Re: DOCBOOK: bib lists

[Terry Allen <tallen at sonic dot net>]

Dave Pawson wrote:
| Having just marked up a shortish bib list for
| the first time in docbook, a couple of questions
| then a request for the more experienced to see
| if its marked up reasonably.
| 
| 1. Are initials such as Pawson JD marked up as firstname?

We didn't make specific provision for initials in this 
context (and in fact, we probably went too far as it is;
we should have been content with Name and Sortname, given
how many varieties of naming there are around the world).
But you can use Othername here.  Whatever suits your processing ...

| 2. When a document being referenced is some periodical,
|    does the title get marked up as title or citetitle?

<citetitle pubwork="journal">.  I append part of a bibliography
I've done, and which is online in HTML, converted using
Norm's style sheets, at

  http://www.sonic.net/~tallen/palmtree/ayybib.htm

It exercises many of the combinations you'd want to use in 
bibliomixed.

| 3. whats the difference between authorgroup and a series
|     of author tags (none is an easy answer :-)

The difference between a series of elements and a series
of elements in a container.  I find I didn't use it,
substituting instead <bibliomset relation="authorgroup">,
but I couldn't tell you why.  Again, whatever suits your
processing.

| E.g.
| 
|   <bibliomixed><authorgroup>
| 	      <author>
| 		<surname>Gill</surname>
| 		<firstname> J M</firstname></author>  <author>
| 	      <surname>Humphreys</surname>
| 	      <firstname> J  A</firstname></author>
| </authorgroup><title>Feasibility Study on a Braille Transcription
| Service for Short Documents. </title>
| 	    <citetitle>Braille Automation Newsletter,</citetitle> <pubdate>Aug
| 1976,</pubdate><pagenums> pp 19-24.</pagenums></bibliomixed>

As you used bibliomixed, instead of biblioentry, you should supply
the punctuation, e.g., between the names of the authors, rather
than expecting processing to do it for you.  If you want processing
to do it for you, use biblioentry.

That article title should be <citetitle pubwork="article">.

| Others I'm unsure of
| 
|  <bibliomixed><author>
| 	      <surname>Gill</surname>
| 	      <firstname> J M</firstname></author>  <title>The Use of
| Digitally-Stored Text for Braille Production.</title>  <publisher>
| 	      <publishername>National Computer Conference,</publishername>
| 	      <address> New
| 		York,</address></publisher> <pubdate>June 1976.</pubdate>  Reprinted in
| <title>Braille Automation Newsletter,</title> <pubdate>Aug 1976,</pubdate>
| <pagenums>pp
| 	      6-10;</pagenums> and in <title>Sigcaph
| 	      Newsletter,</title> <publishername>ACM, No 20,</publishername>
| <pubdate>July 1976,</pubdate> <pagenums>pp 21-24.</pagenums></bibliomixed>
| 
| Whatever ACM is, is that about right?
| A publication from a conference proceedings, publisher or
| ???

Again, title should be citetitle.  Here you've supplied the punctuation,
which is correct.  You could wrap the section beginning "Reprinted in"
in a bibliomset with relation="reprints" or something similar, if it
helped.  Wrapping subsidiary relationships is part of the point of 
bibliomset.  As for ACM, that's the publishername (Association for
Computing Machinery, or something like that), but "No 20" is an
IssueNum.  If you go for fine typography you'd put a &ndash; between
the two sets of page numbers.  Otherwise it looks okay.

| Below I have a -republished type thing
| 'and in' etc. Can this be explicitly tagged,
| or is it 'bent' to fit?

(same example given)  I don't think you have to bend anything in
this.

| Thanks for any advice,
| a docbook newbie (I hate bibs already)

You're welcome.  Questions on the biblio stuff always welcome.
My best advice, which won't help bibliographers, only regular
writers, is *do it as you write* so you capture the info while
you have the book in hand and don't have to go back to the library
for it.  And always photocopy the title page ...

regards, Terry