hi all,
I'm trying to come to terms with the fine-tuning of 'refer' output.
the problem is as follows:
I have attached a text file "tt" and a 2-entry refer database "tt.db". the aim is to get labels in the text consisting of the first three authors plus "et al". I don't understand how to achieve this at all.
what seems to be feasible with 'refer' is to enforce use of the unambiguous initial subsequence of authors + "et al" (which usually will
be only the first author).
but even this seems not to work correctly:
the refer manpage says:
======================cut================================ et-al* string m n ================== Control use of et al in the evaluation of @ expressions in label expressions. If the num- ber of authors needed to make the author sequence unambiguous is u and the total number of authors is t then the last t-u authors will be replaced by string provided that t-u is not less than m and t is not less than n. The default behaviour is
et-al " et al" 2 3 ========================cut==============================
for the two entries in 'tt.db' the parameters "t" and "u" mentioned in the manpage are
#one t = 1 u =1
#two: t = 9 u = 2
if I understand the manpage correctly, the standard setting of "et-al"
should result, in this example, in labels
"Carson, 2003" and "Carson, Cunningham et al, 2003", but this is not what happens: the second label is shortened to "Carson et al, 2003" in this case.
therefore, in the attached example, I believe the first variant is OK, the second is not. am I making a mistake or is this broken?
maybe I miss some important point: the 'refer' manpage states in the "label" section concerning the "@" tag:
========================cut============================== @ === All the authors joined as specified by the join-authors command. The whole of each author's name will be used. However, if the references are sorted by author (that is the sort specification starts with A+), then authors' last names will be used instead, provided that this does not introduce ambiguity, and also an initial subsequence of the authors may be used instead of all the authors, again provided that this does not introduce ambigu- ity. The use of only the last name for the i-th author of some reference is considered to be ambiguous if there is some other reference, such that the first i-1 authors of the references are the same, the i-th authors are not the same, but the i-th authors' last names are the same. A proper initial subsequence of the sequence of authors for some reference is considered to be ambiguous if there is a reference with some other sequence of authors which also has that subsequence as a proper initial sub- sequence. When an initial subsequence of authors is used, the remaining authors are replaced by the string specified by the et-al command; this command may also specify additional require- ments that must be met before an initial subsequence can be used. @ tentatively evaluates to a canonical representation of the authors, such that authors that compare equally for sorting purpose will have the same representation. ========================cut============================== question: _how_ can I use/create subsequences of authors?
sorry for not being able to make this shorter.
regards joerg
.R1
no-default-database
search-truncate 255
move-punctuation
database tt.db
search-ignore AE
bracket-label " (" ")" "; "
no-abbreviate-label-ranges
sort-adjacent-labels
sort A+
label @',\~'D.y%a*
.R2
.\"-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.\"this should output all the authors in the label:
.R1
et-al " et al" 9 3
.R2
A TEST IS A TEST IS A TEST.
.[
Carson2003
.]
.[
Carson2003a
.]
.\"-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.\" the default setting:
.R1
et-al " et al" 2 3
.R2
.\"-------------------------------------------------------------------------------\l'5i' a test is a test is a test. .[ Carson2003 .] .[ Carson2003a .]
%T PET Pharmacokinetic Course %B PET Pharmacokinetic Course Manual %A RE Carson %A V Cunningham %A RN Gunn %A J van\~den\~Hoff %A GM Knudsen %A AA Lammertsma %A KL Leenders %A RP Maguire %A W Müller-Schauenburg %E RP Maguire %E KL Leenders %I University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands and McGill University, Canada %C Montreal %D 2003 %O %L Carson2003 %T Tracer Kinetic Modeling in PET %A RE Carson %B Positron Emission Tomography %E PE Valk %E DL Bailey %E DW Townsend %E MN Maisey %I Springer %C London %D 2003 %P 147-79 %O ISBN 1852334851 %K BOOK %L Carson2003a
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