In a recent thread, there was some discussion about inadequacies of
standard BibTeX styles, especially as regards work in the humanities.
Having a little time free, I decided to educate myself as much as
possible about BibTeX styles and see what I could do. To this point, I
have a working TRANSLATOR field; I can use both author and editor in
books (e.g., "Hume, David (1978). /A Treatise on Human Nature/, ed. by
L. A. Selby-Bigge", etc);/ / I've manged to overcome this problem with
how makebst handles dashed versions of repeated authors:
Heck, R. (1993). ...
----- (1995). ...
Heck, R. (ed). (1997). ...
Heck, R. (2001). ...
----- (2003). ....
and, most importantly to me, I've figured out how to allow the use of
abbreviations for some references (i.e., instead of (Hume, 1978, p. 23),
I can have (/Treatise/, p. 23), or whatever, but only for specific
works); and to do all of that using natbib, so that I don't have to give
up LyX's support for natbib or deal with the complexities of jurabib.
There's more work to do. In particular, I'm working on an alternative to
makebst that is intended to be more flexible but not much harder to use,
especially for those of us who need more customization than the question
and answer format offers. The idea here is that formats for various
types of entries can be written in a sort of format-by-example syntax, e.g.:
NAME.FORMAT=last-first
BIBTYPE ARTICLE
NAME=AUTHOR
BIBFORMAT
$NAME ($CITATION): `$TITLE', \emph{$JOURNAL} $VOLUME<|($NUMBER)|>: %
<|IF<|$PAGES.MULTI|><|pp. |><|pg. |>|>$PAGES.
ENDFORMAT
ENDTYPE
BIBTYPE BOOK
NAME=AUTHOR, EDITOR
EDITOR.FORMAT=first-last-etal
BIBFORMAT
$NAME ($CITATION): $TITLE.emph<|IF<|$AUTHOR|><||><|, ed. by $EDITOR|>|>. %
$ADDRESS, $PUBLISHER.
ENDFORMAT
ENDTYPE
That's an example of the intended syntax. I'm guessing most of you will
be able to figure out what it should do. (It does nothing yet, as the
program hasn't been written.) Comments appreciated.
That leads to my question. While I'm at this, I'd like to have some
sense what it is that other people wish their BibTeX styles would do. So
what DO people wish BibTeX would do? Other than make it easier to create
formats for specific journals and the like: That's what the above will
do. Are there other frustrations? as, for me, were the absence of a
TRANSLATOR field, the inability to use author and editor at the same
time, the inability to define citation abbreviations, and the like?
Best,
Richard
