[Groff] Reinventing the refer(1) wheel

[Jorgen Grahn]

My brother is doing research for a semi-scientific book on the birds of our
home county, and I think I've kind of persuaded him to format at least the
early drafts using groff.

For this work, he's gathering hundreds of references, but I haven't been
able to convince him to use refer - or any other software - for them. And
after studying the ancient refer(1) documentation and groff's refer(1), plus
the national standard for references (which is a Harvard variation), I'm not
sure it would be possible, even with some s.tmac hacking.

So I've been playing with the idea of writing a refer(1) "replacement" which
is compatible with the existing .[/.] notation and with existing databases,
but does not rely on the macro set to format the citations and references.
And with much less flexibility when it comes to different Oxford/Harvard
variations - there would be initial support for one or two styles.

It shouldn't be too hard (famous last words!), but before I start I need you
to tell me exactly how stupid and pointless it would be ;-)

regards,
Jörgen

-- 
  // Jörgen Grahn       "And then the design was ignored, and small children
\X/ <address@hidden>  with crayons were given the O'Reilly Perl books and
                         told to Create.  And lo, it was done."
                                                         -- Teo de H, in ASR