Re: [Docutils-users] Scientific article example

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

On 10/17/11 6:28 PM, Alan G Isaac wrote:
> On 10/17/2011 6:10 PM, Paul Tremblay wrote:
>> within the text, you have to include info not in the database--such as page and volume number
>
> Right.  And we need the developers to choose a simple
> yet easily extensible syntax for that.  I hope that
> my proposal of terminal, braces-delimited text within
> a citation reference will receive developer consideration.
>
> It is important that people like you are making the point
> that this functionality would be a very desirable addition to reST.
> It would be nice even to have an agreement in principle
> on that from the current developers.
>
>
I agree. I think the reason this has not been implemented yet is that 
such a system is complicated. Can someone help me out--I believe this is 
the case. Not only would there have to be agreement on the actual 
"instance" (what you call the page number, etc.), but agreement on how 
to create a database, and then how to manage the formatting. It gets 
incredible tricky. For example, you might have:

[author 33]_ .....text [author 55]_

Many styles require that you format these as:

last name, first name *book* pub, year (etc.), p 33

Ibid p 55

So you actually have to look at the previous entry and see if it matches 
completely (in which case you use "ibid,"), or if it just matches the 
author, in which case you use "ibid, p 55."  Then you have to write 
different rules for the dozens and dozens of different styles.

I believe this is the reason it has not been implemented yet.

Paul