>>Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 11:22:43 -0500
>>From: Matej Cepl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>Subject: Re: customizing natbib
>>
>>On Tue, Feb 12, 2002 at 03:48:54PM -0500, Paul Tremblay wrote:
>>> On Mon, Feb 11, 2002 at 09:38:09PM -0500, Matej Cepl wrote:
>>> > another one is to throw bibtex out of the window and use amsrefs
>>> > (on www.ams.org). It does not do any such ugly things.
>>>
>>> I just checked out this website. It seems like the amsrefs
>>> package is meant for publishing mathmatical documents, something
>>> I won't be doing. Also, if I understand it correctly, amsrefs
>>> doesn't wouldn't offer any flexibility. The database of your data
>>> base has to be what you would use in a latex document. What
>>> happens if you need to change one element in this database?
>>> Wouldn't you have to every single entry by hand?
>>
>>Wrong on both counts :-).
>>
>>1) Although AMS is concerned mostly with the mathematic
>> (surprise!), they are also publishers who are dissatisfied
>> with the BibTeX. Therefore, amsrefs is entirely
>> non-mathematical thing--just a replacement of BibTeX written
>> entirely in LaTeX.
>>
>>2) Let me see from the example document (jktest.ltb):
>>
>> \bib{MR58:27738}{book}{
>> author={Andrews, G.~E.},
>> title={The {T}heory of {P}artitions},
>> publisher={Encyclopedia of Mathematics and its
>> Applications, Vol. 2,
Addison-Wesley,
>> Mass.-London-Amsterdam},
>> date={1976},
>> }
>>
>> It does not seem like what you will use in your document, does
>> it? And I do not think, how maintenance of the database
>> consisting from such blocks is more difficult than maintenance
>> of BibTeX database (of course, unless you use Pybibliographer,
>> but _that_ I found totally unsufficient to my needs, so I am
>> using good old EMACS/vi for BibTeX databases anyway).
>>
>> Happy LyXing!
>>
>> Matej
>>
This is a very bad data structure from the point of view of
data manipulation and indexing because the fields are not atoms:
the publisher field mixes the collection name, the volume number,
the publisher name and the publisher address.
It is very easy to build up such a command from a .bib file, but the reverse
is not possible. Let's stick to .bib syntax
as specified by O. Patashnik and enforced by a lot of various
data manipulation and indexing tools (I personnaly use Nelson Beebe's suite).
Then write an alternative to bibtex which transcodes .bib standard
to amsref standard.
I know it's a bit easy to say "Hey, just do it",
but I haven't got much time to spare to write it
(and besides I cope with the currently available .bst files).
--
Jean-Pierre
