Juergen points out that changing bibtex mind break things. I'd like to ask, is this the right place for the present discussion? According to https://www.latex-project.org/latex3/code/, the present list "is intended solely for discussing ideas and concepts for future versions of LaTeX". According to http://tug.org/bibtex/, the mailing list for [bibtex] bugs and discussion is at http://tug.org/pipermail/biblio/ There are github repositories for biber and biblatex. https://github.com/plk/biblatex https://github.com/plk/biber I think putting the current source for bibtex up on github would be a good first step for Oren being able to do the right thing for bibtex. And it might provide a better place for carrying out the present discussion. -- Jonathan On Sat, May 5, 2018 at 8:50 PM, Juergen Fenn <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > I think there is another feature BibTeX really lacks, viz. a standard > style for author-title-year citations as a standard for the humanities. > > But I wonder whether it is really worth the effort to change something > about BibTeX because I think nowadays it is supposed to be stable in the > first place. E.g., BibTeX has been implemented in many a library > catalogue as an exchange format for bibliographic data. And those who > rely on citation styles different from the standard styles and on UTF-8 > have a much more powerful tool at hand: Biblatex. > > Maybe it would be best not to change anything about BibTeX now and to > concentrate on Biblatex and Biber instead. > > Regards, > Jürgen. > > Am 05.05.18 um 00:36 Uhr schrieb Karl Berry: > > Hello LaTeX folk. Oren (Patashnik) has expressed a desire to do > > "whatever seems useful" (given that compatibility is paramount) with a > > future BibTeX release -- not that anything is going to happen quickly, > > but he wanted to start gathering information at this point. > > > > For instance, clearly it would be nice to have a url field in the base > > styles. But, what to do in the .bbl file? Assume \url{...} works? But > > there have been different versions over the years and they don't all > > accept the same thing, e.g., bare "#" and "%" in the url, not to mention > > \url{...} vs. \url|...|, etc. And it induces a new dependency (to load > > url/hyperrref/something) on the document, though maybe that is not a big > > deal. Or maybe use a new macro, \btxurl, whose definition is output by > > bibtex itself? That doesn't sound right. > > > > A doi field is another glaring candidate. But there there isn't even a > > commonly-available \doi command in the first place. So what to do? > \btxdoi? > > > > Maybe BibTeX could provide a core file bibtex.sty which is (implicitly?, > > if available) loaded to define all such macros, probably mostly by > > loading other packages? Sounds fraught with possible problems, but I > > guess it's the most general solution. > > > > Another idea is to add new entry types. That at least doesn't have the > > same compatibility issues as fields, but maybe isn't that interesting, > either. > > > > Another "modern" idea is to support Unicode sorting, but having core > > bibtex depend on ICU does not sound good, nor does reimplementing the > > sorting algorithm. (And there is bibtexu for people who are gluttons for > > such punishment.) People can already put UTF-8 characters in their .bib > > files if they want to, I believe, and they just get output literally. > > > > Overall, it somewhat seems to us that although bibtex has zillions of > > limitations and deficiencies, they have already been worked around, one > > way or another (e.g., using biblatex). So imposing fixes in the core > > code may be a solution that's worse than a problem, meaning the best > > thing to do is ... nothing. Which doesn't sound right either :). > > > > Reactions, ideas? --thanks, karl. > > >