wrote:
>> see Bibtex's conventions.

On 10/17/2011 5:11 PM, Paul Tremblay wrote:
> that undermines the whole purpose of having
> a bibliographic system.

Are you familiar with BibTeX?
I hardly think you can make that case.

> If I followed your recommendation, and I had 500 entries,
> I would have to re-type all 500 entries.

Not at all. You would have *one* database.  The entries
would be **formatted** based on a style file.  This is
the BibTeX approach.  (It is also the approach used
by bibstuff to format citations.)

> we could mix the pattern if there was only a page number.
> The page number is simply the text after the citation:

It is better to say what it is.
If it is a page number, say so explicitly.
Don't rely on a convention that may mystify others.

> I cannot use bibtex because I do not use LaTeX. RST is
> supposed to be more than a front end for LaTeX, right?

Yes, but it's inadequate citation handling is an
acknowledged shortcoming and, in fact, there is no developer
commitment (at this point) to change that.  However you can
still get part of what you want from bibstuff.

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

There may be many citation references to the same citation.
Each reference instance may need information specific
to that instance. (The most common example is a page
number.) We need some way to provide such instance specific
information while still referencing a shared citation.
That is the reason for my proposal, which has **absolutely
nothing** to say about formatting of the output.

I want to stress that I am a user, not a developer, and that
to my memory only Guenter has expressed much interest in
seeing an improvement in citation support.  (I think David
at one point even doubted the appropriateness of attempting this.)

Cheers,
Alan