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Re: rfc-ed reference style [Re: Last Call: Instructions to Request for Comments (RFC) Authors to BCP]

2003-03-17 15:08:12
On Mon, 17 Mar 2003, John C Klensin wrote:
This is not just "a tradition", it is an approved form in some
style manuals.  It is most often used along with
[AUTHyyS]-type references, where "AUTH" is two or four letters
from the first author's name, yy are a two-digit year, and S
is "a"..."z" if there are more than one reference for the same
author, or for an author with the same (last) name.  One of
the controversies about the method (controversy == different
sources make different recommendations) is whether, say two
articles, one each by Joe Jones and Fred Jones, should be
cited as [JONE03a] and [JONE03b] or whether they should
preferentially appear as [JONJ03] and [JONF03].  

   LastName1, initials1, initials2 LastName2, ...
form is preferred to
    initials1 LastName1, initials2 LastName2, ...
because it is easier for the reader to identify the author
name and match it to the above referencing variants.   And
those manuals tend to prefer "Initials Lastname" (more
generally, having names appear in their natural order) in the
absence of other considerations because it is really nice to
not have ambiguity about what people are really called (those
Asian names that are normally written with the family name
first appear in natural order in that scheme, without the key
commas).

The RFC Editor's real "tradition", as I understand it, has
been to permit any reasonable reference form to be used, as
long as it is applied consistently.   I am personally
sympathetic to that tradition; I think an argument for forcing
a single format should focus clearly on the method to be
chosen and why it represents an improvement.  And, in doing
so, please remember those Asian and Spanish-style names.

It seems I was not clear enough and you misinterpreted my point.  Let try 
to clarify,

   [10] Eastlake, D. and E. Panitz, "Reserved Top Level DNS
   Names", RFC 2606, June 1999.
==> hopefully this isn't the reference practise, should be
s/E. Panitz/Panitz, E./, right?

I have a problem of writing the author list as "Eastlake, D., and E.  
Panitz", rather than "Eastlake, D., and Panitz, E."

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings