Re: [Groff] Refer and Journals

[Frank Jahnke]

First, thank you for the detailed reply.

On Thu, 2007-03-15 at 16:44 +0100, Joerg van den Hoff wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 14, 2007 at 02:28:15PM -0700, Frank Jahnke wrote:
> > I am trying to cast references from refer into the format requested by a
> > particular journal.  Is there a place where better documentation can

> yes it is not easy reading, but still...

I had surmised that most of the action occurs between the .R1 and .R2
flags.  My difficulty is that the definitions in the man page are
extremely terse.  Keeping with man page traditions, I'm sure they are
great reminders for things you know, but not really the place to learn.

> > be found?

> none that I know of.

That is a shame.  It would help a *lot* to have even a simple
user-friendly introduction with a few common examples.

> 
> I presume you use the `ms' macros.

Yes.
> 
> 1. 

> .R1
> search-truncate 255
snip
> .R2
> 
> the explanation for these settings are in the `refer' manpage.

Well, sort of.  I will play with this to see what the various fields do.
> 
> 
> 2.
> fine tuning requires adjustements to the macros in the `ref'-module of `ms'.
> to this end you should copy this module into a separate file (or the file 
> where
> the .R1/.R2 block resides), modify it and source it from your document. I 
> never
> get around to spending really once and for all sufficient time to understand 
> it
> fully, but I enclose a copy of the `ref'-module which includes my comment
> blocks, where I have put down my current state of understanding, what's going
> on.

OK.  So this would be the place where you set bold or italic fonts, for
example, right?

It would also seem that you would have to modify this file for each
Journal format (which unfortunately differ).  If that is so, do the
readers of this list have some "standard" ones already worked out?  It
would be useful to pool these, so that we don't all have to reinvent the
wheel.

Frank