Text::BibTeX::BibFormat - formats bibliography entries

- NAME
- SYNOPSIS
- DESCRIPTION
- METHODS
- SEE ALSO
- AUTHOR
- COPYRIGHT

# NAME

Text::BibTeX::BibFormat - formats bibliography entries

# SYNOPSIS

    # Assuming $entry comes from a database of the 'Bib' structure
    # (i.e., that it's blessed into the BibEntry class, which inherits
    # the format method from BibFormat):
    @blocks = $entry->format;

# DESCRIPTION

The `Text::BibTeX::BibFormat` class is a base class of `Text::BibTeX::BibEntry` for formatting bibliography entries. It thus performs the main job of any program that would hope to supplant BibTeX itself; the other important job (sorting) is handled by its companion class, `Text::BibTeX::BibSort`.

`BibFormat` (the `Text::BibTeX` prefix will be dropped for brevity) pays attention to almost all of the structure options described in Text::BibTeX::Bib; it only ignores those that cover sorting, currently just `sortby`. In particular, all of the "markup" options control what language is generated by `BibFormat`; if none of those options are set, then it will generate plain, unmarked text.

The only method in `BibFormat`'s documented interface (so far) is `format`. (The class defines many other methods, but these should not be necessary to outsiders, so they are undocumented and subject to change.)

# METHODS

format ()

  Formats a single entry for inclusion in the bibliography of some document. The exact processing performed is highly dependent on the entry type and the fields present; in general, you should be able to join `format`'s outputs together to create a single paragraph for inclusion in a document of whatever markup language you're working with.

  Returns a list of "blocks," which can either be jammed together like sentences (for a traditional "tight" bibliography) or printed on separate lines (for an "open" bibliography format). Each block is a reference to a list of sentences; sentences should be joined together with an intervening period. Each sentence is either a single string or a list of clauses; clauses should be joined together with an intervening comma. Each clause is just a simple string.

  See the source code for `btformat` for an example of how to use the output of `format`.

# SEE ALSO

Text::BibTeX::Structure, Text::BibTeX::Bib, Text::BibTeX::BibSort

# AUTHOR

Greg Ward <gward@python.net>

# COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 1997-2000 by Gregory P. Ward. All rights reserved. This file is part of the Text::BibTeX library. This library is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

Text::BibTeX::BibFormat - formats bibliography entries