Re: [Docutils-develop] More bibliographic fields: `translator` / `translators` ?

[Adam C. <ad...@ch...>]

On Wed, 24 Jul 2002 01:17:05 -0400 David Goodger
<go...@us...> wrote:

> Adam Chodorowski wrote:
> > What do you think about adding an/two extra bibliographic fields, namely
> > `translator` and `translators`?
> 
> I think something could be done to accommodate this.  I've been thinking of
> adding other fields, such as "reference" (for web site URLs).  I believe
> Tony Ibbs would like to see "dedication".
> 
> Perhaps, in addition to the current fixed set of recognized fields, we could
> have a generic bibliographic field where both the field name and the field
> body are user-specified.  The set of recognized fields are useful, since
> many have specialized processing.  But currently, if there's an unrecognized
> field in the bibliographic field list, it's left out of the "docinfo"
> element as a field of a separate, ordinary field list (the original field
> list is split in two).  Maybe it's time to rethink that, and make a
> general-purpose solution instead of tacking on individual cases one after
> another.  Adding a field_list field to the content model of "docinfo" would
> do the trick.  Then "docinfo" itself could be thought of as a specialized
> field_list.

Yes, I think this is a very good idea. People are bound to come up with some
extra bibliographic fields they would like to use, so this is the only good
way to accomodate all of them.

However, there is a slight problem for handling fields which contain list of
eg. names (as "authors" does and "translators" would do) as this is a totally
specialized thing currently. I think it would make sense to create a general
inline markup for "horizontal lists" (field lists, bulleted lists, etc being
vertical ones) one could use in this (and other cases). This way people could
even add their own "authors"-style bibliographic fields, and get them
processed automatically in a similar way...

---
Adam Chodorowski <ad...@ch...>

Remember, any design flaw you're sufficiently snide about becomes a feature.
    -- Dan Sugalski