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.