Re: [Axiom-developer] Axiom bibliography

[Bob McElrath]

Ralf Hemmecke address@hidden wrote:
> Did you know that BibTeX does not impose a restriction on the fields 
> names that are used inside a bibentry? Everything is decided by the 
> corresponding bibstyle (.bst) file (which is more like a program).

Yes, the format is:
@ARTICLE{identifier,
    key1 = value1,
    key2 = value2,
    etc...
}

you can put anything in there you want.  Wheter your .bst uses it or not
is another matter.  Some odd keys in my bibtex files include "adsurl",
"doi", "abstract", "SLACcitation", and comments from me via "bobnote".
;)

> And yes, it is a pity that people have not thought about it from the 
> beginning: any paper/book/... should have a uniqe string (the bibkey) 
> that identifies the item **worldwide**. At the moment every person uses 
> his/her own identifiers and it is not easy to merge two overlapping 
> bibliography databases.

That is the intent behind the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system:
    http://www.doi.org/
A doi looks like: 10.1126/science.1066687

The problem is not that no strings exist, the problem is that many
people have chosen different and incompatible ways to do it.  But on the
other hand their databases are generally open, so one can interrogate a
server when you get an identifier that isn't in your .bib.

--
Cheers,
Bob McElrath [Univ. of California at Davis, Department of Physics]

    "It is almost universally felt that when we call a country
    democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every
    kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they
    might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one
    meaning." -- George Orwell

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