Format of Bibliographic Entries for Milestone 1

Format of Bibliographic Entries
for Milestone 1 Deliverable
(and Other Bibliographic Citations)

To provide a common format for the information that we gather in Milestone 1, plus additional bibliographic information we may find throughout the quarter, we will use a format supported by the UNIX refer utility. Refer- format files are plain text, with a simple textual format to define bibliographic entries. Here is an excerpt from the refer manual page that describes the file format:

     The bibliographic database is  a  text  file  consisting  of
     records  separated  by one or more blank lines.  Within each
     record fields start with a % at the  beginning  of  a  line.
     Each field has a one character name that immediately follows
     the %.  It is best to use only upper and lower case  letters
     for  the  names  of fields.  The name of the field should be
     followed by exactly one space, and then by the  contents  of
     the  field.   Empty  fields  are  ignored.  The conventional
     meaning of each field is as follows:

     A    The name of an author.  If the name  contains  a  title
          such as Jr. at the end, it should be separated from the
          last  name  by  a  comma.   There   can   be   multiple
          occurrences  of the A field.  The order is significant.
          It is a good idea always to supply an A field  or  a  Q
          field.

     B    For an article that is part of a book, the title of the
          book

     C    The place (city) of publication.

     D    The date of publication.  The year should be  specified
          in  full.   If  the month is specified, the name rather
          than the number of the month should be used,  but  only
          the  first  three  letters  are required.  It is a good
          idea always to  supply  a  D  field;  if  the  date  is
          unknown,  a  value  such  as in press or unknown can be
          used.

     E    For an article that is part of a book, the name  of  an
          editor  of the book.  Where the work has editors and no
          authors, the names of the editors should be given as  A
          fields  and , (ed) or , (eds) should be appended to the
          last author.

     G    US Government ordering number.

     I    The publisher (issuer).

     J    For an article in a journal, the name of the journal.

     K    Keywords to be used for searching.

     L    Label.

     N    Journal issue number.

     O    Other information.  This is usually printed at the  end
          of the reference.

     P    Page number.  A range of pages can be specified as m-n.

     Q    The name of the author, if the author is not a  person.
          This will only be used if there are no A fields.  There
          can only be one Q field.

     R    Technical report number.

     S    Series name.

     T    Title.  For an article  in  a  book  or  journal,  this
          should be the title of the article.

     V    Volume number of the journal or book.

     X    Annotation.

     For all fields except A and E, if there  is  more  than  one
     occurrence  of a particular field in a record, only the last
     such field will be used.

For 508, we will make particular use of the %O and %X fields. Specifically, use %O for the document URL, if it has one. Use %X for review comments. The %X entry may extend for multiple lines.

There are a number of useful UNIX utilities for refer files that can be used to generate full bibliographies automatically, including generation of HTML text. We will use these utilities to produce the references section of the 508 requirements specification document.