path: root/contrib/groff/refer/TODO

inline references

Some sort of macro/subroutine that can cover several references.

move-punctuation should ignore multiple punctuation characters.

Make the index files machine independent.

Allow search keys to be negated (with !) to indicate that the
reference should not contain the key.  Ignore negated keys during
indexed searching.

Provide an option with lkbib and lookbib that prints the location
(filename, position) of each reference.  Need to map filename_id's
back to filenames.

Rename join-authors to join-fields.  Have a separate label-join-fields
command used by @ and #.

Have some sort of quantifier: eg $.n#A means execute `$.n' for each
instance of an A field, setting $ to that field, and then join the
results using the join-authors command.

no-text-in-bracket command which says not to allow post_text and
pre_text when the [] flags has been given. Useful for superscripted
footnotes.

Make it possible to translate - to \(en in page ranges.

Trim eign a bit.

In indexed searching discard all numeric keys except dates.

Allow `\ ' to separate article from first word.

%also

Option automatically to supply [] flags in every reference.

See if we can avoid requiring a comma before jr. and so on
in find_last_name().

Cache sortified authors in authors string during tentative evaluation of
label specification.

Possibly don't allow * and % expressions in the first part of ?:, | or
& expressions.

Handle better the case where <> occurs inside functions and in the
first operand of ~. Or perhaps implement <> using some magic character
in the string.

Should special treatment be given to lines beginning with . in
references?  (Unix refer seems to treat them like `%').

Add global flag to control whether all files should be stat-ed after
loading, and whether they should be stat-ed before each search.
Perhaps make this dependent on the number of files there are.

Option to truncate keys to truncate_len in linear searching.

Allow multiple -f options in indxbib.

In indxbib, possibly store common words rather than common words
filename.  In this case store only words that are actually present in
the file.

Perhaps we should put out an obnoxious copyright message when lookbib
starts up.

Provide an option that writes a file containing just the references
actually used.  Useful if you want to distribute a document.

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 @.

In consider_authors when last names are ambiguous we might be able to
use just the first name and not Jr. bit. Or we might be able to
abbreviate the author.

It ought to be possible to specify an alternative field to sort on
instead of date. (ie if there's a field giving the type of document --
these references should sort after any years)

Provide a way to execute a command using a command-line option.

Option to set the label-spec as a command-line option (-L).

Command to to specify which fields can occur multiple times:
multiple AE

Command to specify how various fields sort:
aort-as-name A
sort-as-date D
sort-as-title T
sort-as-other O

Command to specify which fields are author fields:
# if we don't have A use field Q
author-fields AQ

Commands to set properties of tokens.
sortify-token \(ae ae
uppercase-token \[ae] \[AE]

Command to set the names of months:
months january february march april may ...

Perhaps provide some sort of macro capability:
# perhaps a macro capability
defmacro foo
annotation-field $1
endef

Command to control strings used in capitalization
capitalize-start \s+2
capitalize-end \s-2
(perhaps make these arguments to the capitalize command.)