Formatting question

[markau]

I have question about the formatting.
If I have two fields,
- SeriesName (j)
- SeriesNumber (v)
For an item in the bibliography it is possible to have:
- both fields blank
- SeriesName only
- SeriesName and SeriesNumber
I typically want them to come out in the bibliography like this (including the fullstop at the end):
SeriesName SeriesNumber.
so I put this in the formatting field:
j v.
But, if there is no SeriesNumber, I just want to have
SeriesName.
Finally, (and here comes the complication), if there is neither field I don't want anything, not even a fullstop.

My question is, is there any way to do this? The problem I have is in getting all three possibilites (both fields blank, one field only, or both fields filled) to work properly.

[Jon]

Bookends uses spaces as 'boundries' to indicate where Bookends should start/stop if a field before or after it is missing. Please see the User Guide for how Bookends handles an empty (or missing) field.

I played with this a bit, and can come close, but it's not perfect. If you use

j$ $v`.`

Bookends will output what you want if one or both fields are present. But if both are empty Bookends will still output the period.

Jon
Sonny Software

[ozean]

I also have a problem that does not seem to be solvable by the current formatting options in Bookends.

The output my publisher wants for journal articles goes like this:

author (year) "titleofthearticle". journalname volume/issue, pp. pagerange.

I am using the following format definition:

Code: Select all

a (d) "t". f v/i`, `$p. ^pp. $p–.

The problem arises with entries that do not have issue and volume number (we won't talk about why this is case). I had to put the commaspace in ` because of articles that only have a volume defined (i.e. I have them with both, only volume, and none defined).

Maybe we need some kind of bracketing mechanism to deal with such cases:

Code: Select all

a (d) "t". f{ v/i`, `}$p. ^pp. $p–.

The contents of the brackets would only be displayed if at least one of variables inside has a value. If one of the contained variables has a value, it must be displayed - as if being in ` signs.

markau's problem would then be solved by this definition:

Code: Select all

{j$ $v.}

Or wouldn't it?

*hopes not to have run into some twisted false logic trap*

[Jon]

I'm not sure what problem arises when the volume/issue are missing. You mean the extra space between the journal the the comma? You can get rid of that by putting the preceding space (after the f) in quote marks:

a (d) "t". f$ $v/i`, `$p. ^pp. $p–.

Jon
Sonny Software

[markau]

I've been messing around with this further, and have a question. I was looking at Endnote (sorry) to see why it could do what I wanted in this regard, and it has a breaking mechanism (a "|" symbol) which will determine which field non-field elements get associated with.
So first up I tried formatting like this:
a. t$. $j$ $v$. $l: u, d. ¬
which looked like it was heading in the right direction. The big problem with it was though, that I really want the second "$. " to be associated with the "l" field which comes after it. But it gets deleted if there is no "v" field.
So I tried the following:
a. t$. $j$ $v``$. $l: u, d. ¬
My thought was that adding the `` might have the effect of causing a break. But I was surprised because I seemed to be getting an extra space in the output. For example:
Milgrom, Jacob. Leviticus. The Anchor Bible . New York: Doubleday, 1991-2001.
I can't figure out where the space after "The Anchor Bible" came from.
So I tried:
a. t$. $j$1 $v`2`$. $l: u, d. ¬
to try and figure out where that space is coming from and got
Milgrom, Jacob. Leviticus. The Anchor Bible2. New York: Doubleday, 1991-2001.

So, what I'm wondering is this:
1. Is there a bug where doing `` produces a space even though I haven't specified one, or an I understanding what is happening incorrectly?
2. If the space really shouldn't be there, could things be sorted out so that putting in `` produced a break between elements of the formatting. I think that would solve my problem (being the equivalent of Endnotes | symbol, if anyone is familiar with Endnote).

[Jon]

So first up I tried formatting like this:
a. t$. $j$ $v$. $l: u, d. ¬
which looked like it was heading in the right direction. The big problem with it was though, that I really want the second "$. " to be associated with the "l" field which comes after it. But it gets deleted if there is no "v" field.
So I tried the following:
a. t$. $j$ $v``$. $l: u, d. ¬
My thought was that adding the `` might have the effect of causing a break. But I was surprised because I seemed to be getting an extra space in the output. For example:
Milgrom, Jacob. Leviticus. The Anchor Bible . New York: Doubleday, 1991-2001.
I can't figure out where the space after "The Anchor Bible" came from.

Well, this is getting hard to follow in the absence of the reference. But it may be that `` without intervening characters causes this. I'll check.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Jon]

So first up I tried formatting like this:
a. t$. $j$ $v$. $l: u, d. ¬
which looked like it was heading in the right direction. The big problem with it was though, that I really want the second "$. " to be associated with the "l" field which comes after it. But it gets deleted if there is no "v" field.

I played with this, and I think this is what you want:

a. t$. $j$ $v`. `l: u, d. ¬

If it is not, please contact me directly...it's much easier to deal with this if you can send examples.

Jon
Sonny Software

P.S. The "extra" space you saw was from j$ $ -- the "force quote" character (`) causes Bookends to honor punctuation that came before it. It is not analogous to the EN | formatting command.