Re: [Refdb-users] Re: The case against <middlename>

[Markus H. <mar...@mh...>]

Justus H. Piater writes:
 > In general, I think that structure should be defined by markup and not
 > by string parsing conventions (that's what XML is for after all:
 > unambiguous definition of structure).

I strongly support this. The only problem we're facing currently is
that RefDB tries to stay compatible with RIS which does not allow this
unambiguous markup. This is only going to change when RefDB switches
to a different data model (most likely a variant of MODS). Then we'll
have a chance to get this right. I'm admittedly not too happy with the
way MODS deals with names. It essentially allows the same murky markup
that keeps all sorts of name parts in a single element.

 > On the other hand, multiple
 > names that belong together and should be treated equally may perhaps
 > be kept together, as it avoids tons of markup and is easily parsed by
 > spaces or hyphens.
 > 
 > Thus, I propose something like the following:
 > 
 > <personal>James</personal>
 > <given>C.</given>
 > <given>D.</given>
 > <family>Scott</family>
 > 
 > <personal>Raman</personal>
 > 
 > <given>F.</given>
 > <personal>John</personal>
 > <family>Smith</family>
 > 
 > <personal>Jean-Fran=E7ois</personal>
 > <family>Dubois</family>
 > 
 > <personal>Jos=E9 Antonio</personal>
 > <family>Garcia Fernandez</family>
 > 
 > I'd prefer to put each name into a separate element, but that would
 > require a surrounding element to group them together, along with a way
 > to specify the separator (space? dash?).
 > 

I don't think that dashes ever cause problems. In my understanding, a
name using a dash is an entity. Therefore the separator would always
be a space if one is required by the bibliography style.

Does anyone have real-life examples of names along the lines of
"F. John Smith" in a journal that uses full first and initialized
middle names? This would indeed be the best proof why first and middle
names (or whatever you call them) need to be distinguishable.

regards,
Markus

-- 
Markus Hoenicka
mar...@ca...
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