Re: [NTG-context] A note on Arabic names in bibliographies and indices

Hi Idris, All, We have here the classical database problem of finding a format that fits all. But, as any body working with databases knows this will not work with a rigid format. Here we have 3 fields for the authors can can be misused. The von is the most problematic. It seems due to its cultural diversity. The use of the \setuppublicationlist[colsep=] helps in some ways that it gives the writers of text the flexibility of manually controlling the space after von field, but as Idris has pointed out this would involve a lot of work depending on the authors one has in ones database. This is especially, problematic for academics that reuse their bibliographies! Irdis second solution is a simple work around for where only a few changes are necessary. I am not an expert with this „von“ business, but in Idris case here „al-„ a simple change in the output of the vonsep could help globally without causing to many problems. That is make the output of the vonsep dependent on the last character of the von-field here „-„ The other possibility would be to use a discretionary switch for the output of the vonsep one definition could be vonsep= yes : output blank or global vonsep (default if vonsep field not in publication entry) no : do not output vonsep string : output character sequence command : use command to output vonsep Of course we could just have a default handler for the von field and allow it to be changed by writers! hope this helps the people smashing their brains on this subject/code! regards Keith.

Am 01.02.2015 um 16:06 schrieb Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد :

Dear Syndicate,

The current bibliography handler uses the following for authors:

\type{\author[junior]{firstnames}[inits]{von}{surname}}

Now in Arabic we have something similar to the 'von' field: the definite article 'al-', 'ibn', etc. Just as with 'von' we want to ignore them in the alphabetical sorting. [On the other hand, ConTeXt cannot currently sort its own bbl files alphabetically]. See the linked picture for a real-life example (the top-right of the page contains both Dutch and Arabic examples):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rnimlactrlqz6ak/arabic-dutch-bib.jpg?dl=0

Now the {von} field works for these Arabic prefixes, but there is an issue: There can be no space between 'al-' and what follows (e.g. 'al-Haq'). But the {von} field by default adds a space (von Corbin). So what to do? One solution is to use \setuppublicationlist[vonsep=] (see also attached):

[snip, snip]

\setuppublicationlist[vonsep=] kills the space after the prefix, but that means that for every 'von', 'van', 'abu', and the like we have to add the space manually in the {von} field (as in the above example).

If we don't want to use \setuppublicationlist[vonsep=] then we have to define a command for 'al-' that gobbles the space:

% \define \GobbleSpace{\ignorespaces} % \define \Al{al-\GobbleSpace}

If one is using lots of Arabic names and few, e.g., Dutch names, then using the [vonsep=] approach seems better. But in the upcoming bib module we may want a better solution so that bbl files can be more consistent and portable. Any thoughts are appreciated, and [snip, snip]