This analysis is not quite correct. The mkiv bibliography system is not rigid at all, in fact it is eminently configurable. However, the APA specification that is programmed is rigidly adhered to, and it is up to the responsibility of the user to configure any desired deviations.
The outstanding bugs that Rik refers to are either obscure special cases, misuses of bibliography fields, or simply a special configuration request. There may be some outstanding bugs in a system that is still not fully tested under all conditions. BibLaTeX introduces many incompatible and curiously defined fields. A ConTeXt specification that uses them can be written, but I am not going to do this as I see no point. BibLaTeX is a good example not to follow. There are "plans" to write other humanities-focused standards, but there needs to be some motivation and more importantly, a clearly written standard. I use the "bibliography" subsystem as a general database tool, defining glossaries, tables of crystallographic symmetries, catalogs of diagrams, etc., so it is quite a bit more flexible than just to create bibliographies. Alan On Sat, 23 Dec 2017 16:44:32 -0500 Rik Kabel <cont...@rik.users.panix.com> wrote: > On 2017-12-05 13:20, Gour wrote: > > On Sun, 7 May 2017 23:33:30 +0200 > > r.erm...@hccnet.nl wrote: > > > >> I recently finished a book project in multimarkdown, which I > >> converted to LaTeX (I could not use ConTeXt because of its limited > >> bibliographical functions in comparison to BibLatex). > > Just wonder, since I plan to embrace ConTeXt for a larger > > educational-based project with the need to use bibliographical > > functions, what did you prevent you to use it? > > > > Let me say that I'm fully familiar with neither BibLatex's > > capabilities nor with the similar things in MkIV... > > > > Sincerely, > > Gour > > > The utility of the new bibliography subsystem is a function of your > ability to work within the rigid structure of the APA reference > standards. Even with that, there are outstanding bugs that have not > been addressed for many months. > > If your publisher requires adherence to some other bibliographical > standards, or even variations of the APA standards, the new subsystem > may not suffice, or may not suffice without significant customization > that requires understanding of the source code. > > (ConTeXt also has some support for the APS standard, but that is > secondary to APA in the implementation plan as so far revealed. There > is no current plan of which I am aware to support more > humanities-focused standards (Chicago, MHRA, Turabian, ...), although > I would be happy to be proved wrong on that.) > > For comparison, BibLaTeX supports tens of different standards and > variants, and has (or had a couple of years ago when I last used it) > an active community of developers. To accomplish this, BibLaTeX > relies on many added tags to BibTeX, thus forgoing compatibility with > other systems. > > The differences between the two derive from a few basic decisions > taken by the ConTeXt developers. Among these, ConTeXt prefers to not > add additional fields to BibTeX, and prefers to develop its own code > without reliance on third-party software. > > If your document requires bibliographic support beyond what ConTeXt > currently provides, there is another mechanism by which you can > incorporate other reference standards. You can write your document in > Pandoc <http://pandoc.org/> [1] Markdown and use any of the hundreds > of reference standards and variants supported there through CSL > <http://citationstyles.org/> [2]. Pandoc can create an XML result > that can be transformed into a PDF by ConTeXt with the bibliography > created according the the selected CSL format. This works well for > documents that do not require significant customization, but may > become cumbersome when you must fiddle with many individual objects. > I have done this for a book-scale project as a proof of concept, and > the bibliography handling works well. My work expands on that of > Pablo Rodríguez, who addressed the method in a note to you last year > <https://www.mail-archive.com/ntg-context@ntg.nl/msg83581.html> [3]. > > [1] http://pandoc.org/ > [2] http://citationstyles.org/ > [3] https://www.mail-archive.com/ntg-context@ntg.nl/msg83581.html > ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://context.aanhet.net archive : https://bitbucket.org/phg/context-mirror/commits/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________
