Hi J"org, > Phillip Helbig schrieb: > > > What are the prospects for coming up with some standard journal macros, > > including a BibTeX-style front matter handler, embracing the physical > > and social sciences and also getting all publishers and editors to > > encourage their use as well as distribute proper BibTeX files. > > We (i. e. Jens Kloecker, Michael Piotrowski, Frank Holzwarth and JKn) > want to develop a standard _scientific article_ class in a BOF session > at EuroTeX99 to be hold in Heidelberg from September 20--24. > J"org Knappen > Electronic Technologies > Springer-Verlag Heidelberg Nice to see someone from Springer involved (how long have you been there?) (and using VMS at that:). It is becoming obvious even in the UK now that A&A has really overtaken MNRAS in terms of `sensible modernity' in the publishing arena; hopefully this trend will continue at Springer and other journals will follow suit in a very compatible manner. > We want to emphasize the idea of a document class as a markup > language. The rendering of the article will of course follow > different styles for each publisher (and even vary from journal > to journal with the same publisher). In fact, front matter and > bibliography are our two main targets in the design of this class. > We hope to come up with a new class usable with different publishers. This is looking really concrete! Great! What are your thoughts on using straight BibTeX 1.0? How strictly will the front-matter stuff adhere to a BibTeX-like scheme? (Didn't David Carlisle once do some stuff in this area)? It seems it would be a good idea to air some more detailed sketches about what you have in mind, primarily in terms of goals but also in terms of implementation. -- Phillip Helbig Email ......... [log in to unmask] Nuffield Radio Astronomy Laboratories Tel. ... +44 1477 571 321 (ext. 2635) Jodrell Bank Fax ................ +44 1477 571 618 Macclesfield Telex ................ 36149 JODREL G UK-Cheshire SK11 9DL Web ... http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/~pjh/ ************************ currently working at ******************************* Kapteyn Instituut Email (above preferred) [log in to unmask] Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Tel. ...................... +31 50 363 4067 Postbus 800 Fax ....................... +31 50 363 6100 NL-9700 AV Groningen The Netherlands Web ... http://gladia.astro.rug.nl/~helbig/