Re: Bibliography, unicode strings, @ELECTRONIC, sorting and bibtex

["Schmitz Thomas A." <thomas.schmitz@uni-bonn.de>]

On Sep 18, 2012, at 12:28 PM, Marco Patzer <homerow@lavabit.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I have some questions regarding the bibliography.
> 
> 1)
> The style files bibl-ams.tex, bibl-ssa.tex, etc contain strings like
> ``, ~. This does not make sense to me. The `` ends up like that in
> the output and the tilde might interfere with the \asciimode
> setting. Wouldn't it be better to use the proper Unicode glyphs
> (U+201C, U+00A0, etc.) nowadays? I assume the files are old MkII
> files and not being updated since. Example:
> 
> \setupbibtex       [database=sample]
> \setuppublications [alternative=ssa]
> \starttext
>  \cite[hh2010a]
>  \cite[Eijkhout1991]
>  \cite[hh2010]
>  \placepublications [criterium=cite]
> \stoptext
> 
You're right, this is old code that needs to be fixed. The problem is that users of bibtex in ConTeXt are a minority, and users of such precooked styles a tiny minority - I use bibtex quite often, but wouldn't know how to fix these styles and have never used them. So if you're sure about what to do, fix them and send Hans a patch.

> 2)
> The @ELECTRONIC type does not work (already mentioned in the wiki).
> It does not show up in the references list. I guess no one bothered
> adding them and it's up to me to add the corresponding entries.
> 
> Maybe someone has already prepared a working file for the APA style?

Possible. I have @ELECTRONIC definitions in my own private style files, but have never used APA.

> 
> 3)
> How to sort the bibliography by author? According to the bib manual
> I expected this to work:
> 
> \setupbibtex       [database=sample]
> \setuppublications [alternative=apa, criterium=cite, sort=author]

You haven't read carefully enough, it's sorttype=author

> \starttext
>  \cite[hh2010a]
>  \cite[Eijkhout1991]
>  \placepublications
> \stoptext
> 
> 4)
> \completepublications produces an empty page. Is that intended?
> 
> \setupbibtex       [database=sample]
> \setuppublications [alternative=ssa, criterium=cite]
> \starttext
> \cite[hh2010a]
> \completepublications
> \stoptext
> 
http://archive.contextgarden.net/message/20110923.091734.6b388a11.en.html

> 5) (side question)
> What is BibTeX used for in ConTeXt? As far as I can see, it reads
> the .bib database and generates a .bbl file which then is read in by
> ConTeXt. Why do we need an external tool for this? Why does ConTeXt
> not read in the .bib database and directly save it as a Lua table?

Because nobody has coded that part yet? This may not be as easy as you make it sound because quite a few heuristics go into parsing bibtex files (e.g., look at the way in which bibtex divides names into first name, last name, von-part, jr-part). Over the years, I have read and heard many complaints about bibtex and many announcements that something infinitely better is just around the corner, to be delivered in all its glory "real soon now." For the time being, I don't see any real replacement, but I may be wrong.


Thomas

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