Re: [Refdb-users] "formatting" vs "information"

[Marc H. <mar...@fr...>]

On Sat, 10 Jan 2004, Markus Hoenicka wrote:

> Marc Herbert writes:
>  >       We had one problem only Janet knew we faced bankruptcy
>  >
>  >   Have you decided? Now consider this string again with differing
>  >   punctuation:
>  >
>  >       We had one problem: only Janet knew we faced bankruptcy.
>  >       We had one problem only: Janet knew we faced bankruptcy.
>  >       We had one problem only, Janet knew: we faced bankruptcy.
>  >       We had one problem only Janet knew we faced: bankruptcy.
>  >
>
> This is analogous to the punctuation in names as separators in an
> input format. The parser in your brain needs the punctuation in order
> to understand the intended meaning of these sentences. The parser in a
> reference manager needs the periods/spaces in order to understand the
> name parts (that is, if you use an odd input format like RIS that does
> not have better means to separate the parts, like XML). That's why they
> need to be consistent and independent of the personal taste of the
> person who carries that name.

Yeah, and that's why periods suck as a separator. Because:
- for RIS, the period is a separator;
- for some publishers, it's a decoration ("formatting")
- for authors, it's a *consistent* way to inform about an
abbreviation, independent of their personal taste (well... not for
Truman, granted)

This is too much asking from the period sign. Clashes are impossible
to avoid. 1st and 2nd dashes co-exist peacefully in refdb. My patch
drops them in favor of dash 3, because I don't care about the _given_
name parsing in refdb. That's all. Don't take offense because I
dropped a part of your code. I still enjoy all the rest very much.


> As your example above shows, you can't
> move punctuation around in English sentences just because you'd
> personally like to have it somewhere else. The same applies to names.

Agreed: a period after a capital means an abbreviation, so a lack of
period means... no abbreviation! You can't just pop it up or down for
RIS- or publishers reasons. This is my point of view. Of course,
the (your) point of view of a RIS parser is totally different and
incompatible with mine. So what?

I am not trying to convince you that "I am right", just trying to make
you discover and understand a different point of view. Please stop
trying to prove that my point of view is non-sense (or do it for
good). It's just a slighty different use of your software. May I?



Cheers,

Marc.