ReSpec and references

So.... today during the PFWG Editors meeting, I learned that there is a 
W3C standard way to do citations: http://www.w3.org/2001/06/manual/#citation

Sadly, this is not the way ReSpec does it - and it is not super easy to 
change ReSpec to do it this way.  I also think it is stupid, but I think 
lots of the pubrules are stupid...

Anyway, What I was wondering is if there is a way to extend the current 
reference architecture so that it could magically do the text leading up 
to the reference AND the reference itself - wrapping them in the silly 
cite and a elements, inserting abbr elements as needed.  My first 
thought was to do something like this:

[[[lead in reference string]REFERENCE]] - that would be backward 
compatible so existing specs wouldn't change and we wouldn't need to 
change the bibliography file.  On the other hand, it would not magically 
deal with abbreviations...

Another idea was that we just continue to use [[REFERENCE]], but allow 
an extension to the biblio file that, if present, would supply the 
lead-in text, the reference, and any necessary abbreviations.  This 
would require changes to any spec that used ReSpec and used references 
that were so annotated though.  That seems like a bad idea.

Finally, I considered some more subtle extension combined with changing 
the biblio file.  Like [[@REFERENCE]] would mean insert a reference and 
the standard lead-in for it.  [[REFERENCE]] would work as it always had, 
albeit also adding the surrounding <cite> element.

Thoughts?

-- 
Shane P. McCarron                          Phone: +1 763 786-8160 x120
Managing Director                            Fax: +1 763 786-8180
ApTest Minnesota                            Inet: shane@aptest.com

Received on Wednesday, 28 July 2010 19:29:12 UTC