GNU bug report logs - #36252
26.1; bibtex-generate-autokey does not use use date field

Previous Next

To add a comment to this bug, you must first unarchive it, by sending
a message to control AT debbugs.gnu.org, with unarchive 36252 in the body.
You can then email your comments to 36252 AT debbugs.gnu.org in the normal way.

Toggle the display of automated, internal messages from the tracker.

Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Ryan Kavanagh <rak <at> debian.org>
To: submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: 26.1; bibtex-generate-autokey does not use use date field
Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2019 16:23:30 -0400

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Package: emacs
Version: 26.1
Tags: patch

The bibtex.el package will automatically generate a key for a BibTeX
entry when required. To do so, it extracts the year from the 'year'
field. Instead of the 'year' field, the biblatex dialect uses the 'date'
field to record the publication date. The bibtex-generate-autokey
function should fallback to the date field when the year field is
absent. This requires a bit of care because the 'date' field can contain
an arbitrary date satisfying the "ISO8601-2 Extended Format
Specification Level 1". Fortunately, a relatively simple regex can
extract the year from all of the examples listed in the biblatex
manual[0].

Please see attached for a patch adding support for the 'date' field.

[0] http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/CTAN/macros/latex/exptl/biblatex/doc/biblatex.pdf

-- 
|)|/  Ryan Kavanagh      | GPG: 4E46 9519 ED67 7734 268F
|\|\  https://rak.ac     |      BD95 8F7B F8FC 4A11 C97A

[0001-Fallback-to-date-field-when-year-field-is-absent-in-.patch (text/x-diff, attachment)]

[signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, inline)]

Message #8 received at 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>
To: Ryan Kavanagh <rak <at> debian.org>
Cc: 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#36252: 26.1;
 bibtex-generate-autokey does not use use date field
Date: Sat, 06 Jul 2019 16:52:07 +0200

Ryan Kavanagh <rak <at> debian.org> writes:

> The bibtex.el package will automatically generate a key for a BibTeX
> entry when required. To do so, it extracts the year from the 'year'
> field. Instead of the 'year' field, the biblatex dialect uses the 'date'
> field to record the publication date. The bibtex-generate-autokey
> function should fallback to the date field when the year field is
> absent.

This makes sense to me, but I'm not a bibtex user.  Anybody else that
can take a look at this patch?

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

Message #11 received at 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>
To: Ryan Kavanagh <rak <at> debian.org>
Cc: 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#36252: 26.1;
 bibtex-generate-autokey does not use use date field
Date: Sat, 06 Jul 2019 16:55:47 +0200

Ryan Kavanagh <rak <at> debian.org> writes:

> This requires a bit of care because the 'date' field can contain
> an arbitrary date satisfying the "ISO8601-2 Extended Format
> Specification Level 1". Fortunately, a relatively simple regex can
> extract the year from all of the examples listed in the biblatex
> manual[0].

(This reminds me -- Emacs should really have a parser that can parse all
ISO8601 variants.  There's parse-iso8601-time-string, but it only
handles the simplest of the formats...)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

Message #14 received at 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Ryan Kavanagh <rak <at> debian.org>
To: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>
Cc: 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#36252: 26.1; bibtex-generate-autokey does not use use date
 field
Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2019 20:34:21 -0400

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

On Sat, Jul 06, 2019 at 04:55:47PM +0200, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
> (This reminds me -- Emacs should really have a parser that can parse
> all ISO8601 variants.  There's parse-iso8601-time-string, but it only
> handles the simplest of the formats...)

Perhaps that should be the first step, and then the committed fix to
this bug can just use that.

I've been using this patch since I submitted it and I've discovered a
slight bug in how date parsing works for bibtex files with this patch.
Please hold off on committing this patch until I've managed to narrow
down the bug and figure out where it is.

Thanks,
Ryan

-- 
|)|/  Ryan Kavanagh      | GPG: 4E46 9519 ED67 7734 268F
|\|\  https://rak.ac     |      BD95 8F7B F8FC 4A11 C97A

[signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, inline)]

Message #17 received at 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>
To: Ryan Kavanagh <rak <at> debian.org>
Cc: 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#36252: 26.1; bibtex-generate-autokey does not use use date
 field
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2019 09:24:38 +0200

Ryan Kavanagh <rak <at> debian.org> writes:

> On Sat, Jul 06, 2019 at 04:55:47PM +0200, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
>> (This reminds me -- Emacs should really have a parser that can parse
>> all ISO8601 variants.  There's parse-iso8601-time-string, but it only
>> handles the simplest of the formats...)
>
> Perhaps that should be the first step, and then the committed fix to
> this bug can just use that.

I've implemented a proper iso8601 parser now, but hasn't merged with the
Emacs trunk yet because I haven't done the entire test suite yet.  It's
on the scratch/iso8601 branch if you want to check it out.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

Message #20 received at 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>
To: Ryan Kavanagh <rak <at> debian.org>
Cc: 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#36252: 26.1; bibtex-generate-autokey does not use use date
 field
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2019 23:01:02 +0200

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org> writes:

> Ryan Kavanagh <rak <at> debian.org> writes:
>
>> On Sat, Jul 06, 2019 at 04:55:47PM +0200, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
>>> (This reminds me -- Emacs should really have a parser that can parse
>>> all ISO8601 variants.  There's parse-iso8601-time-string, but it only
>>> handles the simplest of the formats...)
>>
>> Perhaps that should be the first step, and then the committed fix to
>> this bug can just use that.
>
> I've implemented a proper iso8601 parser now, but hasn't merged with the
> Emacs trunk yet because I haven't done the entire test suite yet.  It's
> on the scratch/iso8601 branch if you want to check it out.

The iso8601 parser is in the trunk now, so if you could rework your
patch based on that, that'd be nice.  The function to use is
`iso8601-parse'.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

Message #25 received at 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>
To: Ryan Kavanagh <rak <at> debian.org>
Cc: 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#36252: 26.1; bibtex-generate-autokey does not use use date
 field
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2020 13:01:29 +0200

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org> writes:

> The iso8601 parser is in the trunk now, so if you could rework your
> patch based on that, that'd be nice.  The function to use is
> `iso8601-parse'.

Ryan, did you look into redoing this functionality with `iso8601-parse'?

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

Message #30 received at 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>
To: Ryan Kavanagh <rak <at> debian.org>
Cc: 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#36252: 26.1; bibtex-generate-autokey does not use use date
 field
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2020 17:02:03 +0200

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org> writes:

> Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org> writes:
>
>> The iso8601 parser is in the trunk now, so if you could rework your
>> patch based on that, that'd be nice.  The function to use is
>> `iso8601-parse'.
>
> Ryan, did you look into redoing this functionality with `iso8601-parse'?

This was five weeks ago, and there was no response, so I'm closing this
bug report.  If progress can be made here, please respond to the debbugs
mail address, and we'll reopen the bug report.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

Message #39 received at 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Patrick M. Niedzielski <patrick <at> pniedzielski.net>
To: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>, Ryan Kavanagh <rak <at> debian.org>
Cc: 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#36252: 26.1; bibtex-generate-autokey does not use use date
 field
Date: Sat, 05 Dec 2020 09:20:52 +0000

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org> skribis:
> Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org> writes: 
> 
> This was five weeks ago, and there was no response, so I'm 
> closing this bug report.  If progress can be made here, please 
> respond to the debbugs mail address, and we'll reopen the bug 
> report. 

I’d like to reopen this bug, and submit the attached patch which I 
believe fixes the issue. This patch teaches 
‘bibtex-generate-autokey’ to prefer an ISO8601-formatted ‘date’ 
field when present, and fall back to a ‘year’, and is implemented 
using Lars’ ISO8601 parsing functions.

Just some implementation notes: I don’t believe Ryan’s original 
patch works as documented when ‘bibtex-autokey-use-crossref’ is 
non-nil.  In this case, his patch would seem to prefer a 
crossref’d entry’s ‘year’ field to a local entry’s ‘date’ field. 
More concretely, with the following BibLaTeX,

 @misc{doe1995some,
   title = {Some work},
   author = {John Doe},
   year = {1995},
   date = {1995-01-01},
 } 

 @misc{,
   title = {Another work},
   author = {Anon Y. Mous},
   date = {1990-03-12},
   crossref = {entry1},
 }

When generating a key for entry2, the original patch would prefer 
using the year 1995 to the year 1990, which is unintuitive. The 
attached patch implements a different behavior instead, in which 
an entry’s own ‘year/date’ field are prefered to the crossref’d 
entry’s ‘year/date’ field. In the above case, 
‘bibtex-generate-autokey’ will generate a entry key with the year 
1990 rather than 1995.

Additionally, we prefer to use the ‘date’ field when present over 
the ‘year’ field. This behavior is probably more correct, since 
BibLaTeX deprecated the ‘year’ field in favor of its own ‘date’ 
field, which only should occur in BibLaTeX-flavor files. Note that 
this is a breaking change from the prior behavior, but only when 
an entry has incompatible ‘date’ and ‘year’ fields.  If a file is 
meant to support both BibTeX and BibLaTeX, the ‘date’ and ‘year’ 
fields should contain the same information.

The attached patch implements the above behavior.

Best,
Patrick

[0001-Prefer-date-field-to-year-field-in-BibTex-entry.patch (text/x-diff, attachment)]

Message #42 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Colin Baxter <m43cap <at> yandex.com>
To: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#36252: 26.1;
 bibtex-generate-autokey does not use use date field
Date: Sun, 06 Dec 2020 09:25:38 +0000

Hello,
>>>>> Patrick M Niedzielski <patrick <at> pniedzielski.net> writes:

    > Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org> skribis:
    >> Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org> writes: This was five weeks
    >> ago, and there was no response, so I'm closing this bug report.
    >> If progress can be made here, please respond to the debbugs mail
    >> address, and we'll reopen the bug report.

    > I’d like to reopen this bug, and submit the attached patch which I
    > believe fixes the issue. This patch teaches
    > ‘bibtex-generate-autokey’ to prefer an ISO8601-formatted ‘date’
    > field when present, and fall back to a ‘year’, and is implemented
    > using Lars’ ISO8601 parsing functions.

    > Just some implementation notes: I don’t believe Ryan’s original
    > patch works as documented when ‘bibtex-autokey-use-crossref’ is
    > non-nil.  In this case, his patch would seem to prefer a
    > crossref’d entry’s ‘year’ field to a local entry’s ‘date’
    > field. More concretely, with the following BibLaTeX,

    >  @misc{doe1995some, title = {Some work}, author = {John Doe}, year
    > = {1995}, date = {1995-01-01}, } @misc{, title = {Another work},
    > author = {Anon Y. Mous}, date = {1990-03-12}, crossref = {entry1},
    > }

    > When generating a key for entry2, the original patch would prefer
    > using the year 1995 to the year 1990, which is unintuitive. The
    > attached patch implements a different behavior instead, in which
    > an entry’s own ‘year/date’ field are prefered to the crossref’d
    > entry’s ‘year/date’ field. In the above case,
    > ‘bibtex-generate-autokey’ will generate a entry key with the year
    > 1990 rather than 1995.

    > Additionally, we prefer to use the ‘date’ field when present over
    > the ‘year’ field. This behavior is probably more correct, since
    > BibLaTeX deprecated the ‘year’ field in favor of its own ‘date’
    > field, which only should occur in BibLaTeX-flavor files. Note that
    > this is a breaking change from the prior behavior, but only when
    > an entry has incompatible ‘date’ and ‘year’ fields.  If a file is
    > meant to support both BibTeX and BibLaTeX, the ‘date’ and ‘year’
    > fields should contain the same information.

I am a heavy user of bibtex, but I am puzzled over the 'date'
field. Publications have a 'year' ok, sometimes a 'month', but never
have I seen a 'day'. So how would a user enter (YYYY-MM-DD)? Is it
perhaps the date of entry of the record in to the file? Sorry to butt
in, but I am curious.

Best wishes,

Colin Baxter.

Message #47 received at 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>
To: Patrick M. Niedzielski <patrick <at> pniedzielski.net>
Cc: Ryan Kavanagh <rak <at> debian.org>, 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org,
 Roland Winkler <winkler <at> gnu.org>
Subject: Re: bug#36252: 26.1; bibtex-generate-autokey does not use use date
 field
Date: Sun, 06 Dec 2020 14:19:23 +0100

Patrick M. Niedzielski <patrick <at> pniedzielski.net> writes:

> I’d like to reopen this bug, and submit the attached patch which I
> believe fixes the issue.

OK, reopened.

> This patch teaches ‘bibtex-generate-autokey’ to prefer an
> ISO8601-formatted ‘date’ field when present, and fall back to a
> ‘year’, and is implemented using Lars’ ISO8601 parsing functions.

Looks reasonable to me.  I've added Roland to the Cc's; perhaps he has
some comments.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

Message #50 received at 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: "Roland Winkler" <winkler <at> gnu.org>
To: Colin Baxter <m43cap <at> yandex.com>
Cc: 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#36252: 26.1;
 bibtex-generate-autokey does not use use date field
Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2020 00:18:55 -0600

On Sun Dec 6 2020 Colin Baxter wrote:
> I am a heavy user of bibtex, but I am puzzled over the 'date'
> field. Publications have a 'year' ok, sometimes a 'month', but never
> have I seen a 'day'. So how would a user enter (YYYY-MM-DD)? Is it
> perhaps the date of entry of the record in to the file? Sorry to butt
> in, but I am curious.

ISO8601 permits dates like YYYY, YYYY-MM, and YYYY-MM-DD.  I agree,
the last format is likely rare in the context of citations.  This
smells to me as if internally biblatex relies on a canned library
handling iso8601 formats.

Message #53 received at 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: "Roland Winkler" <winkler <at> gnu.org>
To: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>
Cc: "Patrick M. Niedzielski" <patrick <at> pniedzielski.net>,
 Ryan Kavanagh <rak <at> debian.org>, 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#36252: 26.1; bibtex-generate-autokey does not use use date
 field
Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2020 00:20:54 -0600

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

On Sun Dec 6 2020 Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
> Looks reasonable to me.  I've added Roland to the Cc's; perhaps he
> has some comments.

[Thank you Lars, I haven't subscribed to the bug-gnu-emacs mailing
list.  Lately bug reports for bibtex.el seem to be popular.  Can you
please drop me a note if you see more bug reports for bibtex.el?
Thanks!]

A few days ago I installed in master a related patch that I had
lying around for some time.  I believe it addresses the question of
searching the date and year field in a cleaner way by passing a list
of field names to bibtex-text-in-field.  But I didn't know the new
iso8601 library.  So that's the main purpose of the new patch
attached below.  (This patch is against the current version of
bibtex.el in master.)

Out of curiosity, I also checked Oren Patashnik's old documentation
of the BibTeX year field.  It says that "standard styles can handle
any year whose last four nonpunctuation characters are numerals,
such as '(about 1984)'."  This must be very rare.  But now this
should be handled correctly, too.  (I only use old-fashioned
BibTeX.  But I believe biblatex promises backward compatibility for
the BibTeX year field.)

Regarding the docstring of bibtex-generate-autokey: I am not sure
this is the right place to elaborate on iso8601.  bibtex.el assumes
throughout that users are familiar with valid values for different
fields.

[bibtex-2.patch (application/octet-stream, attachment)]

Message #56 received at 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>
To: "Roland Winkler" <winkler <at> gnu.org>
Cc: "Patrick M. Niedzielski" <patrick <at> pniedzielski.net>,
 Ryan Kavanagh <rak <at> debian.org>, 36252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#36252: 26.1; bibtex-generate-autokey does not use use date
 field
Date: Mon, 07 Dec 2020 16:14:43 +0100

"Roland Winkler" <winkler <at> gnu.org> writes:

> On Sun Dec 6 2020 Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
>> Looks reasonable to me.  I've added Roland to the Cc's; perhaps he
>> has some comments.
>
> [Thank you Lars, I haven't subscribed to the bug-gnu-emacs mailing
> list.  Lately bug reports for bibtex.el seem to be popular.  Can you
> please drop me a note if you see more bug reports for bibtex.el?
> Thanks!]

Sure; I'm just slowly working my way through old bug reports, which is
why you're seeing more of these now.  :-)  I'll keep Cc-ing you on the
bibtex stuff.

> A few days ago I installed in master a related patch that I had
> lying around for some time.  I believe it addresses the question of
> searching the date and year field in a cleaner way by passing a list
> of field names to bibtex-text-in-field.  But I didn't know the new
> iso8601 library.  So that's the main purpose of the new patch
> attached below.  (This patch is against the current version of
> bibtex.el in master.)

Looks good to me.

> Regarding the docstring of bibtex-generate-autokey: I am not sure
> this is the right place to elaborate on iso8601.  bibtex.el assumes
> throughout that users are familiar with valid values for different
> fields.

Yup.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

Message #61 received at 36252-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: "Roland Winkler" <winkler <at> gnu.org>
To: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>,
 Patrick M. Niedzielski <patrick <at> pniedzielski.net>,
 Ryan Kavanagh <rak <at> debian.org>, 36252-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#36252: 26.1; bibtex-generate-autokey does not use use date
 field
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2020 09:04:24 -0600

On Mon Dec 7 2020 Roland Winkler wrote:
> A few days ago I installed in master a related patch that I had
> lying around for some time.  I believe it addresses the question
> of searching the date and year field in a cleaner way by passing a
> list of field names to bibtex-text-in-field.  But I didn't know
> the new iso8601 library.  So that's the main purpose of the new
> patch attached below.

Installed as commit 4a700a2f79d5cca64602b7cad30d6485cfe0e449.

Closing.

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.