Re: [Groff] refer and Dutch names

[Robert D. Goulding]

On Thu, 3 Apr 2003, Christian Jensen wrote:

> On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, Robert D. Goulding wrote:
>
> > no-discard
> > sort Z1A1
>        ^^
>
> Hmm, I have discovered an unfortunate side-effect of using the Z field in
> the sort option. I use the APA style reference (or label) in the text in
> the form of Lastname (year) rather than numbers, but starting the sort
> option with anything but 'A' (author) makes refer use the whole author
> string '@' instead.

Have played around with this, and I don't see any simple way around it.
It is recognized as limitation with refer, in the TODO file:

---------------------------
Have a magic token such that
%A <sort stuff><magic token><print stuff>
will print as though it were
%A <print stuff>
but sort as though it were
%A <sort stuff>
Do we need this if we can specify author alternatives for sorting?
No, provided we have separate alternatives for @.
----------------------------

Two differently inadequate solutions to your problem:

Use a block something like:

.R1
database t.ref
no-discard
no-search-ignore
sort Z1A+
no-label-in-reference
reverse A
label "A.n ' ' D"
.R2

This will give, of course, only the *first* author's surname and the year.

Alternatively (and this is a tedious hack), for all of the items with
multiple authors, add another field to your reference file, say %Y,
listing *exactly* how you want the authors' names to appear in the
*label*. So, to use your example, one of your entries would contain the
line:

%Y Silverman et al.

Then your label line should be:

label "(Y|A.n) ' ' D"

If you do not have too many multiple-author entries, this may be the
easiest, if inelegant, way to achieve what you want.

R.