Re: [docbook-apps] linkend attr required in <biblioref>?

[Markus Hoenicka <markus.hoenicka@mhoenicka.de>]

maxwell <maxwell@umiacs.umd.edu> was heard to say:

> I think the 'xrefstyle' attribute on <biblioref> is supposed to be used
> for things like where the parens go, or whether things are parenthesized,
> etc.  I suppose it's too much to ask that this could be standardized in
> DocBook, perhaps along the lines of the LaTeX 'natbib' package--probably
> there's just too much variability.  If only everyone did things like me!

This is what the committee said back then about the attribute  
(http://sourceware.org/ml/docbook/2004-03/msg00034.html):

"The renderas attribute was changed to xrefstyle
because it is so similar to the xrefstyle in
the xref element. It will be CDATA rather than
enumerated values because the group felt it
was not possible to cover everyone's needs with
a fixed list of values.  The documentation will
include a list of suggested values, and a
stylesheet will ultimately determine which
values are supported in a given environment."

And here is a pointer which provides some more insight about what  
biblioref was intended for:

http://xfree86.cygwin.ru/ml/docbook/2003-10/msg00085.html

Obviously, the stock DocBook stylesheets cannot meet everyone's needs  
in terms of citation and bibliography formatting, although in general  
they do an excellent job at that. In order to format citations and  
bibliographies according to specific requirements, e.g. formatting  
styles enforced by publishers or journals, you'll probably need  
another layer on top of the DocBook stylesheets. You'll find lots of  
references to that issue in the archives. Look e.g. for Bruce D'Arcus'  
CiteProc project  
(http://bibliographic.openoffice.org/citeproc/index.html), a pure xslt  
solution for formatting citations and bibliographies, and RefDB  
(http://refdb.sourceforge.net), a bibliographic database package  
(which, however, to date still does not support all benefits of  
biblioref).

regards,
Markus



-- 
Markus Hoenicka
http://www.mhoenicka.de
AQ score 38