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From: dupuy@cs.columbia.edu (Alexander Dupuy)
Newsgroups: news.groups,comp.text
Subject: Re: What'll be the format of comp.bibliography?
Message-ID: <DUPUY.90Aug7212148@hudson.cs.columbia.edu>
Date: 8 Aug 90 01:21:48 GMT
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In-Reply-To: dsims@uceng.UC.EDU's message of 7 Aug 90 14:11:41 GMT

I don't see much problem with duplicate bibliographies - people can decide for
themselves which is more useful/accurate/whatever - but more of a problem would
be the question of the database formats.

The first issue would be whether any format would be used at all.  Given the
experience of comp.archives, I would expect that trying to define a new format
would almost certainly be a failure, and even using an existing one, at least
half the postings wouldn't use it (or any other any standard format).

There are currently three major bibliography formats out there (that I know of,
anyhow) not counting library software systems.  One is Unix refer(1) format,
documented in addbib(1), and the other two are Scribe and BibTeX.  BibTeX
format is pretty much a subset of Scribe's with one or two minor exceptions.
Both refer and Scribe/BibTeX format have their own advantages and
disadvantages.

Unix refer format is more fixed in structure, and thus more amenable to
database-style operations (e.g. sortbib, indxbib, lookbib).  It has the
advantage that it comes pretty much standard with Unix.  Although the defined
fields are somewhat more regular than Scribe/BibTeX format, they aren't quite
as extensive.

Scribe/BibTeX format is more freeform, but requires classification of the
document type (i.e. article, book, proceedings, unpublished, etc.).  It has the
advantage that Scribe and BibTeX can both understand a common subset format,
and both provide support for generating bibligraphies and references in a
number of styles (e.g.  CACM, IEEE, etc.)

A sample refer format bibliography entry might look like this:

%K Miscellaneous
%A David P. Anderson
%A Robert Wahbe
%T A Framework for Multimedia Communication in a General-Purpose Distributed Sys
tem
%R Technical Report 89/498
%I UC Berkeley CS Division
%D March 1989
%X \fBAbstract:\fP
Motivates the design given in TR 88/462, gives some comparisons,
and discusses implications for protocol and local system design.
Description of channel parameters supercedes TR 88/462.


The same bibliography entry in Scribe/BibTeX common subset might look like:

@TechReport(UCBTR-89-498,
	Author = "David P. Anderson and Robert Wahbe",
	Title = "A Framework for Multimedia Communication in a General-Purpose
 Distributed System",
	Institution = "UC Berkeley CS Division",
	Number = "89/498", Month = "March", Year = "1989",
	Abstract = {
Motivates the design given in TR 88/462, gives some comparisons,
and discusses implications for protocol and local system design.
Description of channel parameters supercedes TR 88/462.} )

It is more or less feasible to convert from one format to the other (easier, I
think when going from refer to Scribe/BibTeX, which is why I prefer refer).

I'll follow this article with a posting describing each format in more detail,
and some notes I've made on conversions between them.

@alex
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