[Debichem-devel] Formating of author field in debian/upstream (Was: [Debichem-commits] r3618 - /unstable/gromacs/debian/upstream)

[Andreas Tille]

[Reply to set to debian-science]

Hi Michael,

On Sun, May 06, 2012 at 09:19:54PM +0200, Michael Banck wrote:
> > --- unstable/gromacs/debian/upstream (original)
> > +++ unstable/gromacs/debian/upstream Fri May  4 13:01:17 2012
> > @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
> >  Name: GROMACS
> >  Reference:
> > - - Author: B. Hess, C. Kutzner, D. van der Spoel, E. Lindahl
> > + - Author: Hess, Berk and Kutzner, Carsten and van der Spoel, David and Lindahl, Erik
> >     Title: "GROMACS 4: Algorithms for Highly Efficient, Load-Balanced, and Scalable Molecular Simulation"
> 
> I am fine with having the author information in regular BibTeX format in
> debian/upstream, as long as it gets displayed human-readable on the web
> page.  However, the web page currently displays it as above.  If a
> change to display it as usual (I would expect "Berk Hess, Carsten
> Kutzener, David van der Spoel and Erik Lindahl" is not planned for the
> near future, I would suggest reverting the above change (possibly
> keeping the spelt out first names).

I do not intend to implement something which comes close to a BibTeX
parser on the tasks pages.  In other words:  The tasks pages will
feature the verbatim string as it is given in the Author field.  I
had some private discussion with Daniel and wie both in principle
agree that it looks better if you use

   Firstname1 Lastname1 and Firstname2 Lastname2 and Firstname3 Lastname3

rather than

   Lastname1, Firstname1 and Lastname2, Firstname2 and Lastname3, Firstname3

My main motivation to use the later form (which I do not really prefer)
because it was a verbatim copy of what was in the downloadable BibTeX
record.  As far as I know BibTeX can deal nicely with both forms.

So what can we do?  IMHO we should in any case try to use a form that BibTeX
can deal with.  If we would agree to the first form mentioned above

   Firstname1 Lastname1 and Firstname2 Lastname2 and Firstname3 Lastname3

some regexp that substitutes all ' and' strings but the last one by ','
could be found to make the string more Web page (tasks pages) friendly -
but interpreting the second form seems to be a bit more complex (patches
welcome for sure).

Kind regards

     Andreas.

-- 
http://fam-tille.de