LATEX-L Archives

Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project

LATEX-L@LISTSERV.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE

Options: Use Forum View

Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
[Oren Patashnik <[log in to unmask]>: Re: [MERTENS Jean-Francois <[log in to unmask]>: Re: LaTeX journal and publisher macros]]
From:
"Nelson H. F. Beebe" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 17 Oct 1997 22:27:35 -0600
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (324 lines)
Folks, here is some extensive commentary from Oren Patashnik on the
BibTeX personal name handling topic.  As he requests, please
communicate further with him OFF the latex-l list if you wish to
pursue the discussion:

                ---------------

Date: Fri, 17 Oct 97 00:38:50 PDT
From: Oren Patashnik <[log in to unmask]>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I have been forwarded from the LaTeX-L list some comments regarding
name structure and BibTeX.  Here are my comments.  (I don't read
LaTeX-L, so if you want to send me comments, please email me directly.
Thanks.)  Also, I apologize in advance for any faulty assumptions I've
made due to my jumping into the middle of the discussion.

JFM = Jean-Frangois Mertens
SR = Sebastian Rahtz
BV = Boris Veytsman
RF = Robin Fairbairns

JFM>    4) Concerning names: it are clearly not only Chinese names (or
JFM> south-indian, or from other far-away places) that have a completely
JFM> different STRUCTURE than the US one.
JFM>    Just as to surnames already, I get that in Spain typically an
JFM> individual's surname has his wife's maiden-name after his own _ so is
JFM> no longer a "family-name" (in the sense of being the same as for his
JFM> brothers). But the "given" (or: "preferred") name would typically be
JFM> just the first part. In Portugal on the contrary, (part of) the
JFM> mother's name would be pre-pended to () the father's name in naming
JFM> the children _ and the "given" (or: "preferred") name would be some
JFM> final part. Even here, a colleague of mine has "d'Aspremont-Lynden" as
JFM> surname (so Bibtex misses the "von" part, because of the absence of a
JFM> space), but the "given" name would be just "d'Aspremont" (so even a
JFM> hyphen doesn't mean the 2 parts have to be treated equally _ the name
JFM> could equally plausibly have been "Lynden-d'Aspremont", with "Lynden"
JFM> as "given" name.).

With the current BibTeX (0.99), there are four "parts" to a name
(first, von, last, jr); each part consists of zero or more tokens, and
tokens are separated by either whitespace *or* hyphens.  (For this
discussion, I'll use the terms `surname' and `family name'
synonymously; the purpose of having `von' and `last' parts is to break
the surname into a primary and a secondary part, for the styles that
want to treat the primary and secondary tokens differently.)

For the current BibTeX, I had considered making the apostrophe, too, a
token separator, but I decided not to do that, because I saw too many
published examples that seemed to not treat, for example, "d'" as a
`von' token in the same way that they treated "de" as a `von' token.

But I now think that that decision was a mistake, and my current
plans are to make the apostrophe a token separator in BibTeX 1.0.
Thus, if you have

     author = "Jean le Rond d'Alembert",

styles that use the ordering `last, first von' will render this name as

     Alembert, Jean le Rond d'

for BibTeX 1.0.

By the way, with "d'Aspremont-Lynden" the current BibTeX treats
d'Asperemont as a `von' token and Lynden as a `last' token.  (This is
different from what JFM claims above---perhaps he was thinking of a
different way in which the current BibTeX mishandles this name.)
Anyway, anyone who wants to know exactly how BibTeX parses a name can
read the bibtex.web source code, or (easier) can ask me for a simple
name-parts.bst I wrote, which tells you precisely the four parts of a
specified name.  (This will all be documented explicitly for 1.0.)

JFM>     And for complete names, something like "Maria de Dolores de Garcia
JFM> de la Vega" would be a quite plausible Spanish name (with similar
JFM> examples in several other languages), but with 3 "von" parts, of which
JFM> it is the SECOND that separates first and last name... And the
JFM> textbook example of "de La Vallee Poussin" signs some of his books
JFM> with "Charles-J." as first name (so nothing like Charles Louis ...),
JFM> while his "given" first name was just "Charles": so this is a case
JFM> where a hyphen between the 2 first names does NOT mean they are a
JFM> single "given" name and should be treated equally.

With

     author = "Maria de Dolores de Garcia de la Vega",

the current BibTeX uses, and BibTeX 1.0 will use, these parts:

     first: Maria
     von:   de Dolores de Garcia de la
     last:  Vega

If there's a bibliography style that will produce incorrect formatting
(incorrect with respect to that style) with this division of tokens,
then this name must be entered with the one-comma syntax to get BibTeX
to parse it differently.  More on this shortly.

As for de la Vall/'ee Poussin, the person (Charles Louis ...) that
appears in the "BibTeXing" document, DEK tells me, is the father of
the more famous de la Vall\'ee Poussin---the one who was a co-prover
in 1896 of the Prime Number Theorem---

      Charles-Jean-Gustave-Nicolas de la Vall\'ee Poussin

(father and son were at the same university, which is apparently why
DEK got them confused in the index of volume 2, second edition).  So
Charles Louis and and Charles-J. are two different people.  In any
case, as I mentioned earlier, BibTeX treats a hyphen as a token
separator, hence a BibTeX style may, if it wants, treat the two tokens
differently.

JFM>     In summary, I think there is no hope to parse complete names
JFM> correctly, and one has to ask for the individual name-components.

If I understand this correctly, I think I disagree.  It seems to me
that the problem is not in parsing the names into parts (for example,
BibTeX's comma syntax can, unambiguously, parse a name into different
parts), but rather the problem is in assigning meaning to those parts.
Different languages and different cultures have different name
structures.  I think it's probably a mistake to assign a *fixed*
meaning to name components, because for some cultures those components
won't adequately handle its name structure.  (It's true that, in some
sense, BibTeX's first-von-last-jr structure is fixed, but that's only
because of how the current standard styles interpret the four parts;
it's certainly possible to have other styles interpret those parts
differently.  More on this in a bit.)

JFM>     Further, it seems to me that for each of those components one has
JFM> to ask the full form (if only just for database use: it seems
JFM> ridiculous to refer in databases with different names to the same
JFM> individual, so this probably means in practice one has to use there
JFM> the full form, as in the Library of Congress cards), and the "given"-
JFM> or "preferred" form (if only for uses like headers) (reduction to
JFM> initials can well be handled automatically _ cf. e.g. BibTeX _, so no
JFM> need to bother authors with that).

I'm not sure what's the intended use of the database mentioned here,
but in general it seems to me that you really have to think hard about
the intended uses.  For example, a Library-of-Congress-type database
may want to use the name, say, for two purposes, which may require
both an author's full name as well as an author's name the way it
appears in the work itself.  For these two purposes, using BibTeX at
least, it probably suffices to enter the name just once, in a form
like

    name = "Donald E[rvin] Knuth",

indicating that "Donald Ervin Knuth" is the full name but "Donald E.
Knuth" is the way it appeared in the work itself.  But you need some
abbreviation markup mechanism (here, the square brackets), because for
the two purposes above it's insufficient to do the abbreviation
automatically---for example you can't tell from just the full name

    name = "Donald Ervin Knuth",

(without the square brackets) how it appeared in the work itself.

On the other hand, I can think of databases for which you want to make
three uses of a name---for example, an author's full name for an
index; the name of the author as he prefers it; and the name of the
author as it appeared in some work, say because some overbearing
journal editor butchered it by automatically abbreviating "Donald".
For this situation, using BibTeX, I would probably have two fields:

     author = "D[onald] E. Knuth",
     full-author = "Donald Ervin Knuth",

(It's possible to serve all three purposes with just a single field,
but the markup would probably be too cumbersome in this case---I
realize that some people think that even using the bracket markup I've
suggested above is too cumbersome.)

JFM>     As to those components, we need concepts that are as widely
JFM> meaningful as possible _ to avoid "visual markup" _, and I have no
JFM> precise idea what those might be... I heard that Patashnik is working
JFM> hard on BibTeX 1.00; and he must have given serious thought to this
JFM> question. Since in addition there may be obvious advantages in
JFM> coordinating this question with BibTeX, one should probably ask his
JFM> opinion.

I go through stages where I work hard on 1.0, punctuated by periods
where I'm forced to turn my attention elsewhere (:-(

BV> Maybe BibTeX-like syntax will work, i.e. something like \author{Albert
BV> Einstein} and \author{Einstein, Albert} would produce same output
BV> determined *only* by house class?  Then house classes could process
BV> \author declarations and extract, if required, both Albert Einstein in
BV> title page and A.~Einstein in the running head?
BV>
BV> Actually BibTeX has a very subtle algorithm of dealing with author names;
BV> I think it is possible to reimplement it in TeX for journal styles.

I'm not sure how hard it would be to do BibTeX's name-handling in TeX,
but it seems to me that, if it's done, it should be done exactly (or
almost exactly) the same---I think it might cause too much confusion
if it were a half-way job, because then people would start confusing
the two syntaxes.

SR> While I (sort of) admire BibTeX's system for second-guessing surnames,
SR> I have always found it confusing as an author, and as a processor of
SR> other peoples .bib files. I think a clean separation into surname and
SR> other bits is better.

I guess the question I have is, is it confusing because BibTeX's
parsing scheme is inherently confusing, or because it's insufficiently
documented?  I'm guessing it's more of the latter, although I suppose
I'm not the one to ask (it's not confusing to me at all :-).

SR> That does not mean you cannot give a simple case like
SR>
SR>  \author{name=Sebastian Rahtz}
SR>
SR> and have it parsed easily by TeX as if you had typed
SR>
SR>  \author{surname=Rahtz, forenames=Sebastian Patrick Quintus} [1]
SR>
SR> but it goes further than that, doesn't it. some styles will need to
SR> suppress that to S.P.Q., others want the full name. you cannot always
SR> work out that initial compression easily, by the way - people called
SR> Christian sometimes like to be be abbreviated Chr.

Two comments here.  First, you might want the initials as S.P.Q., or
maybe as S.~P.~Q., or maybe as S.\,P.\,Q., so you need some
flexibility here.  Also, BibTeX's special-character mechanism lets you,
if you want, abbreviate Christian as Chr. or Charles as Ch. or whatever.

BV> Actually BibTeX has a very subtle algorithm of dealing with author names;
BV> I think it is possible to reimplement it in TeX for journal styles.

SR> While I (sort of) admire BibTeX's system for second-guessing surnames,
SR> I have always found it confusing as an author, and as a processor of
SR> other peoples .bib files. [...]

RF> I wholeheartedly agree with Sebastian.  In addition, I feel that the
RF> BibTeX algorithm is seriously slanted towards European languages (more
RF> precisely, languages whose impact was felt in the USA prints at the
RF> time BibTeX was being designed).

Yes, BibTeX's name handling is definitely biased toward the names
encountered in U.S. academia, 1983.  But the goals were to have a
system that was both flexible and, for the "common" names, easy to
use.  Thus you could type

     author = "Sebastian Patrick Quintus Rahtz",

and BibTeX would figure out what you meant.  And in the somewhat rarer
case where you wanted Quintus to be part of the surname, you could
type

     author = "Quintus Rahtz, Sebastian Patrick",

which is only a little more difficult, and BibTeX would again know
what you meant.  And while it's true that, for Asian names, for example,
typing

     author = "Mao, Tse-tung",

(which is what the current BibTeX requires) is a little less natural
than typing

     author = "Mao Tse-tung",

(without the comma), still, it's not very hard.  So although there is
indeed a bias, it's not much of a hardship---it's certainly easier
than having to use, for example,

     author-surname = "Mao",
     author-firstnames = "Tse-tung",

RF> I suspect it's inadequate to `world-wide publishing' -- is Oren
RF> listening to this list? -- or can someone else comment on whether the
RF> eagerly-awaited BibTeX v1.0 is going to extend the algorithm anywhere?

I assuming you mean that BibTeX's name-handling is inadequate for
`world-wide publishing'.  Perhaps you could give examples; but it
seems to me that even the current scheme is adequate.  (I make a
distinction between the adequacy of the scheme itself and the adequacy
of available styles, which is a separate issue.)

In the current scheme, there are four name parts, with three allowed
input syntaxes:

     first von last
     von last, first
     von last, jr, first

The two main name-handling changes on the slate for BibTeX 1.0 are:

     (1) The addition of another syntax, probably
            last, von, jr, first,
     so that users may unambiguously mark the von/last boundary, in
     difficult cases, without too many contortions.

     (2) The use of another field, call it `attributes' for now, that lets
     a user specify certain attributes of a name.  For example if a name
     has an `Asian' attribute, then a style might use Asian ordering for
     that name, for example with
          author = "Donald E. Knuth and Mao, Tse-tung",
     the style could produce
          Donald E. Knuth and Mao Tse-tung
     instead of
          Donald E. Knuth and Tse-tung Mao
     which is what, e.g., plain.bst would produce.  (Of course currently a
     style may use Asian ordering; what the `attribute' field buys in this
     case is the ability to produce Asian-style ordering in the middle of an
     otherwise Western-ordering style.)

In any case, I'm open to other enhancements for which there is a
demonstrated need.  In particular, if any language/country has names
that must be broken into five or more parts to be handled correctly
(that is, if BibTeX's four name-parts are insufficient), I'd love to
hear about them.

        --Oren Patashnik ([log in to unmask])

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Nelson H. F. Beebe                  Tel: +1 801 581 5254                 -
- Center for Scientific Computing     FAX: +1 801 581 4148                 -
- University of Utah                  Internet e-mail: [log in to unmask] -
- Department of Mathematics, 105 JWB                   [log in to unmask]       -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                                  [log in to unmask]      -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA  URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

ATOM RSS1 RSS2