Re: [xbiblio-devel] abbreviations: a question for Frank

[Frank B. <bie...@gm...>]

On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 2:16 PM, Bruce D'Arcus <bd...@gm...> wrote:
> "
>
> On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 7:06 AM, Frank Bennett <bie...@gm...> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 10:10 AM, Sylvester Keil <syl...@ke...> wrote:
>> > Hi Andrea,
>> >
>> > On Nov 4, 2011, at 11:06 AM, andrea rossato wrote:
>> >
>> >> Hi Frank,
>> >>
>> >> I'm going to implement abbreviation support using citeproc-js as a
>> >> model:
>> >> http://gsl-nagoya-u.net/http/pub/citeproc-doc.html#getabbreviations
>> >>
>> >> and I have a question. The first key of the list is "default": what are
>> >> other possible values and what are they used for? Is that meant for
>> >> multilingual support?
>> >
>> > just to pitch in, to my understanding, the values act as namespaces. Multilingual support could be theoretically achieved that way, however, if that is the main rationale perhaps the structure should be changed to reflect the 'multi' values on items and names.
>> >
>> > Sylvester
>>
>> Glad there is interest in abbreviations! I've been juggling things
>> around privately for the past month, and I think I have a handle on
>> the requirements -- which means that now is probably a good time to
>> get critical feedback.
>>
>> I need to prepare a document describing what the categories in the
>> Abbreviations Gadget (and processor) mean, and how the abbreviations
>> in each are applied. This weekend I'll be tied down with some other
>> tasks, but I should have something readable up within a week or so
>> after. Meanwhile, there's this:
>>
>>  http://citationstylist.org/2011/11/04/citation-friendly-metadata-for-law/
>>
>> On the one question up so far, I nearly cut out the "default" segment,
>> and then discovered that it was needed as a jurisdiction namespace,
>> for legal styles.
>
>  I'm having a hard time understanding what the notion of namespace
> means when applied to jurisdiction.

Yes, it's weird and may be unnecessary. I've bounced around a bit
while putting together the working demo, so pretty much everything is
in flux and on the table.

About 260 pages of the Bluebook are made up entirely or in large part
by abbreviation lists, with a couple of hundred pages of abbreviations
that are specific to individual jurisdictions. A couple of weeks ago I
scanned 43 pages of this material with Tesseract and converted it to
JSON, for import into the Abbreviations Gadget for the demo.

A jurisdiction-specific requirement is stated in the section of UK
law, as the rubric to a list of "Common abbreviations": "These
abbreviations should be used in case names, in addition to those found
in tables T6 and T10, or other citation formats where appropriate." At
least one of the items in the list -- Attorney General -- lists an
abbreviation that differs from the default (US) convention (AG instead
of Att'y Gen.). Thumbing through the rest of the foreign listings now,
I see that the UK is the only jurisdiction with such a "Common
abbreviations" section -- including New Zealand and Australia, which
otherwise broadly follow UK conventions. It doesn't seem to have been
carefully thought through by the (many, successive) designers of the
style.

I'm not sure whether there are similar overlaps between other
jurisdiction-specific abbreviations and the default listings. Getting
everything into electronic form would be the only way to be really
sure (for example, the Philippines abbreviates "Official Gazette" as
"O.G.", and other jurisdictions might, or might not, differ on that
one).

So ... that's the background, anyway.

>
> Also, I'm just looking at this for the first time, What's the
> significance of the distinction between "authority" and "institution"?
> Isn't the former a subset of the latter (at least conceptually; there
> may be other reasons for the distinction)?

In the latest iteration of citeproc-js and the Abbreviations Gadget,
these have been merged. I'll try to get a full updated description out
sometime soon.


>
> Bruce
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> RSA(R) Conference 2012
> Save $700 by Nov 18
> Register now
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/rsa-sfdev2dev1
> _______________________________________________
> xbiblio-devel mailing list
> xbi...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xbiblio-devel
>