Quote:
Originally Posted by Starson17
As a matter of interest, what 'non-standard' author_sort settings do you use?
|
Almost all of them are related to 'noble' names containing what the French call 'particules'. Names like this are supposed to sort in the order of the word following the particules, but generally they appear with the particules where they belong. Some examples:
- "Joe de Blogs" appears as "de Blogs, Joe", but sorts as "Blogs de, Joe" (or as "Blogs, Joe de", preferred by some)
- "A van L" appears as "van L, A", sorted as "Lam van, A"
- Names like "Baron George von Q" add complexity. I usually make these "von Q (Baron), George" and sort it as "Q von Baron, G", to distinguish the name from "George Baron von Q". Fortunately I don't currently have any books that exhibit this complexity.
However, there are complications (as usual). For example, the name
"Charles De Gaulle" appears as "De Gaulle, Charles", and *sorts* as "De Gaulle, Charles", because in this case the De is not a particule. In addition, some people prefer one form or the other. I have a friend with a name of the form "X de Y" who insists that the name sort as "de Y" because (he says) they haven't had a noble patent for hundreds of years.
[edit] Some Asian names also present complications. For example, when I lived in Malaysia, my Chinese-ancestry students had names like "Lim Cheong", where Lim is the surname. However, the Malay and Indian-ancestry students had names in the other order (fn ln). Some (mostly Malays) had only one name sometimes adorned with parentage, other Malays have the equivalent of particules, and some had both. I ended up entering Chinese-ancestry names as they appeared without any commas, but entered the other names with the order reversed (with commas). Thus I would see a list looking like
"Geetha" (a single name)
"Gupta, Deepak" (a 'normal' name)
"Nai binti Ab (Nik)" (comes from "Nik Nai binti Ab", or "Dame Nai daughter of Ab".)
"Lim Cheong" (a Chinese name)
[end edit]
For a while I ignored the problem. However, people I have cited in my papers have contacted me to tell me that their name is sorted into the wrong place in the references section. I now try to try to get it right to avoid possible offense, and this has carried into how I maintain my library.
A rule that recognizes de, du, de la, van, von, di, and a host of others as special would catch most of these cases, but not all. even with the rules, a global replace would (and in my case did) break something.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Starson17
It just seems to me that using an environment variable for this feature is different from the way most of the other optional user functionality is implemented.
|
No argument from me.
