L A T E X And The Personal Database
Bernice Sacks Lipkin · 2000
Ignoring fixed-size and coded field formats, text databases can be viewed as either ASCII-delimited or ID-prepended. ASCII-delimited databases reserve a particular symbol as record delimiter, and another symbol as field delimiter. ID-prepended databases mark the start of each new field with stylized text unique to that field type. Personal means that the record can take any form the database owner desires, from the rigidly-structured, where the informational fields are in the same order in each and every record in the database, to the totally unstructured records of ordinary documents. TADS is a set of integrated programs that manipulate the text in a personal database. Using TADS, field-specific LATEX instructions can be made an intrinsic part of an ASCII-delimited database from its inception. To create a bibliographic data base and incorporate items from the database into manuscript text requires that the writer do two tasks: 1. Using TADS, the writer creates a customized data entry program that will prompt for keyboard input to create the field order he wants; e.g., author, title, journal, etc.. The data entry program writes a skeleton LATEX file, complete with skeleton commands, one per field. These macro names, which also prepend the fields in each database record, define font size and shape. 2. In writing a document for publication, the writer alludes to citations in the document, using whatever phrases he can recall. The allusions are written within brackets; for example, Smith et al suggested... Under a script that stacks TADS program modules with the appropriate options, these allusions are extracted from the document, and serve as wildcard match words to pull out records in the derivative database. Records are automatically sorted by number or by Name-Year and the numbers (or Name-Year) substituted for the allusions in the document. Fields can be rearranged or omitted in the bibliography; and the accompanying LATEX field macros can be redefined for the font and style requirements of the particular journal.