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References: <97102719061911@multivac.jb.man.ac.uk>
Message-ID:  <446-Tue28Oct1997100042+0000-s.rahtz@elsevier.co.uk>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
In-Reply-To:  <97102719061911@multivac.jb.man.ac.uk>
Date:         Tue, 28 Oct 1997 10:00:42 +0000
From: Sebastian Rahtz <s.rahtz@ELSEVIER.CO.UK>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
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To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L
              <LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Subject:      Re: journal macros (not front matter)
Status: R

 > Although I guess there is no reason to REQUIRE a journal to support
 > bibliographies generated by BibTeX, it seems a sensible thing to do,
i don't quite understand this. how can a style know whether a
bibliography was formatted by BibTeX or by hand? do you mean one or
all of:
 - journals must supply a .bst file on demand
 - journals should strongly recommend that authors use \cite
 - authors should supply only a .bib file

 > itself not to be journal dependent, some sort of extended citing scheme,
 > covering all the possibilities, should be at least allowed if not
 > required.  BibTeX seems to cover enough ground, and the formats, fields
i think you are confusing two issues here. layout of the contents of
the \bibitem (by BibTeX) is one thing, the interaction between \*cite*
and the label of the \bibitem is another. i dont think the internal
formattng is much of an issue (unless someone proposes structured
markup inside a \bibitem), and i would suggest that standardizing on
the extended \cite markup of `natbib' would suit almost everyone.

I have had to do styles and editorial support for quite a few journals
here, and since i started telling people to use natbib, i have not had
any more complaints of `but i cant express this bizarre citation
situation'. really, anyone who has a scheme they cannot express should
tell Patrick, and ask him to support it.

 > This list seems to be the best (only) way to finally get some changes
 > made in this area so people can get back to thinking about content and
so far as bibliographies is concerned, do you mean that you want core
LaTeX to define extended \cite commands? well, we know that won't
happen for LaTeX2e, so our only recourse is a standardized package. i
personally would like to see the problem solved by moving natbib into
the macros/latex/packages area of CTAN, so as to give it the
`preferred supplier' status.

 > before that we must agree on what information is needed, how it is to be
 > grouped, what the syntax should be and develop a sample (or real) .cls,
 > .bst etc which shows that the scheme can actually fulfill its purpose.
i'd suggest doing one bit at a time. get front matter right first, and
produce a sample package that implements it. if you try and do the
whole job in one go, it'll fall to pieces.

 > Has anyone thought about a scheme similar to BibTeX for front matter?

Michael Downes did, yes

sebastian