[seqfan] standard format for refs in OEIS?

[Neil Sloane]

At present the references in the OEIS (to papers, books etc) are not in a
uniform format, nor are the links.

If we were to put them into a uniform style, what should we use?
Bibtex format is one possibility, but is that the best? It is pretty
ancient, is there something more recent?

Here are some of the goals (there are many others):
- make it clear what the start of the last name is, for sorting [Smith, Jon
as opposed to John Smith]
- make it possible to link with the Zentralblatt or Math Sci Net (MSN)
databases so the we can add Zbl or MSN links
- include URLs for documents that are on the web
- if we can get it to work, the OEIS software would then make any reference
that had a URL into an active link - then we could get rid of the
difference between Reference (%D) lines and Link (%H) lines [Tricky because
many of the links now are to entries in the Index to the OEIS - so that
would have to be one of the fields in the Bibtex entry, if we decide on
Bibtex]
- to be compatible with Russ Cox's search mechanism, so that one could for
example specify a search for papers by Smith that appeared in 1983.

I like the way Bibtex separates all the different parts of a reference into
fields. If we were to use that, we would probably string all the separate
fields together into one long line.

Whatever we decide, the conversion will take a while - we have 220000
sequence entries, 60000 references and 140000 links.
Which is why it is important to choose the right format before we start
converting.

In short, thinking about the future of the OEIS, what format (Bibtex?)
should we use for references and links?

-- 
Dear Friends, I have now retired from AT&T. New coordinates:

Neil J. A. Sloane, President, OEIS Foundation
11 South Adelaide Avenue, Highland Park, NJ 08904, USA
Phone: 732 828 6098; home page: http://NeilSloane.com
Email: njasloane at gmail.com