On Mar 30, 2005, at 5:42 PM, David Wilson wrote:

I understand that different language may need different sorting routines.

I think I'm not being clear. Here's what I originally posted:

I'm working on sorting configuration, but am running into a fundamental design question:

When dealing with reference lists, is the first field always the sort key?

For example, in a typical reference list, the creator name will be the sort key. If there is no creator, there needs to be rules to specify substitutes. For a book, it might be to substitute the phrase "Anonymous." For an article, it might be to substitute the periodical title.

In a cite key style citation class, likewise, it seems the sort key is the citation key; e.g.:

[doe99] Doe, J. ...

Is this a reliable general rule then? Or should instead the layout and the sorting be seen as completely separate?

I'm leaning towards a structure like:

<reftype name="article" sort-key="creator" alternate-sort-key="container-title">

It's possible for me to do some RELAX NG magic and condition the layout of the following elements based on the sort-key value, but I'm not sure I should do that or not.

The other issue I've not resolved is how to handle CDATA, though one solution is to have:

<reftype name="article">
<sort>
<primary>creator</primary>
<secondary type="variable">container-title</secondary>
<!-- "variable" is probably not the right value name, but I can't think of a better one -->
</sort>


<reftype name="book">
  <sort>
    <primary>creator</primary>
    <secondary type="text">Anonymous</secondary>
  </sort>

Bruce


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