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From: edwards@cogsci.berkeley.edu (Jane Edwards)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.wanted,sci.math,sci.research
Subject: Re: referencing system
Summary: how about REFER?
Message-ID: <34950@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 15 Mar 90 03:18:33 GMT
References: <Mar.13.16.46.18.1990.9836@caip.rutgers.edu> <1544@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: edwards@cogsci.berkeley.edu (Jane Edwards)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 57

In article <Mar.13.16.46.18.1990.9836@caip.rutgers.edu> boubez@caip.rutgers.edu (Toufic Boubez) writes:
> 
>I finally decided, after years of trying, starting then abandoning in the
>middle, to organise my large collection of papers, articles, etc...
>
>I am looking for a referencing system
>

Why not "refer"?  It's my impression that at least part of it is standard 
UNIX. Also, I have seen several lists of references posted to the net in 
this format, making me think that it is widespread.  The basic format of 
references looks like this:

%A I. Abe
%T How vocal pitch works
%E L. R. Waugh & C. H. van Schooneveld
%B The melody of language
%D 1980
%C Baltimore
%I University Park Press

%A B. O. Baptista
%T English stress and native speakers
%J Language and Speech
%D 1984
%V 27
%P 217-227

The program which prints the references as a bibliography (rather than
endnotes or footnotes) is called "roffbib".  By modifying the print macros 
used by roffbib you can get your references formatted in any style you wish 
(e.g., with date immediately after author names versus at the end of the 
reference), such as Amer. Psychol. Assoc., or Ling. Soc. of America, etc.

At Berkeley, there are several additional utilities, which are part of 
BSD UNIX, but I'm not sure about non-BSD UNIX.  These include the 
following:

addbib - interactive data entry (the user is prompted one field at at time, 
  and can correct errors while still within that shell);
indxbib - builds inverted index to enable quick search through the 
  bibliography
lookbib - searches through the inverted index to find references 
  having particular patterns in particular fields
  It reads keywords typed after the ``>'' prompt on the terminal, 
  and retrieves records containing all these keywords.  
  It is possible to search multiple databases, as long as they
  have a common index made by indxbib. In that case, only the
sortbib - sort bibliographic database according to user-specified field
  or combination of fields (e.g., author only or author plus date etc.)

It's true that these things can make a terrific difference in keeping
track of, locating, and using reference citations.  There are probably
a lot of others out there besides this one, but I hope this helps.

Jane Edwards (edwards@cogsci.berkeley.edu)
UC Berkeley