Re: [Bibulus-dev] Bibulus DTD: An concrete example

[Thomas Widmann]

Torsten Bronger <address@hidden> writes:

> Thomas Widmann <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> Torsten Bronger <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>> Thomas Widmann <address@hidden> writes:
>>>
>>>> [...]
>>>>
>>>> 3) The <place> doesn't have any structure.  Would this be better:
>>>>    <place>
>>>>      <city>Boston</city>
>>>>      <state>Massachusetts</state>
>>>>      <country>USA</country>
>>>>    </place>
>>>>    ?
>>>
>>> I don't think so.  The question is whether somebody would need
>>> that, e.g. "I want to see all entries with publishers from
>>> Boston" or "I want to have the city printed in small caps".  But
>>> in my opinion this is not necessary.
>>
>> Agreed.  But there could be a case for leaving out certain parts
>> (e.g., I might include "USA" in the example above if publishing in
>> Europe, but not if publishing over there).
>
> Granted, but then I'd suggest to have only <address> (with #PCDATA
> inside) and <country> (with optional ISO code attribute) in <place>.

What about <address country="us">Boston, Massachusetts</address>?

>> Also, some placenames have to be translated, e.g., Aachen should
>> come out as Aix-la-Chapelle in French, and Glasgow as Glaschù in
>> Gaelic.  This might be easier to do correctly if the structure is
>> there.
>
> This I don't like.  The city name is some sort of part of the
> publisher's name and should not be translated (except for the case
> if the publisher does so itself).

As far as I've been able to find out, this depends on the style.
Since Bibulus should support all reasonable styles, it has to support
place name translation as well (but of course it will also support
non-translation if the user so prefers).

> Moreover, this approach is fragile because it relies only on mere
> string comparison (there are no codes for cities).  This means that
> if two cities share the same name but only one has a foreign
> translation, this fails.  The other way round, there are multiple
> spellings for some cities:
>
> Frankfurt                         New York
> Frankfurt am Main                 New York City
> Frankfurt a.M.                    New York City/New York
> Frankfurt a. M.                   New York City (NY)
> Frankfurt a.&#160;M.              ...
> Frankfurt&#160;a.&thinspace;M.

Yes, this is a problem, but this is also a problem for consistency in
bibliographies -- you wouldn't want to see both 'Frankfurt am Main'
and 'Frankfurt a. M.' in the same document.

/Thomas
-- 
Thomas Widmann          Bye-bye to BibTeX: join the Bibulus project now!
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