Re: [Refdb-devel] latex bibliographies with multiple databases

[David N. <dav...@sw...>]

Hi Markus,

>  > One interesting consequence of this is that author names may contain=
=20
>  > non-ascii characters.  If, when new references are added to refdb, t=
here=20
>  > is no citation key specified, the citekey is constructed by mangling=
=20
>  > primary author surname and year.  If citekey is restricted to ascii =

>  > characters then non-ascii author surname characters would have to be=
=20
>  > stripped or converted (e.g., =E4 -> a, =DF -> ss).
>
> Currently non-ascii characters are simply stripped. You always have
> the option to specify a citation key explicitly when adding a
> reference, using any reasonable translation of the foreign characters
> to ascii.
>  =20

I'd like to focus on this point again.  I personally allow refdb to=20
generate the citekey for me, mainly because it will automatically append =

'a', 'b', etc. if there is danger of duplication.  Automatically=20
stripping non-ascii characters from authors with foreign characters will =

lead to some unusual results.  A recent publication from our old=20
workhorse 'H=E4=DFler' might produce the citekey 'Hler2006'.

There are tools around which attempt to convert sensibly from unicode to =

ascii.  Here is an example using the tool 'konwert':
-------------------------------------------------------------------------=
--------------
$ cat name
H=E4=DFler, G=FCnter
$ cat name | konwert UTF8-ascii
Hassler, Gunter
$
-------------------------------------------------------------------------=
--------------

Use of this (or a similar) tool would result in the much more=20
satisfactory, and easy to remember,  default citekey of 'Hassler2006'. =20
It should be a fairly simple to add this additional conversion step.

Regards,
David.