Re: [office-comment] OpenDocument - suggested tweaks forbibliography format

["David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler@dwheeler.com>]

John Cowan said:
> I think the only universal answer is to represent full names in two ways:
> a display version and a sort version.  One could do this with markup as
> follows:
> 	<name sortAs='Cowan, John'>John Cowan</name>

I _think_ that would work, or at least be better.

Here's what I'd like; given just the data, I want
to be able to change the biblio format and have it
auto-generate correctly.  The problem is the
various formats people use. In the main bibliography, I may want this:
Cowan, John, David A. Wheeler, and Fred Flintstone.

While other times I want this:
Cowan, John, Wheeler, David A.., Flintstone, Fred.

And other times this (I HATE this one, because it loses
important information, but some standards require it):
Cowan, J., Wheeler, D.A., Flintstone, F.

And the reference might be [Cowan 2000], or [Cow2000], or some such.

I guess for Western names a "sortas" field, along with comma conventions
for its contents to at least make western names work, would be
an improvement.

There are naming standards, but the truly internationalized ones
are so complicated that they're practically never used.

--- David A. Wheeler