> > Why does refer(1) have no database field for "edition"?
> The lacuna isn't in refer(1), but in the macro packages using it. > Any %c, where c is an alphabetic character, can be used to create > a field refer(1) understands. It is up to macro writers to work > out the the formatting and placement within a refer(1) citation or > bibliography entry. Certainly it can be extended, but it would be useful if there were some general agreement on which character to use (preferably something mnemonic; "E" is already taken by "editor"), unless you are satisfied with a solution that works only with one macro package (if competing approaches are taken by the writers of different macro packages). Sticking it onto the end of the title field is ugly, because one might like the title to be printed in italics, whereas the edition is "meta information" and should therefore perhaps be in the regular font. Making the macro parse the content of a field to extract this kind of information is also unappealing, because that is the whole purpose of having different fields in the first place. There is also no field for "type" (i.e., article, book, etc.), so refer has to infer this information from the presence/absence of other fields...