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From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Need help with weirdo format for bib
Message-ID: <2808@phri.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 21-Jul-87 14:23:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: phri.2808
Posted: Tue Jul 21 14:23:55 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 23-Jul-87 06:40:01 EDT
Reply-To: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Organization: Public Health Research Institute, NYC, NY
Lines: 38


	One of the users here is writing a manuscript for a jounal which
requires a strict (and strange) format which I don't think bib can handle
just by changing the macro file.  We need:

1. First citation in the text of 3 authors is Smith, Watson & Crick, 1988.

2. Second citation of the same paper is Smith et al., 1988.

3. Four authors is always Smith et al, 1987.

4. In the reference list Smith preceeds Smith, Baker & Jones, which
   precedes Smith and Jones, with no attention paid to date except for
   a set of identical authors;  then, Smith, Jones & Baker 1987a/b.

	Has anybody made bib do this, preferably using -me troff macros?
Numbers 2 and 4 are the kickers.

*Flame on*

	I'm pissed!  I mean, *Jeeze*, why does every single goddamn
publisher have to go invent a new and incompatible format for references?
Researchers should spend their (expensive) time doing research, not wasting
time fighting with their word processor to meet the picayune details of 67
million different reference formats.  The people *reading* the paper aren't
going to give a shit if there is a semicolon after the title or if the
volume number is in bold instead of italics, or if you list trailing page
numbers or not, why should the people writing it care!?  And if publishers
think it is so goddamn important that this be done the way they want, why
don't they pay their copy editors to fix up the details and let the authors
spend their time doing important things like producing the data that the
paper describes?  This is the real world, not junior high school.

*Flame off*
-- 
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016