kelem@aero.ARPA (Steve Kelem) (12/19/85)
I am using the 'refer' program in conjunction with 'troff' and having a
problem with accents in last names. On page 6 of the documentation,
("Refer - A Bibliography System", Bill Tuthill, Computing Services, UCB)
it states that "interpolated strings (such as accent marks) must have two
backslashes, so they can pass through copy mode intact.
In my database, I have the entry:
%A Carlo H. Se\\*'quin
%T Generalized IC Layout
%D January 6, 1982
%I Computer Science Division, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences,
University of California, Berkeley
%C Berkeley, California
Bug #1:
In my imprecise reference, I have been unable to use Se\\*'quin, Se\*'quin,
or Sequin. I have been able to use only "carlo".
Bug #2:
If I use the -l option (labeled references),
a) the citation prints as [Se\*'quin1982] (one too many backslashes causes
it not to be interpolated),
b) the reference prints properly (the right number of backslashes),
but c) the reference tag prints both "Se" and "quin" at the left margin
(overstriking and making it almost illegible) (not enough backslashes to
prevent the interpolation of \*' until the correct moment - the string probably
gets copied one too many times).
Bug #3:
If I use the option -l4,2 (labels with 1st four characters of name,
last 2 digits of the year), the citation prints as [Se\82] (the 4 characters
are "Se\\") and the reference tag overprints "Se" and "82".
I have a fix for the citation length bug, (making the above citation
print as [Se'qu82] (with the accent over the 'e'), but it doesn't do a lot
of good with the other problems being present.
Does anyone have a fix for this? Is the original author interested in
fixing it?np42pf@sdcc12.UUCP (Pierre Flament) (12/23/85)
In article <160@aero.ARPA> kelem@aero.UUCP (Steve Kelem) writes: >I am using the 'refer' program in conjunction with 'troff' and having a >problem with accents in last names. On page 6 of the documentation, >("Refer - A Bibliography System", Bill Tuthill, Computing Services, UCB) >it states that "interpolated strings (such as accent marks) must have two >backslashes, so they can pass through copy mode intact. > (....) > Does anyone have a fix for this? Is the original author interested in >fixing it? Handling accents the conventional way is a real pain. I am frequently typesetting texts and bibliographies in french, and I have designed the following procedure, which also solves your problems. 1) when you type accents, type the accent after the letter with no troff excape sequence, like: te'le'phone (French) Franc,,ais (French) Nin~o (Spanish) fu::r (German) 2) handle all your bibliographies, i.e. pullref, refer, addbib ... with the accent written this way 3) just before piping to troff, ditroff or nroff, insert the pipe: | sed -f ~/.accent | troff where the file ~/.accent is: 1,$s/e'/\\*'e/g 1,$s/a`/\\*`a/g 1,$s/e`/\\*`e/g 1,$s/u`/\\*`u/g 1,$s/a^/\\*^a/g 1,$s/e^/\\*^e/g 1,$s/i^/\\*^i/g 1,$s/o^/\\*^o/g 1,$s/u^/\\*^u/g 1,$s/a::/\\*:a/g 1,$s/e::/\\*:e/g 1,$s/i::/\\*:i/g 1,$s/o::/\\*:o/g 1,$s/u::/\\*:u/g 1,$s/c,,/\\*,c/g 1,$s/n~/\\*~n/g This procedure has the advantage of handling the accents in a much less tedious way (I can't think of entering a french text and typing \*'e each time I need an accent !), and of by-passing any problem that \ could cause to refer. I have aliases that do this implicitely: alias nroff 'sed -f ~/.accent | nroff' and it has been working fine for 3 years. Interferences with the apostrophe is minimal, and totally absent in French (letters that can be followed by an apostrophe such as l n s never have an accent) and I presume that this is true for most languages. In fact, putting accents after the word works so well that I do not understand all the noise on net.internat about the problems of foreign alphabets. Even spell can look in a list of words that contain accents in the form te'le'phone.