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Manual page for GREFER(1)

grefer - preprocess bibliographic references for groff

SYNOPSIS

grefer [ -benvCPRS ] [ -an ] [ -cfields ] [ -fn ] [ -ifields ] [ -kfield ] [ -lm,n ] [ -pfilename ] [ -sfields ] [ -tn ] [ -Bfield.macro ] [ filename... ]

DESCRIPTION

This file documents the GNU version of refer, which is part of the groff document formatting system. refer copies the contents of filename... to the standard output, except that lines between .[ and .] are interpreted as citations, and lines between .R1 and .R2 are interpreted as commands about how citations are to be processed.

Each citation specifies a reference. The citation can specify a reference that is contained in a bibliographic database by giving a set of keywords that only that reference contains. Alternatively it can specify a reference by supplying a database record in the citation. A combination of these alternatives is also possible.

For each citation, refer can produce a mark in the text. This mark consists of some label which can be separated from the text and from other labels in various ways. For each reference it also outputs groff commands that can be used by a macro package to produce a formatted reference for each citation. The output of refer must therefore be processed using a suitable macro package. The -ms and -me macros are both suitable. The commands to format a citation's reference can be output immediately after the citation, or the references may be accumulated, and the commands output at some later point. If the references are accumulated, then multiple citations of the same reference will produce a single formatted reference.

The interpretation of lines between .R1 and .R2 as commands is a new feature of GNU refer. Documents making use of this feature can still be processed by Unix refer just by adding the lines

.de R1
.ig R2
..

to the beginning of the document. This will cause troff to ignore everything between .R1 and .R2. The effect of some commands can also be achieved by options. These options are supported mainly for compatibility with Unix refer. It is usually more convenient to use commands.

refer generates .lf lines so that filenames and line numbers in messages produced by commands that read refer output will be correct; it also interprets lines beginning with .lf so that filenames and line numbers in the messages and .lf lines that it produces will be accurate even if the input has been preprocessed by a command such as gsoelim.1

OPTIONS

Most options are equivalent to commands (for a description of these commands see the Commands subsection):

-b: no-label-in-text; no-label-in-reference
-e: accumulate
-n: no-default-database
-C: compatible
-P: move-punctuation
-S: label "(A.n|Q) ', ' (D.y|D)"; bracket-label " (" ) "; "
-an: reverse An
-cfields: capitalize fields
-fn: label %n
-ifields: search-ignore fields
-k: label L\(ti%a
-kfield: label field\(ti%a
-l: label A.nD.y%a
-lm: label A.n+mD.y%a
-l,n: label A.nD.y-n%a
-lm,n: label A.n+mD.y-n%a
-pfilename: database filename
-sspec: sort spec
-tn: search-truncate n

These options are equivalent to the following commands with the addition that the filenames specified on the command line are processed as if they were arguments to the bibliography command instead of in the normal way:

-B: annotate X AP; no-label-in-reference
-Bfield.macro: annotate field macro; no-label-in-reference

The following options have no equivalent commands:

-v: Print the version number.
-R: Don't recognize lines beginning with .R1/.R2.

USAGE

Bibliographic databases

The bibliographic database is a text file consisting of records separated by one or more blank lines. Within each record fields start with a % at the beginning of a line. Each field has a one character name that immediately follows the %. It is best to use only upper and lower case letters for the names of fields. The name of the field should be followed by exactly one space, and then by the contents of the field. Empty fields are ignored. The conventional meaning of each field is as follows:

A: The name of an author. If the name contains a title such as Jr. at the end, it should be separated from the last name by a comma. There can be multiple occurrences of the A field. The order is significant. It is a good idea always to supply an A field or a Q field.
B: For an article that is part of a book, the title of the book
C: The place (city) of publication.
D: The date of publication. The year should be specified in full. If the month is specified, the name rather than the number of the month should be used, but only the first three letters are required. It is a good idea always to supply a D field; if the date is unknown, a value such as in press or unknown can be used.
E: For an article that is part of a book, the name of an editor of the book. Where the work has editors and no authors, the names of the editors should be given as A fields and , (ed) or , (eds) should be appended to the last author.
G: US Government ordering number.
I: The publisher (issuer).
J: For an article in a journal, the name of the journal.
K: Keywords to be used for searching.
L: Label.
N: Journal issue number.
O: Other information. This is usually printed at the end of the reference.
P: Page number. A range of pages can be specified as m-n.
Q: The name of the author, if the author is not a person. This will only be used if there are no A fields. There can only be one Q field.
R: Technical report number.
S: Series name.
T: Title. For an article in a book or journal, this should be the title of the article.
V: Volume number of the journal or book.
X: Annotation.

For all fields except A and E, if there is more than one occurernce of a particular field in a record, only the last such field will be used.

If accent strings are used, they should follow the character to be accented. This means that the AM macro must be used with the -ms macros. Accent strings should not be quoted: use one \ rather than two.

Citations

The format of a citation is

: .[opening-text
flags keywords
fields
.]closing-text

The opening-text, closing-text and flags components are optional. Only one of the keywords and fields components need be specified.

The keywords component says to search the bibliographic databases for a reference that contains all the words in keywords. It is an error if more than one reference if found.

The fields components specifies additional fields to replace or supplement those specified in the reference. When references are being accumulated and the keywords component is non-empty, then additional fields should be specified only on the first occasion that a particular reference is cited, and will apply to all citations of that reference.

The opening-text and closing-text component specifies strings to be used to bracket the label instead of the strings specified in the bracket-label command. If either of these components is non-empty, the strings specified in the bracket-label command will not be used; this behaviour can be altered using the [ and ] flags. Note that leading and trailing spaces are significant for these components.

The flags component is a list of non-alphanumeric characters each of which modifies the treatment of this particular citation. Unix refer will treat these flags as part of the keywords and so will ignore them since they are non-alphanumeric. The following flags are currently recognized:

#: This says to use the label specified by the short-label command, instead of that specified by the label command. If no short label has been specified, the normal label will be used. Typically the short label is used with author-date labels and consists of only the date and possibly a disambiguating letter; the # is supposed to be suggestive of a numeric type of label.
[: Precede opening-text with the first string specified in the bracket-label command.
]: Follow closing-text with the second string specified in the bracket-label command.

One advantages of using the [ and ] flags rather than including the brackets in opening-text and closing-text is that you can change the style of bracket used in the document just by changing the bracket-label command. Another advantage is that sorting and merging of citations will not necessarily be inhibited if the flags are used.

If a label is to be inserted into the text, it will be attached to the line preceding the .[ line. If there is no such line, then an extra line will be inserted before the .[ line and a warning will be given.

There is no special notation for making a citation to multiple references. Just use a sequence of citations, one for each reference. Don't put anything between the citations. The labels for all the citations will be attached to the line preceding the first citation. The labels may also be sorted or merged. See the description of the <> label expression, and of the sort-adjacent-labels and abbreviate-label-ranges command. A label will not be merged if its citation has a non-empty opening-text or closing-text. However, the labels for a citation using the ] flag and without any closing-text immediately followed by a citation using the [ flag and without any opening-text may be sorted and merged even though the first citation's opening-text or the second citation's closing-text is non-empty. (If you wish to prevent this just make the first citation's closing-text \&.)

Commands

Commands are contained between lines starting with .R1 and .R2. Recognition of these lines can be prevented by the -R option. When a .R1 line is recognized any accumulated references are flushed out. Neither .R1 nor .R2 lines, nor anything between them is output.

Commands are separated by newlines or ;s. # introduces a comment that extends to the end of the line (but does not conceal the newline). Each command is broken up into words. Words are separated by spaces or tabs. A word that begins with \(ts extends to the next \(ts that is not followed by another \(ts. If there is no such \(ts the word extends to the end of the line. Pairs of \(ts in a word beginning with \(ts collapse to a single \(ts. Neither # nor ; are recognized inside \(tss. A line can be continued by ending it with \; this works everywhere except after a #.

Each command name that is marked with * has an associated negative command no-name that undoes the effect of name. For example, the no-sort command specifies that references should not be sorted. The negative commands take no arguments.

In the following description each argument must be a single word; field is used for a single upper or lower case letter naming a field; fields is used for a sequence of such letters; m and n are used for a non-negative numbers; string is used for an arbitrary string; filename is used for the name of a file.