Sonny Software

Partly in view of suggestions at adding extra fields (which will make the following issue even more serious), but mainly in view of problems I have now, I was wondering if there was any chance of having additional special characters added to the formatting. At the moment, breaking between parts of a format is primarily achieved through the fields themselves, and also spaces. However, I am running into situations where this is a problem.

Say there is a bit in a format like this:
f v.
(which is SerialName SerialNumber)
As long as there is either a SerialName and SerialNumber, or neither, everything is ok. But if there is only a SerialName but no SerialNumber then you don't get the fullstop at the end. In the context of a complete format, that means you end up missing a fullstop in the middle of a reference.
One solution to this is to add extra types. But when you consider Serials is only one situation where this might happen, and you need to take care of it for books and chapters in books etc, you end up with multiplied types just to deal with this.

A preferable solution would be to enhance the formatting characters. Two which I would like to see are:
- non-breaking space (in other words, a space which functions similarly to a letter in the format).
- a way of forcing a break between parts of the format. That is, regardless of spacing or letters, you put a forced break somewhere in the format and it completely dissociates the format parts on the left and right of the format.
e.g. so if you had (completely hypothetical):
f$abc$ForcedBreakCharacterHere$xyz$v
Then abc would be printed if f existed, xyz would be printed if v existed, and there is no relationship between the two parts.

Mark.

markau wrote: Say there is a bit in a format like this:
f v.
(which is SerialName SerialNumber)
As long as there is either a SerialName and SerialNumber, or neither, everything is ok. But if there is only a SerialName but no SerialNumber then you don't get the fullstop at the end. In the context of a complete format, that means you end up missing a fullstop in the middle of a reference.

Just add a force-quote around the period:

f v`.`

[/quote]

Jon wrote:

markau wrote: Say there is a bit in a format like this:
f v.
(which is SerialName SerialNumber)
As long as there is either a SerialName and SerialNumber, or neither, everything is ok. But if there is only a SerialName but no SerialNumber then you don't get the fullstop at the end. In the context of a complete format, that means you end up missing a fullstop in the middle of a reference.

Just add a force-quote around the period:

f v`.`

[/quote]

The difficulty with this is that it will include the period, even if there is no f and v at all. So if I have a book with either f and v, or just f, it looks fine. But if the book has no f or v, then I get an extra period. e.g. I know one solution to this, as I mentioned earlier, to start creating new types. The difficulty with this though, is that you end up having to have a number of different types of books and chapters, just to deal with variations in series and volumes.

So far, I've tried lots of combinations of formatting and can only ever get two out of three combinations (1. book with no series info; 2. book with series name only; 3. book with series name and series no.) to work.

Another possible solution that I just thought of, rather than adding extra special characters, might be to delete extra punctation.
e.g. turn ". ." into ".",
and "; ;" into ";"
I suspect these two combinations might resolve my issues.

Hm, that's a thought.

Jon
Sonny Software

BTW, I tried another order that does not output two periods if both f and v are missing: use $

f v$.$

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon wrote:BTW, I tried another order that does not output two periods if both f and v are missing: use $

f v$.$

Jon
Sonny Software

However, in case where you have f, but no v, you don't get the period.
The best option that I could come up with was:
f$ $v'.'
Using this:
- if you have f and v, or f but no v, everything is ok.
- if you have neither f or v, then you will end up with two periods separated by a space (assuming it is part of a normal bibliographic reference as per most humanities formats. Then, you have to search and replace, ". ." -> "." Since ". ." is not a usual sequence of punctuation, it shouldn't cause any problems.

However, as I mentioned in an earlier email, perhaps Bookends scanning could incorporate the search and replace?

I think that is reasonable.

Jon
Sonny Software

If it could also include a similar combination that would be good.
Replacing:
; ;
[that is, semicolon space semicolon]
with
;
[that is, semicolon only]

The period version takes care of the formatting for bibliographies. But footnotes separate the various parts of the citation with semi-colons rather than periods, so both replacements are required really.

Please contact me directly and I'll send you a new BookendsCarbonLib that should handle these situations.

Jon
Sonny Software