3.713 bibliographies (81)
Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca)
Tue, 7 Nov 89 19:56:30 EST
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 713. Tuesday, 7 Nov 1989.
(1) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 89 17:52 EST (23 lines)
From: <BURT@BRANDEIS>
Subject: bibliography databases
(2) Date: Mon, 06 Nov 89 21:57:18 EST (38 lines)
From: Shu-Yan Mok <YFPL0004@YORKVM1>
Subject: Bibliography, WATFILE, and SCRIPT
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 89 17:52 EST
From: <BURT@BRANDEIS>
Subject: bibliography databases
The person whose computer center advised using WSCRIPT gave him/her good
advice. Wscript and Scribe are often considered dinosaurs, but they
can make bibliographies in many formats at the drop of a hat, and they
use all-ascii files which can easily be imported into other formats and
set up with a few global replaces. I continue to use Scribe for that purpose,
because it least ties my hands about what I might want to do later with the
file. More modern programs may be sexier, but you may be stuck with them
later when they too go out of date.
About Pro-Tem's BIBLIOGRAPHY. I also like it, for the same reason that I
like Scribe--it pretty much sticks to ASCII, and it doesn't tie your hands
for later. It was designed for use with Wordstar, which also pretty much
sticks to ASCII. I think that to use it with WP5 you might have to
convert your files to all-ASCII. Wordperfect doesn't make this easy to do,
but you can do it by printing your file to disk using the "DOS Text Printer"
in the printer control menu. There are all sorts of cumbersome hitches
in this procedure, but I am only a rare Wordperfect user and haven't figured
out better ways of making pure ASCII text in WP.
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------44----
Date: Mon, 06 Nov 89 21:57:18 EST
From: Shu-Yan Mok <YFPL0004@YORKVM1>
Subject: Bibliography, WATFILE, and SCRIPT
I have been using the WATFILE/Plus database program in the IBM
mainframe environment for several years, mainly for recording
students' grades and organizing the bibliography of my
dissertation. The program allows users to customize reports by
means of layout files. Users create layout files in which the
positions of the names and contents of each field in the report
are specified. These files can also incorporate a primitive
conditional structure to determine whether a field is to be
included in the report.
I have some limited success in using WATFILE as a
bibliographic tool in conjunction with WATERLOO SCRIPT, which is
a powerful text formatter. My method is to create layout files so
that the reports generated by WATFILE will serve as the input
files for the SCRIPT program. It's a pity that the length of
each field in WATFILE is limited; this means that a very long
title for a book will have to be broken down into more than one
field. You can see why I need the SCRIPT to produce the final
output. (to put back the two parts of the title together)
Another difficulty is due to the sheer number of different
ways to present bibliographic information according to any style
handbook. Is the author an editor? Are there more than one
editor? Is the title that of a book, or chapter within a book? .
. . Theoretically speaking, the custimizing features of WATFILE
allows users to capture practically all these possibilities. My
solution is simply to limit myself to a subset of most common
combinations and to modify the SCRIPT input files by hand to
accommodate unusual information.
I'd be happy to send my layout files, together with a few
other files written in the language of CMS system interpreter, to
anyone who is interested.